Birthday......Just to let everyone know

2 beautiful Grey Owls

Bear doing his early morning stretches.

Today, 17th June is my birthday.....there, said it, now I will try not mention it again.

Yesterday (the day before my birthday) I was still in Stockholm with a day to fill as the boat did not leave until 6pm, so I had a few hours left in which to entertain myself.

For starters I went to Skansen, which is a site on one of the many islands of Stockholm where they have re-erected a load of old buildings from Swedish history. I got there at about 11am by the time I had broke camp, and even though the place had been open since 10am, it had that just about too open feel about it. Most of the buildings were still shut and no staff appeared to be about. Also there was a certain unkept appearance about the place with the grass around the buildings being very long and weed infested. It certainly is not a Cregneash or Black Country Museum.

Anyhow I made my way up the hill following a sign to Scandinavian Animals to find 5 bears, 1 fox, 2 grey owls and some European Bison (looked like American Bison to me, but what do I know. There were also a number of wmpty pens under renovation, very run down.

However, by the time I had watched the bears for a bit I had decided to cut and run and make my way to the Science Museum where the NASA exhibition was taking place, but as I started to walk to the exit I noticed that a few of the buildings were now open so decided to take a closer look. On the whole it was not too bad, it was interesting talking to the people playing the parts of the peasants and some of the building interiors were intersting...would I reccomend it to visitors....No, sorry.

Next stop then was the science museum which was far better, the Nasa exhibition is on a world tour at the moment and is due in London some time next year, now this is worth a visit.

I took an audio tour of the exhibition and it was very informative.

By now I was once again starving but only had enough Swedish currency for a cup of tea...all together now, I know. I had noted that Swedes use debit cards for everything, I was even in a queue behind a girl who paid for a single ice cream with a debit card, so, as they say, When in Rome!!!! sorry, wrong country. In the end I was able to eat and left Sweden with the fine sum of 6 kroner, or about 60 pence in proper money...no wastage there then.

My next step was to make the port for my 14 hour crossing to Estonia on the Baltic Queen, one of the Baltic state cruise ships. I have been on P and O ships a few time and they thought that these were great, but it was no contest with the Baltic Queen, even my cabin was superb with great shower, radio, TV (including BBC news 24 and MTV) writing desk and computer points. The ship had numerous shops and a supermarket (you should see how many crates of the beer and liquor they shift!!) 5 bars, 3 restraunts qnd 3 seperate disco's and entertainment areas. Impressive.

The food was also pretty good and would say that P and O was of similar standard on that score. Anyway a pleasent 14 hours spent and a very nice bed to boot!