P.S.

Every time we post there is always something we forgot to write down. This is going to be a short and quick “Oh I forgot to write that down” post.

The second night at sea the water was really choppy. There were large swells all day and night. I was in the gift shop when all of a sudden a display of expensive crystal went crashing down. One bowl was $100.00 and it was the size of a cereal bowl. Probably $1000.00 worth of merchandise lay broken on the floor. I asked the sales clerk if that had ever happened before. She replied, “all day long”. While we were discussing this another display went crashing down. I couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t keep the brooms going fast enough. Either they have insurance for this or the mark up is so great that they really didn’t lose that much.

We have not been able to watch any Olympics. On the 2nd day of the games we received a notice in our daily flier stating that they didn’t have approval from NBC to show them so they would not be showing the Olympics. So we get our Olympic update, minor that it is, on the BBC channel. Of course, USA isn’t their main interest so we don’t get much. I guess we are going to miss all of the games this year.

Finally, most of the countries we have visited are members of the European Union (except Russia). But they do not use the euro, the currency of the European Union. Norway, a very rich country, chose not to convert to the euro. If they didn’t have to then Sweden chose not to also. So did Denmark and Estonia. So with the arrival at each country we have to have:

Swedish Kroner
Danish Kroner
Estonian Kroon
Finland Euro
Norwegian Kroner
Russian Rouble
Iceland is yet to be announced

None of the countries takes the other’s money. So we get what we need from an ATM, use as much of it as we can and move on to the next currency. It is a real pain. Plus most of it looks very similar so we have to make sure that we put away the Swedish money as to not offend the Danes by giving them a Swedish kroner and vice versa. Print this post