Thursday 29 August 2013

Experience: Silja Europa Cruise

As a few of you may know, I spent two weeks in Finland in June. I returned to Estonia on the 11th of June, making my 13th trip on Viking XPRS. A couple of days later I bought a new camera. My old one died to a coke bottle that I didn't close properly during my trip to Finland in December. Since I was too lazy to take it to the repairs till early May, it was cheaper to buy a new one. In the meanwhile I had used my mother's camera, but now I chose the best camera for my needs, with a great 12x optical zoom for ships and other details. Works like a charm compared to the 3,5x zoom my mother's cam has. 

Before: The best zoom of my mother's camera
After: The best zoom of my new camera. Same ship, same place, another day.
In the peak of the summer, one thing kept me from travelling around too much - on the first of July, I started going to the Reval Maritime School. The course lasted till the 23rd of August, when I scored 100% on the exam. Basically, I'm now waiting for the right moment to go get my licence to drive small ships, with a length up to 24 meters. I've earned it well. I really enjoyed the course, since it was all about a topic I'm really into and I know a lot more about navigation and safety at sea now. We had two days of practice at the sea, once with a sailboat, and once with a motorboat, that also involved jumping into the water and floating in big orange waterproof suits. I've been really sure the whole time that I'm more of a motorboat person - I really enjoyed driving it, and at some point our speed reached 60 knots. I mean, really, why buy a hairdryer when you can buy a motorboat and go out on the sea? 

But what got me to writing this post in the first place was what happened A couple of days ago. the post is long, so I'll give a song to listen again.

My first real cruise - Tallinn - Helsinki - Tallinn on Silja Europa, 26-27. August 2013