Wednesday 24 February 2016

Experience: Cruising with style, part 2 (Mariella)

Mariella coming to get us
We reached the Katajanokka terminal just in time to check-in and board the Mariella. For me, it was the first "proper" sailing on her, as I had only crossed on her once from Tallinn to Helsinki in August 2014. She has since been refreshed a bit and now I got to do a full cruise on her. It was here that the amazing cabin luck that followed us for the rest of the trip started - we had booked a suite, and of the six suites on board, we were given the only one that has a total of 8 windows on the port side, giving a wonderful view and allowing us to keep an eye out for other ships at almost all times.

Thursday 18 February 2016

Experience: Cruising with style, part 1 (Finlandia, Superstar)

Not long ago, starting on the 30th of January, I took a trip involving several cruiseferries of the sweet home Baltic Sea; or should I say my best friend Sverre took the trip and kindly invited me to join. For me it started with taking a bus to Helsinki to meet up with him; we spent the first day walking and sightseeing in and near central Helsinki. In the evening we met up with some more people (Timo Selkälä, Kalle Id, Mikko Pätäri) from our solid group of friends to have a dinner in Domo, a small, and quiet Japanese restaurant. The same cannot be said about our group as we were clearly the jolliest and loudest ones that night, however that's really not easy to avoid with such great people around.