A Brilliant Trip!!!

I can't believe that our long awaited trip is now over and that tomorrow its back to work as if nothing has happened!! We drove to Southampton on Bank Holiday Monday to board the MSC Opera for the third time. We love MSC and their laid back style of holidays so we were happy to be back on board, this time with our friends Sue and Richard. 

We checked our bags in, parked the cars and headed back to the terminal for registration. Once on board we headed for the buffet for lunch . We were advised by tannoy that our cabins were ready so we headed there and started to unpack our cases. We had one slight problem, when one of our cases went missing and didn't reappear until late in the evening, we think it had been accidentally delivered to the wrong cabin and it took them a while to find it !!

Before we could leave we had to do a drill to make sure we understood what to do in the case of an emergency. We collected our life jackets and went to our muster station, it was all over in less than 30 minutes, soon after that we set sail for our ultimate destination of The Baltics and St Petersburg.

First stop was Amsterdam, a city that we are very familiar with! We had a good day walking around there, looking at Dam Square and the floating flower market. We also hit the shops and bought a few bits and pieces!! I love Amsterdam so much that  I have another trip planned at the end of the month!!!

I spotted this shop on the walk about, its a clothes shop, but I loved their shop window design!!

Once we were back on the ship we headed out to the back deck and soaked up a few rays before getting dressed for dinner. Our next stop was Tallinn, a country that is now in the EU but was once part of the USSR. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was really impressed with it. We were met by our tour guide directly outside the port and we were taken off in a coach to have a look around. 

The Cathedral was spectacular with the typical onion shaped domes. 

I was able to light candles for my sister and my mum. The artworks in the buildings are beautiful.

We walked around the town and looked in all the little shops. In the lower part of the town I found a craft market, it was stocked with lots of little gifts I could have spent ages there but we only had a short 45 minutes. 

The view from the top of the town was beautiful it looked like the town out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

I had planned to update my blog as \I went along but Internet coverage was very very patchy, so I gave up and decided to save it all for when  got back.If  I get the time I will cover some of the other places we visited, I do just have the odd 700 photos, so plenty of choice!!!

Have a good week, don't work too hard!!!