Day 9: Thursday 6th July 2023: Baltic
I was awake early and saw this mist bow over the Baltic at 5:30 am.
We planned to have a late morning and had ordered breakfast in our cabin.
The map shows our route backwards and forwards across the Baltic.
When it was time to have a walk around the promenade deck there was maintenance work taking place which meant the walk was more backwards and forwards than usual.
Afternoon
Lunch was later in the Deck 5 restaurant and I had a burger and Greek salad after all my exercise in the morning!
Our afternoon started with a meeting in one of the bars with the organiser of our trip in Poland. What a great idea this was. He had organised a private trip to Gdansk using a local minibus company. The cost of the driver and minibus would be shared equally with all of us.
One of the American ladies that we had met joined our party as now there was a space or two available on the bus.
On the Bayou
The evening was a formal one. We sat on a table for six with a New Zealand couple and two Australian ladies. I enjoyed the Beef Wellington which came as promised rare to medium.
The evening show was “On the Bayou“. On this ship it had to be in the theatre with less action than we had seen on Coral Princess. But this performance was just as good as the other performances we had seen on Island Princess and was very enjoyable to see once again.
And it was still light when we back to our cabin.
Our clocks went back an hour.
Day 10: Friday 7th July 2023: Baltic
Visby – again!
The Captain had earlier announced that as Island Princess would be quite near to Visby across the Baltic that he would try again to land. This was the day.
We were awake early and watched the ship came close to Visby.
At each of the three attempts, a sudden gust of wind made approaching the harbour dangerous.
At 7:40 am the Captain announced gust of 30 knots had prevented the ship from docking. Island Princess then set of back across the Baltic Sea for our next port of Riga.
The rest of our day
After a lunch of pizza and beer up on the pool deck, we walked on the promenade deck in the afternoon.
To save queueing, we shared a table for eight (an Australia couple, a UK couple and an American couple.)
Max Himmelreichs’s “The Rock Tenor”
Max is from Amsterdam and his performance “rocked” the theatre.
The orchestra and cruise director all wanted to be on stage for the end of show photographs.
Just to keep us confused our clocks now gained an hour ready for our next port of Riga.
