Monthly Archives: July 2026

Three Days in Copenhagen: Mermaids, Bridges & a Day Trip to Malmö

Leave a Reply

Copenhagen had been on our wish list for years—a city of bicycles, canals, royal palaces and colourful waterfronts. Three days gave us just enough time to see why it’s considered one of Europe’s most liveable capitals…and even sneak into Sweden for the day.

Arrival in Copenhagen (København)

Our ship came alongside Copenhagen right on schedule Friday morning — no fog delay, and since not every passenger was disembarking that day, the process was blissfully quick. No taxi crush, no chaos: just a calm walk off the ship and onto the metro toward our hotel.

Nyhavn doesn’t do subtle — and we wouldn’t want it to. Here, every building picked a different crayon.

Ten in the morning is an ambitious check-in time by any hotel’s standard, so we left our bags with the front desk and set out to explore. First stop: the Little Mermaid. We’d been warned she was smaller than expected. After Manneken Pis in Brussels last year, “smaller than expected” had us bracing for something the size of a garden gnome. As it turns out, she isn’t tiny—just incredibly popular. Getting an unobstructed photo took some patience, but we managed. The sheer volume of people determined to see one small bronze statue never stops amazing us.

From there we wandered — the changing of the guard, fountains, canals lined with the kind of painted buildings that show up on every Copenhagen postcard (and reminded us, oddly, of Curaçao). We wandered through the Citadel, Amalienborg, Christiania, Nyhavn, Christians Church and past Tivoli Gardens along the way, racking up something like 25,000 steps before our room was finally ready.

A bridge that is an engineering marvel, but we did not get to see it work

Some views don’t need moving parts to be worth the smile.

The circular swing bridge — Cirkelbroen — was a must-see for Meg, though no ships came through while we were there, so we didn’t get to watch it operate. Even so, the mechanics and structure of it are a genuine marvel worth the detour.

The trendy market for local food

Decision time at Hallernes Smørrebrød, Torvehallerne.

That evening we headed to Torvehallerne, an upscale food market, to try smørrebrød — open-faced sandwiches on dense rye bread, traditionally topped with herring or cod. We went with marinated salmon, roast pork, and chicken salad from Hallernes Smørrebrød, reportedly the city’s top-rated maker. Worth every krone, though at roughly $20 CAD each, they’re a proper introduction to Copenhagen prices too.

Wandering home through Ørstedsparken, we came across a crew setting up an outdoor theatre — the play turned out to be King Lear. I asked whether it would run in English or Danish; Danish, the producer told me, which left me turning over the strange fact of Shakespeare’s own words getting translated into a language he never wrote in. Unable to follow along, I let it go and called it a day.

Saturday, June 6

The Round Tower’s ramp — an optical illusion you can walk.

We started the day climbing the Round Tower, a 17th-century observatory reached by a helical ramp rather than stairs — seven and a half turns of it — which made the climb far easier than it sounds and rewarded us with a proper panorama over the rooftops in the early morning light.

During our visit, the Round Tower was marking the 350th anniversary of Danish astronomer Ole Rømer’s discovery that light travels at a finite speed— the tower’s exhibits are careful to note that’s what he demonstrated, not that he calculated the speed of light itself, despite what the internet sometimes claims. It’s a good reminder that things we now teach schoolchildren were once genuine frontiers of science. Rømer later put his talents to a more practical use in Paris, engineering the fountains at Versailles for Louis XIV.

Our aimless wandering carried us to Rosenberg Castle, where we strolled the gardens before grabbing takeaway salads for a picnic under a tree — about as good as a summer afternoon gets.

We eventually drifted into the Lego Store, where you can build a personalized minifigure — hair, accessories, a laser-etched outfit of your choosing — for about $20 CAD. Lego may have started in Denmark, but Billund, its actual birthplace, is over 250 km away. We found the Copenhagen store not` especially unique. We considered making custom figures for the kids before deciding we probably already had all the pieces at home—we’d just have to find them.

Sitting along the canal on a sunny day – life is good!

Sunglasses on, agenda off.

The best part of the day came later, when we claimed the last open bench along Slotsholmskanalen (a canal within the city) and just watched the boats go by. Warm evening, cold drinks, a steady parade of rental boats loaded with picnics drifting past in a generally festive mood. Simple, relaxing, and hard to beat.

Caught red-handed — mid-bite, no regrets.

That evening we found a burger bar with an unexpected Canadian connection. Their signature pulled-beef brisket burger, cooked low and slow over open flame, was outstanding—good enough to send me home thinking about firing up the Traeger.

Sunday, June 7

The sunshine had left us overnight, replaced by gray skies, though at least the rain had let up. Since our ship hadn’t passed under the Øresund Bridge, we decided to go over it instead — a 16-kilometre feat of engineering that’s part bridge, part tunnel, connecting Copenhagen to Malmö, Sweden.

The short walk to the train station turned eventful: our intended train had been cancelled, doubling the crowd for the next one. We stood the entire way, watching the car empty out at the airport stop while people were still boarding for Malmö.

Malmö – where old meets new and calm replaces busy.

Malmö turned out to be a study in contrasts — old architecture beside new, a relaxed pace instead of Copenhagen’s bustle. We wandered past the centuries-old Lion Pharmacy and a bronze marching band sculpture, where Cam couldn’t resist stepping in behind the drum major for a photo.

Malmö’s marching band welcomes its newest — and only living — member.

We spent the afternoon among churches, quiet squares, a windmill, and a lunch of smörgåsbord sandwiches that cost a fraction of Copenhagen prices, before finishing at the water with a view of the lighthouse. Malmö felt like a city living its normal Sunday rather than one performing for tourists. The parks and pedestrian paths belonged to locals, cyclists, and joggers rather than crowds like us. Between the pace, the prices (comparable hotels ran at roughly a third of Copenhagen’s, regardless of how far out we booked), and the quieter vibe, we agreed: if we’re ever back in the region, we’re staying in Malmö.

Farewell to Copenhagen

Back in Copenhagen for our last evening, we took a final walk along the canals and cobblestones to an alfresco Italian restaurant. We only ordered a sandwich, but it was memorable — the owner shaped and baked the bread to order after we sat down, which is about as fresh as bread gets. Small, independently owned spots like this one always find a soft spot with us. (If you’re ever in the neighbourhood: spigadoro-due.dk.)

It was a fitting close—not just to Copenhagen or Denmark, but to our entire European adventure. Tomorrow we’d head for the airport and the long flight home to Canada, carrying memories of castles, canals, Baltic ports, Scandinavian summers, and countless moments we’ll be talking about for years.

Thanks so much for reading — leave a comment below, or reach out through the link above.

Cam and Meg

Stockholm Cruise Stop

Leave a Reply

Baltic Cruise, Part 4: Stockholm Cruise Stop = Sunlit Passages, Sunken Ships & an ABBA Encore

A Four-Hour Sail Through the Archipelago to Arrive in Stockholm

Cam was up at 5 a.m., curious just how light “light” really gets this far north. The answer: very. Sunrise in Stockholm comes at 3:41 a.m. in early June, so by the time he reached the open deck, sunglasses were not optional. He claimed a table at the stern and watched the ship begin its four-hour threading of the archipelago — water so calm it barely registered as moving, islands close enough to read the names on the mailboxes along the shore. Unable to keep it to himself, he went below and roused Meg, groggy but soon won over. 

Anyone who has sailed BC’s Inside Passage or the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence will recognize the feeling. We sat at the stern for nearly three hours watching gulls trail the ship and tiny red-and-white cottages slide past, three ferries following in our wake the whole way — this narrow, rock-strewn channel carries a lot of local traffic for something only wide enough for one ship at a time. Cam, a former Navy man, found it all the more enjoyable for not being the one responsible for getting us through it. 

The ship’s wake at dawn, archipelago islands in the early light
As we sailed away, local ferries followed us through surprisingly narrow channels shared by ships of every size.

The Remarkable Story of the Vasa

The remarkably preserved Vasa—raised after 333 years on the floor of Stockholm harbour. Nearly every carved detail survived thanks to the cold, low-oxygen waters of the Baltic Sea.

Docked at last, we headed straight for the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a Swedish warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628, less than a kilometre from the harbour, undone by being far too tall for its width — a stiff gust tipped her enough for water to pour through her open gun ports, and that was that. Of more than 400 people aboard, 37 died. There was an inquiry, as there always is after a disaster, and just as predictably, no one was ever held accountable. Some things don’t change.

The Vasa sat on the harbour floor for 333 years before being raised in the early 1960s, and the cold, low-oxygen Baltic water did something remarkable in the meantime: no shipworms and almost no decay. The museum calls her 98 percent original, carved ornamentation and all, missing only a few noses. We’d been told to budget two hours. We left after four, and didn’t feel rushed.

If you go, we recommend a Combo Ticket with Vrak Museum, highlighted below. The cost is 359 Kroner (as of June 2026) for both museums saving you 66 Kroner. You do NOT need to buy them in advance, pre-purchased tickets do not give priority access.

For us, there was only one option for lunch

Field research: authentic Swedish meatballs. Definitely worth the comparison.

Lunch required Swedish meatballs, obviously. It was our chance to settle, once and for all, whether a certain Swedish furniture retailer’s version holds up. We found a local spot outside the tourist core called Mom’s Kitchen and ordered the köttbullar with gravy, lingonberry, and mashed potatoes. Verdict: noticeably better than IKEA, though IKEA isn’t as far off as you’d hope, and Mom charges accordingly more for the privilege.

ABBA tribute band in Stockholm – it just sounds better in Sweden.

Restored, we wandered through Stockholm’s upscale shopping streets, past the Royal Palace and the Nobel Prize Museum, and into the cobblestoned heart of Gamla Stan. Whether the city actually has a clean, streamlined character, or whether we simply arrived expecting one, is hard to say with certainty. Either way, there was plenty more to see, which was just as well — this was an overnight stop, with a whole second day still ahead. That evening’s onboard entertainment was a tribute to ABBA, which felt like the only correct choice in a Swedish port.

Underground Art

Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården famous cave-like subway station looks more like an archaeological site than a transit stop.

Day two started at a gentler pace, since an overnight stop means no rush to be back aboard before sailing. We were ashore just after eight, and endured a slow bus into town. We made our first stop a detour underground. Kungsträdgården subway station, reputedly Stockholm’s most-photographed subway station, carved to look like raw rock with bursts of artwork. There are Roman-ruin-like sculpture and intricate metalwork built right into the stone. We suspected it earned that title more because it’s the busiest station in central Stockholm than because it’s the city’s most beautiful, but it was worth the stop regardless. 

Maritime History

History is serious business… until someone hands you a Viking sword and shield.

From there, on to Vrak – Museum of Wrecks, the Vasa’s sister museum and the reigning Museum of the Year. It opens with a film projected 270 degrees around the room and across the ceiling, then moves into a gallery where artifacts from a 17th-century wreck have been left exactly where divers found them — the carpet itself is a photograph of the seafloor, with holograms of each object hovering in its true position. Upstairs covers early Viking history and the long-running naval rivalry between Sweden and Poland.

One exhibit landed harder than the rest. The museum plays the actual final radio transmissions from the M/V Estonia, a ferry that capsized in a 1992 storm with the loss of more than 860 of the over 1,000 people aboard. For Cam, who spent years standing bridge watches in the Navy, the strain in the master’s voice over VHF — reporting lost power and no position to give – was obvious. Listening to the radio chatter of nearby ships as they raced toward rocket flares, trying to save people they couldn’t reach in time, was hard to listen to and harder to forget.

The museum’s final section turns visitors into maritime archaeologists: a Virtual Reality (VR) dive to recover artifacts, a lesson in dating wood, a clay pipe, and a bone fragment, then a dig through the archives to piece together how a given ship actually met its end. The kid in both of us loved it.

The Ferry Ride Worth Missing the Bus For (or An Improvised Harbour Tour)

View of the harbour from the ferry. Our “cheap ride home” became one of our favourite cruises of the trip.

We’d hoped to finish with a harbour boat tour but ran short on time, so we improvised. The local transit option turned out to be the best sightseeing cruise of the day and a better plan entirely. A relaxed, hour-long cruise through the archipelago that dropped us within 300 metres of the gangway. A double bonus, it was a fraction of the harbour cruise fare and a fraction of the walking. 

Sailing out of Stockholm – As Delightful as Sailing in

Golden hour in the archipelago: a red boathouse, a yellow cottage, and water still enough to double the view

As we sailed out that evening, the ship retraced the channel in reverse, under another cloudless sky — islands, small boats, cottages, all of it as striking leaving as arriving. It’s hard not to wonder how different this same passage looks in the dark heart of a Swedish winter.

Up Next – Copenhagen

Back aboard, Cam squeezed in a 30-minute stretch-and-release yoga class before dinner. That evening’s entertainment featured a sand artist, drawing onto a lit table with a camera projecting her work overhead, etch-a-sketch style. Impressive technique, interesting craft — just not entirely our thing.

Thanks for reading please feel free to leave any comments or reach out to us by the link above. 

Travel quote “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” — Tim Cahill

Cam and Meg

🛳️ Helsinki Day Trip from a Cruise Ship: Fortress Walls, Reindeer Pie, and Shadow Puppets

Leave a Reply

Helsinki day trip

Helsinki’s skyline as see from the local ferry.

We started simply: off the ship, into town, and straight to Market Square, where Helsinki’s morning bustle was just getting underway — fish stalls, coffee carts, and locals moving with the brisk efficiency of people who’ve done this a thousand times. From there it was a quick ferry ride to Suomenlinna, the sea fortress that sprawls across its own cluster of islands and carries UNESCO World Heritage status.

Suomenlinna Park – A Must on a Helsinki Day Trip

Suomenlinna park – a UNESCO site worth the visit.

We started at the Suomenlinna Visitor Centre to get our bearings and pick up a paper map, which we still find easier to use than a phone when wandering unfamiliar places. Free Wi-Fi was also available, making it a convenient first stop for anyone planning a Helsinki day trip. The visitor centre offers a variety of guided activities, including a 90-minute walking tour (about €16 when we visited in spring 2026), but we decided to explore on our own and were glad we did. Wandering at our own pace let us linger where we wanted and enjoy long stretches of the fortress before the crowds arrived. For current ferry schedules, guided tours, and opening hours, visit the official Suomenlinna website

History and Beauty

The little geese fluff balls were so cute!

We’d arrived early enough that the crowds hadn’t caught up to us, and for a stretch it felt like we had the entire fortress to ourselves. Two hours disappeared into stone bastions, old ramparts, hidden caves and tunnels built for a purpose we were grateful never to test. Built by Sweden in the 1700s and later held by Russia and Finland in turn, the place wears its layered history quietly, weathering away in the Baltic light without a hint of fanfare.

Two moments stood out amid the ruins. The first was soft: a small flotilla of barnacle geese fussing over a clutch of downy chicks along the shoreline. The second was something else entirely — four naval vessels easing out of the harbour, almost certainly bound for training exercises. There’s something about watching ships head out with a mission that never gets old.

The Market – Reindeer pies for everyone!

Back on the mainland, hunger sent us toward Market Square’s food stalls, well-reviewed in every guidebook we’d consulted. The reindeer pie, sadly, did not live up to its billing — heavy on pastry, suspiciously light on reindeer. We made up for it with a bag of local strawberries, which were, without exaggeration, some of the best we’ve ever eaten.

We admired the Rock Church from outside… and decided to spend our €8 elsewhere.

From there, a tram delivered us toward Temppeliaukio, the Rock Church, which every list of Helsinki must-sees insists on including. The tour buses and shuffling crowds outside told us we were close. One glance from the lobby, and an €8 entrance fee was enough to send us elsewhere instead. Later, dinner companions who had gone inside confirmed we hadn’t missed much.

Wandering can lead to some great finds!

What we found instead turned out to be better than any landmark. A small Nepali restaurant, stumbled upon while wandering toward a park, advertising a lunch special. The menu echoed Nepali spots we’d loved back in Japan, and the meal that followed turned out to be the best we’d had since the cruise began — easily the day’s most unexpected win.

The best meal of the day came from the place we never planned to visit.

A few more parks followed, and at one point we simply lay down in the grass and let the Helsinki sunshine do its work — the kind of unhurried pause that rarely makes the itinerary but always makes the trip.

Back aboard for the evening, a yoga class loosened the day’s walking out of our legs before the night’s entertainment: a juggler, followed by a shadow artist who turned turned hand silhouettes and a single light source into scenes from Beauty and the Beast and other half-remembered fairy tales, all set to music. It was a strange and wonderful way to end a day that had already given us fortresses, geese, naval ships, and the best curry of the trip. Dinner followed, then an early night — Stockholm, and a whole new country, was waiting just over the horizon.

Thanks for reading please feel free to leave any comments or reach out to us by the link above. 

Travel quote “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

— Gustave Flaubert

Cam and Meg.

🛳️ Baltic Cruise: Riga and Tallinn (Latvia and Estonia)

Leave a Reply

Saturday, May 30 — Riga, Latvia

Our youngest son spent six months in Latvia in 2023, as a member of the PPCLI and part of a forward-deployed NATO battle group. Walking the streets of Riga, we felt that in a way we hadn’t anticipated. For Meg especially, knowing he had stood in some of these same squares and looked up at some of these same rooftops gave the day a quiet personal weight alongside everything else the city had to offer.

A lovely park in the middle of downtown Riga

Latvia’s history earns that weight. Like its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Estonia, it has spent much of the past several centuries being absorbed, occupied, or fought over by larger powers. Liberated from German occupation in 1945 by the Soviet Red Army — which then simply declined to leave. Latvia exchanged one form of subjugation for another and did not regain its independence until 1990. Walking through a city that beautiful, knowing what it endured to still be standing, makes the cobblestones feel different underfoot.

We were docked well up the river, closer to the old town than the cruise line apparently expected. They were offering a shuttle for € 12 per person that would have taken us about a kilometre into town. We declined and walked instead, following the river into the centre and arriving in considerably better spirits than we would have had we handed over € 24 for the privilege.

On to town and an amazing market

The old town delivered everything you’d expect: ancient churches, a castle, a fraternity hall, squares that invite you to stand still for a moment. We did all of that, then wandered beyond the old moat into quieter neighbourhoods where the architecture shifted and the tourist density dropped considerably. The central market was our mid-morning stop — too early for lunch, but perfectly timed for local berries that were just coming into season and absolutely worth the detour.

Riga’s central market in early June – bursting with fresh local berries.

We found an open-air café in the sunshine, settled in with a rhubarb lemonade that tasted exactly like a warm Saturday afternoon should, and watched Riga go about its day. By the time we returned to the ship for the 3 PM departure, we’d logged eighteen thousand steps. The weather helped — twenty degrees and brilliant sunshine — but Riga would have impressed us in any conditions. It’s a city that clearly loves itself, and it’s hard not to love it back.

Sunday, May 31 — Tallinn, Estonia

On one of Tallinn’s many cobbled streets – living history

We started the morning with ambitions of breakfast on the rear deck. It was twelve degrees with a breeze off the Baltic, which our optimism had rounded up to “brisk but manageable.” The food was cold before we finished it. We retreated inside, layered up properly, and headed ashore with a significantly more realistic assessment of the temperature.

Tallinn’s old town is frequently cited as the finest medieval city in northern Europe, and having now seen it, we’re not inclined to argue — though we’d happily put Riga and even Klaipėda into the conversation. What set Tallinn apart wasn’t the headlines — the towers, the walls, the church spires — but the texture of the place. Fat Margaret’s Tower. Saint Olaf’s Church, its steeple a classical image of the Estonian skyline. The market square before ten in the morning, before the cruise ship crowds arrive, when it still belongs to the city rather than to the visitors.

Meg is locked away in a castle – can Cam save her?

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!

At Munkadetagune Torn (the Tower Behind Monks) we entered for an adventure. The original medieval stairs were steep, narrow and uneven underfoot. There were none of the safety infrastructure that tends to smooth the edges off historic sites elsewhere. It felt genuinely old, in the best possible way. Meg and I separated briefly — she continued along the ramparts while I went down to get a photograph of her from below. Classic Rapunzel moment. What followed was less classic.

When Meg reached the exit, she found the door locked and a handwritten note on a paper plate reading ‘Back in 15 minutes’. Stranded on the ramparts with no way down, she leaned out a window. I was approaching the entrance below when the attendant popped out heading on an apparent coffee run. I mentioned, as diplomatically as possible, that my wife was stranded on the ramparts. “That is not possible,” she said, and wandered off down the street. I looked up at Meg in the window and laughed, because there wasn’t much else to do.

She was eventually released. Regrouping, we followed a sign into the courtyard of the Dominican museum — not for the exhibits, but because the sign said Cloister Red Ale. A brewery operating out of a thirteenth-century cloister, producing twenty-litre batches of ale that regularly sells out. This, to us, felt like exactly the right use of medieval infrastructure. We sampled. We approved. We sat for a long and very pleasant pause in a building that has been standing since 1246.

Treading lightly on 900 years of history

Meg noted that after two months of beautifully reconstructed historic buildings across Europe, stepping into a genuinely original structure felt almost transgressive — as though the space didn’t quite belong to us, but to the centuries of people who’d passed through it before. The courtyard was guarded by what may have been the largest dog either of us has ever encountered: Great Dane height, Saint Bernard build, a reported sixty-five kilograms, a Caucasian Shepherd apparently used by the Russian military in Siberia. He was docile enough. Probably.

We finished the day at the local market — a proper one, with butchers and produce sellers alongside the quick bites — before walking back to the ship along the old tram track, now a green corridor through the city. Sunset that evening was at 10:20 PM. It never really got dark. Another Baltic country, another day that exceeded expectations.

Next up: Helsinki, Finland, and Stockholm, Sweden — the final two ports before our Baltic cruise comes to an end.

Thanks for reading please feel free to leave any comments or reach out to us by the link above. 

Travel thought – “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”— Marcel Proust

Cam and Meg.