I can’t believe we’re going to get on a boat and then wake up and be in Russia.
Yeah, that seems strange.
That’s a good deal!
Yeah!
St. Petersburg!
I’m so excited right now!
Princess Anastasia!
I love how colourful it is!
It’s so colourful!
I don’t know quite how this happened but we’re on our way to Russia.
What?!
I see a sign that says St. Petersburg to the right.
I know but I see one that says straight and over there it says St. Petersburg.
Oh.
They all go to St. Petersburg?
I can’t even believe this.
Somehow we’re in the Port of Helsinki right now.
There’s Helsinki, here’s us, we’re on a boat
in a cabin that has a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe I was just saying to Marc.
And tonight we’re sleeping here and in the morning we wake up
and we’re going to be in St. Petersburg.
So this is just totally crazy.
So basically we…we wanted to go to Russia.
We found this company called Moby SPL.
I’ll link them down below if you’re interested.
And we can go with them to Russia without a visa for up to 72 hours.
Just up to 72 hours.
And they booked our hotel and everything so that’s who we’re with.
And they run trips regularly between Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Stockholm.
Stockholm, yeah…exactly.
Sailing the Baltic just constantly.
In this big beautiful ship that is so colourful.
Actually as we were pulling up to the boat I was like,
‘Wow, this is the prettiest boat here’.
And the check-in procedure was really simple.
We just walked up to the ticket window.
Found it.
The woman looked through our passports.
Yep.
And then we checked in.
Yeah and then they gave us all these tickets that we have to keep for meals.
Yeah it was like playing cards - so many tickets.
Basically all these cards that replace having a visa.
Alright, we got our tickets.
It’s all in here.
Alright so it’s off to catch that boat now. -Don’t lose this!
Multiple checkpoints we had to go through.
I do not want to lose these boarding tickets.
Definitely not.
Oh my god.
I got ‘em though, I got ‘em.
Alright let’s get in line.
Ok.
And then finally we arrived at passport control.
Yes.
Where we got new stamps. -A stamp.
I got stamped.
Yeah!
I haven’t seen it yet though.
You got inked.
It’s just super cool that we can go to Russia without a visa
and experience St. Petersburg without having to go through the process or expense of getting a visa.
We’re about to go down the walkway and we’re officially going to leave Helsinki.
Or I’m looking at it that way.
I’m sad but I’m also really excited for Russia.
The ground of Helsinki anyway.
But I’m so excited to go to Russia.
I can’t believe we’re going to get on a boat and then wake up and be in Russia.
Yeah.
That seems strange.
That’s a good deal.
Yeah!
Bye Helsinki…hello St. Petersburg!
Going to get our cabin.
This is exciting.
Oh I think we’re getting close. -I think it’s the next one.
It’s here.
Oh look at this!
Wicked!
So, I’m really excited!
And I think this part’s really fun because now we’re going to just go explore the boat.
Yeah well actually, I’m just looking…
Dinner starts in 5 minutes.
Ok.
So I think we should go and get some dinner.
Yeah.
And then I just want to explore the boat.
I’ve never really been on a big cruise like this.
I’m so excited for you to be on a cruise!
Marc’s been on a cruise before…
I’ve been waiting for this forever.
So you know they have like entertainment and all these different areas
so I just want to go kind of look around.
Yeah.
And then go to bed and we wake up in Russia!
This is a big buffet, eh?
It’s a really big buffet, yeah.
It went for miles.
I know!
It kind of took me a while to just walk from one end to the other
to see what I wanted to have.
I know.
And I was really surprised to see pizza
and then there was this dim sum section and pirogies.
Yeah it seemed like there was a good variety.
A lot of seafood too.
Tons of seafood.
Tons of people getting seafood.
Which I guess makes sense considering we’re on the Baltic Sea.
It does make sense.
It's probably pretty fresh.
Yeah.
Well bon appétit!
Bon appétit!
I think I ate too much.
You know when you’re starving and you go to a buffet?
Yes!
It’s hard to not overeat a little bit.
I know, I did the same thing.
It’s not a bad thing.
But still enough for dessert.
There’s always room for dessert.
Looks like we just found our photos.
When we first walked onto the boat, there was someone taking photographs
and this very tall man was like, ‘right this way for your official photograph’.
So we weren’t expecting it at all.
Not at all.
And all I could say was, ‘oh…you’re really tall’.
And then they took the photo right after that.
Yeah.
But look at how tall he is.
This is such a cute souvenir to have.
So cute.
We just had our dinner.
And now we’re going to just kind of explore the ship because
it’s huge.
Yeah, it’s enormous.
And I just kind of want to see what’s around
and as we’re walking I didn’t realize there’s all these different restaurants.
I thought it was just where we were eating.
But there looks like the New York Bar.
There’s an Italian restaurant.
We just passed like an Irish pub.
There’s live music happening.
Actually I heard there was a cinema and a spa.
Yeah.
And a casino.
A casino, yeah.
We can go play American Roulette.
Yeah!
They don’t call it...
They don't call it Russian roulette, they call it American roulette.
Yeah.
Which is different.
Tomato, tomato.
Anyway, so we’re going to keep exploring
because there’s just so many different decks on this big ship.
This might sound weird but I love the smell of duty free shops.
Oh there’s all that delicious perfume.
Yeah it always smells like nice perfume.
Here’s the spa.
Eileen, should I get a haircut?
That’s what your toque is for.
Oh, ok.
You’re fine.
Good point.
Oh Eileen!
It’s the kids zone for you.
That’s so nice.
So the kids can just like let loose on the boat.
Yeah.
The ship’s huge, eh?
It’s enormous.
Yeah.
I’m getting like a better sense of how big it is
just looking at the…all the decks here.
By the way, I love saying ‘deck’.
I know!
I just want to say ‘Holodeck’.
From watching Star Trek when I was a kid.
Anyway, I think we can actually go outside.
Oh yeah…which deck is that?
8?
7 or 8.
Wait, it’s probably the top one.
Ok.
So deck 8?
Let’s go outside.
Ok.
Oops!
I meant to do that.
Oh man it’s windy! -It’s really windy.
We probably should’ve brought out coats.
I’ve got to be careful I don’t lose my toque.
Actually yeah, it wouldn’t be the first time.
No!
It wouldn’t be the first toque lost on this trip.
It’s nice to get some fresh air though.
It is.
It’s actually not as cold as I thought it would be on the Baltic Sea this time of night.
Yeah, it’s kind of toasty actually.
It’s a toasty cold breeze.
I don’t know if toasty is the word I would use Marc
but it’s not freezing is what I meant.
Yeah.
I really like coming outside.
I love coming outside.
Because it’s like this whole world of, you know,
this ship just making this journey day in and day out.
This loop in the Baltic Sea over and over again.
Yeah.
It’s just…it’s so interesting to just be part of it for one night.
And see all these other boats out on the water,
watch the waves like…
I’ve heard so many times people going on Baltic cruises…
Yeah.
And it always seemed like this, you know…
Now we’re on one.
Now we’re on one!
And there’s not really many people out here, which is nice actually.
Yeah, it’s pretty private.
Now we’re on the back of the boat.
Yeah.
Oh!
There’s some bass raging!
I think I just heard the nightclub get going.
The nightclub’s firing up.
There’s actually like a disco on the boat.
I think they just got started.
I just realized it’s too early for the nightclub
so actually the bass we just heard must be the show.
They have like an entertainment…
I think it’s music and dance, which we really wanted to see.
I’m really excited for that.
So we’re going to race back inside because I do want to see the show.
We made it back inside to catch the show.
Just made it.
And there was singing,
dancing.
They did some well known songs.
Yeah like Phantom of the Opera.
Yeah and We Will Rock You. -Queen.
Yeah the audience loved that.
Yeah the audience was going crazy. -Got everybody very pumped up.
Yeah there was a guy dancing around.
Yeah, I loved the cello.
Yeah, that was very dramatic. -And they had violin.
Lots of lights.
Very like glitzy.
Yeah.
And it was very crowded so…
I think a lot of the ship must have been at that show.
Yeah.
Clearly a ship favourite.
Yeah, ship favourite, exactly.
So we’re back in our cabin now because we really want to get a good night’s sleep.
Because we arrive in Russia tomorrow
and we want to make the most of the time we have there.
We hit the ground running.
We hit the ground running so we are going to hit the bed?
Hit the bed running?
I think I need to sleep. -Sure.
We’re going to hit the bed or something and we’ll see you guys in the morning in Russia.
Goodnight.
Goodnight!