Thursday 6 August 1998

Slideshow Pictures

The Symphony

We boarded the ferry following Kaj’s car and went to our cabins. Their cabin was on the same floor as ours, a few doors away. After unpacking we went out on the deck of the ferry. Helsinki is beautiful from this vantage point.

We were joined by Kai and Annika later on.

We took some photographs, and then moved into the karaoke bar to have a few beers.

Kaj and Annika offered to buy us dinner, but we told them that our dinners had been prepaid, but would love to join them for dinner. Then we went to the duty-free and bought gold brick liquor bottles and cigarettes. We met Kaj, Annika and their sons Sebastian and Christian at 8:00 p.m. and had dinner in the buffet restaurant.

Again we loaded up on the great variety of food that was available to us. Had a bottle of wine, took some pictures, and then went to the cabaret.

There we watched the show and had a few glasses of wine. This time I had Rachel on a short leash, so I yanked it, and she followed us back to the cabin. On this trip we had a good nights sleep.

Friday 7 August 1998

I woke up early and watched the hundreds of beautiful islands as we approached Stockholm. Rita and Rachel finally woke up, and after the usual makeup period we went down to have breakfast. Kaj and Annika were just leaving the restaurant as we were walking in. We gulped down our breakfast, all the while paying strict attention to the intercom that was announcing our arrival in Stockholm, in several languages. Packed our luggage and went down to the car. To our surprise it was still there.

We were supposed to follow Kaj’s car off the ferry but somehow we were separated. Went through customs and drove out of the terminal, all the while looking for Kaj’s car. He was nowhere in sight and there was no place to pull off to wait for him. We heard somebody honk, and he was just passing us, so we drove in behind him He pulled into a gas station to fill up and we decided to top our tank up also.

We followed his car to Gimo and stopped at Hildur’s. She had prepared a nice lunch for us.

After lunch Kai’s family left for Östhammar while we stayed for a while at Hildur’s. Hildur showed us around Gimo.

We went to look at the house she and Tauno used to live in.

We drove her home and headed out for Östhammar.