Silver Wind Live! Helsinki to Hamburg, June 4-16, 2023

[RachelG]

George at the lighthouse 

 

[Mr Luxury]

36 minutes ago, RachelG said:

George at the lighthouse 

 

Good to see that George is not still in the dog house.

[jpalbny]

Monday evening on board. 

 

Back in time for a drink at the bar. Then we went to dinner at 19:00. Tonight's menu in the MDR:

 

 

I started with the asparagus and mushroom special while Chris had the mushroom risotto. We switched halfway through. 

 

 

 

The included wines were an unoaked chardonnay (which we didn't try) and a California Pinot noir which went well.

 

We both had the veal marsala for our main. Yum! We finished the rest of our Burgundy with that and it was delicious. 

 

 

Dessert was cheesecake for me (only ok, tasted like it was made with ricotta, not cream cheese) and crème brûlée (great).

 

 

 

After dinner we had Latin night in Panorama where Zaid did his best to teach merengue, bachata, and salsa. Then dancing.

 

And a gorgeous sunset. We were far enough south to see it!

 

 

 

And much water drinking, after all the wine with dinner. I hope I had enough salt to avoid hyponatremia!

[jollyjones]

10 hours ago, jpalbny said:

 

And much water drinking, after all the wine with dinner. I hope I had enough salt to avoid hyponatremia!

 

 

Never a worry with commercial food.

 

As Chef David Bilsland always maintained - restaurant food tastes good because they use so much more salt and butter than you would at home.

Have you ever watched him at a cooking demo and winced as he added yet more salt?

 

 

[jpalbny]

Jolly, I find that the food on SS is less salty than how I cook at home.

[TLCOhio]

17 hours ago, RachelG said:

George at the lighthouse 

 

Wonderfully cool, interesting visual by RachelG.  Excellent!!  Like the angle, having a star featured in it, the architecture, etc.  Very involving and fascinating picture.  Keep up the great sharing.

 

Also, love the continued great food pix's and details from J.P. for the various dining delights.  

 

THANKS!  Enjoy!  Terry in Ohio

[jpalbny]

Tuesday June 13th. Kuressaare, Saaremaa, Estonia. 

 

Fortunately I've typed these place names a few tines now, so auto-complete remembers how to spell them. That makes one of us.

 

We gave back the hour we'd recently gained,  as Estonia is on Finland time. So it was an early morning despite a 10AM start. We still had time for a proper breakfast in LT, which we (well, I) needed, as our tour would last until at least 15:00.

 

Gorgeous weather today! High 60s already so the shorts made another appearance. 

 

At 10:00 we were loading onto zodiacs for the short ride to the pier. A Phoenix Reisen ship was docked at the pier today so we were stuck at anchor. But the beautiful weather made up for it.

 

Our group piled on to a small bus for the 45 minute drive to Kuressaare. A good opportunity for napping, perhaps?

 

We arrived in town and parked, then walked to the castle to begin our tour. It was picturesque and surrounded by a moat. Nice of the builders to make it so photogenic! 

 

 

 

The central keep lay over two bridges, inside a large courtyard. Not large enough to avoid some keystone distortion. 

 

 

Here's a schematic. We entered from the two bridges at the bottom. 

 

 

Inside, many varying exhibits. An old phonograph here but hard to see all of the details because of backlighting. 

 

 

And some antiques here - camera, typewriter, and an old Electrolux vacuum cleaner. No word on whether it is used to keep the castle clean now, or whether they have since retrofitted the place with a central vacuuming system. 

 

 

There were many exhibits from the WW1 and WW2 eras. This is a model of a boat which a family used to escape the communists during WW2. They rowed from Estonia to Scotland! I had visions of Shackleton and the James Caird.

 

 

We broke away from our group now and headed upward, to the ramparts. The view of the inner courtyard and the moat.

 

 

We had less than 20 minutes before we had to meet for our next stop, so time for a quick picture before we moved on.

 

 

An ancient tractor, with iron wheels stuck in the concrete. Was that to keep George from driving it away?

 

 

We couldn't figure out what this statue was supposed to be, but we liked the glasses.

 

 

This building just outside of the castle is a nice hotel, according to our guide. 

 

 

We slowly made our way back to town. Here's an Orthodox church. 

 

 

After a good stroll we reached the other end of town and this windmill. Now called Saaremaa Veski, it's a restaurant where we were served a piece of cake and some coffee. After all, it had been about 3 hours since our last food intake. 

 

 

We had more free time so we went looking for a chance to take this picture. Kids were swarming around so we went to a grocery store next door to look around. Finally we got our chance! 

 

 

Back to the main street, and a pretty square with fountains. 

 

 

A little further, a Lutheran church. With a "gentleman's" club right next door. We looked for different street signs to photograph, in order to keep this thread PG-13.

 

 

Brightly painted wooden houses like we've seen in Finland. 

 

 

Another view of the Orthodox church. It's seemingly in a better neighborhood than the Lutheran church. 

 

 

One last view of Lossi, the Main Street in town, before returning to the bus.

 

 

We left on time, as everyone showed up before the deadline. Back to the pier about 15:05 and a quick zodiac ride had us on board by 15:15. Luckily LT was open late (15:30) so we had enough time for a late lunch.

 

Trivia was a bomb. First time we didn't place. Oh well. 

 

We set sail for Denmark at 17:30 and now it's time for recap, and tomorrow's briefing. Sadly, only 3 more nights on board! Probably a good thing, as I'm running out of clothes that fit.

[TLCOhio]

25 minutes ago, jpalbny said:

Tuesday June 13th. Kuressaare, Saaremaa, Estonia.  Gorgeous weather today! High 60s already so the shorts made another appearance.   We set sail for Denmark at 17:30 and now it's time for recap, and tomorrow's briefing. Sadly, only 3 more nights on board! Probably a good thing, as I'm running out of clothes that fit.

 

Great news on the weather.  Love the charm, history and architecture of Estonia.  Wonderful visuals.  

 

Sorry to hear that you adventure is nearing an idea.  It is a "Good News, Bad News" situation with the food being so excellent that your clothing fit is becoming challenging.  Safe travels home.  

 

THANKS!  Enjoy!  Terry in Ohio

[RachelG]

June 13, 2023–Saaremaa, Estonia

 

Again, another time zone change-an hour forward again as we went back to the East..  This time I was prepared for what ever shenanigans my iPhone had in store.  Sure enough, it didn’t move forward, but George’s did, and I had set the alarm allowing an extra hour just in case.

 

It was another bright sunny day.  Looking out, we could see a fairly flat and tree covered island, Saaremaa which is an island off the coast of Estonia.  Our excursion for the day was to Harilaid, at the northwest corner.  It is a peninsula that juts out into the Baltic and is a national park, mostly a bird sanctuary.  There was actually, for the first time this trip, another cruise ship in port.  The Amadea, which appears to be a German ship, was at the dock.  It looks like a monstrosity compared to Silver Wind, and it is not pretty at all.  Wind had to anchor, with zodiac rides to the pier.

 

We boarded our little bus and went through the beautiful countryside to the park.  Part of the drive was through pine forest, but there were also fields of hay, some cattle, horses, and cute villages.  When we arrived at the park, we set off on a flat trail which goes around the peninsula, 11 km, partly packed dirt, partly sand, and some gravel.  The sea was to our left, and pine forest to the right.

 

We saw several pairs of swan and heard a lot of other birds.  We passed a shipwrecked boat which has clearly been there a long while, and is rusting away, half covered with sand.  There is a leaning lighthouse on a broad beach, and apparently sometimes, seals hang out there, but not today.  

 

It was a long hike.  When we returned to the parking lot, we had a snack of a local bread which is sort of like a croissant.  On the way back to the ship, we stopped at a village with a little store.  There was a man splitting wood by hand, a old church, and several interesting buildings.

 

Back to the ship, we were really hungry so had a late lunch at the Grill.  George says the hot dog is better than the hamburger, but not as good as a quiktrip hot dog, and not nearly as good as the sausages we ate in Finland.

 

We did terrible at trivia.  Too many dates, which is a particularly weak point of mine, and soccer questions, another weak point.

 

We had dinner again at La Dame as George wanted to try some different dishes.  I again ordered the lobster salad, but then switched up and had quinoa followed by the steak.  It was very nice, and the steak was perfectly prepared.  George had fois gras, mushroom soup, followed by steak and he said all were good.  He finished with the pistachio souffle while I had a strawberry and chocolate thing which was sort of like flan.  It was good but had a gelatinous coating which was weird.   There was a dance party outside after with all sorts of chocolate.  I couldn’t eat any more, but it was fun.

 

[RachelG]

Saaremaa church

[RachelG]

George and the old boat

[jpalbny]

June 13th, dinner at LT

 

Our reservation was at 20:00 so we had time to sip a G&T at the bar. And to have a few salty chips/crisps too.

 

We went up 10 minutes early and there was plenty of room. Tonight's menu. 

 

 

The usual tray of antipasti which is way more than needed.

 

 

Chris had the cacio e pepe (not nearly enough pepper but easy to fix) and I had the pansotti with walnut sauce. 

 

 

 

For mains Chris had duck and I had the lamb. Randolph brought us a Northern Italian Pinot noir for the duck, and a Southern Rhône Syrah for the lamb. Nice matches.

 

 

 

Chris with our favorite LT waiter.

 

 

For dessert, just some ice cream as we were stuffed. Then we went to the death by chocolate buffet but didn't eat anything. We did dance a lot so maybe we burned one scoop of the ice cream...

 

Beautiful sunset!

 

 

After the buffet the party moved inside to the Paranormal where we danced the night away. We gain an hour back so of course we stayed up about 3 hours later than usual. 

 

One oddity today. I encountered two bottles with cork taint! The first bottle of the Syrah that Randolph brought had a strong odor of cork taint and he agreed. That was immediately replaced and he felt bad that he hadn't tasted it first.

 

Then at the deck party, one of the bottles of the French white we were sipping on was also badly tainted. The server wasn't quite sure what to do about it but eventually got a new bottle which was much better.

[lincslady]

All looks lovely, jp.  About corked/tainted wine, do you think being rocked around a ship might explain it to some extent?   A ship rolling around can't be the best environment for wine, though generally the included ones - cheapish and cheerful - seem to be fine.

 

Glad you two are having such a great time; very busy and therefore able to burn off all the delicious calories.

 

Lola

[jpalbny]

Lola, I'm not sure if the ship environment has anything to do with it or not. Certainly possible. 

 

The issue with yesterday's bottles was cork taint and not spoilage. Cork taint comes from a fungus that is sometimes present in natural cork, which produces a compound that smells and tastes awful.

 

For wine geeks that substance is 2,4,6-TCA. It's harmless, but makes the wine smell like moldy wet newspapers. Or stinky socks. Definitely not the aromas that one wants! And once you're sensitized to it, you can't ignore it if it's present.

[drron29]

Fortunately in my cellar I have only had one cork tainted bottle, but I once did buy a dozen whites for Rojaan. fortunately direct from the vineyard when 2 were tainted they agreed to replace them. Didn't insist I sent the original back but they all went to waste water.

I love the screw tops which have been used here in Australian on good wines since the early years of the Millenium. No longer can you claim a wine is corked and I dare you to say it is screw**.

 

[lincslady]

I agree that it seems unlikely that being corked has anything to do with being on a ship.  We did have one unpleasant experience on another very small luxury line, where the red of the evening was definitely corked, and DH told the wine waiter, who apologised and we tried another, which was the same.  The F and B chap suggested we did not know what we were talking about, and in any case they were not going to do anything if no one else complained.  We had been members of a wine tasting society and visited and bought from lots of wine makers in France, Australia and California, so I suspect we were right, though it was not awful enough for everyone to notice.  And they really did not want you to choose anything different, unlike our favourite lines.

[jpalbny]

Wednesday June 14th. Sea morning in the Baltic. 

 

Lazy morning. We finally got moving a little before 9AM. We split the morning between the Panorama for coffee, the suite for resting, and a few laps on deck enjoying the beautiful weather. We saw a ferry off in the distance.

 

 

Just before lunch we had a look out our window. What?!

 

 

And why is it smoking at the waterline? Is it test firing some torpedoes at us?

 

Lunch on the deck was a very nice seafood buffet. The lobster tails were small and not so good but the Chilean sea bass was delicious. And the crab legs were excellent. 

 

Another warplane went by but quite high up so we couldn't see it well. But we sure heard it! Eventually the warship turned away and left us to our own devices. 

 

Relaxing with a glass (or several) of Macon white wine while awaiting briefing at 14:00, then we will try to redeem ourselves at trivia. Later this afternoon we make our last (!) stop, at Christiansø Island for a nice walk.

[Hezu]

2 hours ago, jpalbny said:

Just before lunch we had a look out our window. What?!

 

 

And why is it smoking at the waterline? Is it test firing some torpedoes at us?

 

Another warplane went by but quite high up so we couldn't see it well. But we sure heard it! Eventually the warship turned away and left us to our own devices.

That is German Navy's Braunschweig-class corvette Ludwigshafen am Rhein and it has exhaust pipes near the waterline.

And the military aircraft activity might be related to currently ongoing large NATO air exercise or alternatively related to the fact that Russian airplanes (including military) that fly between Kaliningrad and elsewhere in Russia have to fly over Baltic Sea international waters as they cannot fly over other countries. And fairly frequently NATO (and Swedish) fighter planes make identification flights to check those Russian military planes that fly with transponders off.

[Lois R]

Besides loving the phots and commentary, it is always good to learn new things. JP, thanks for that cork information. Never too old to learn........I had no idea about that cork spoilage and how bad it can make the wine taste......definitely sounds awful!

[Lauranne]

For those interested, we arrived at Fraser Suites in Hamburg (this is the hotel that Silversea is using) last night. It’s a lovely hotel built in 1907, I believe. We were shown to a decent sized room and after a quick fresh up we went to the dining room. This menu is expansive and we had trouble making a choice. We started with Oysters Rockefeller, followed by a shared prawn salad and finally we shared the schnitzel. Food was fantastic and the wine, a crisp, dry Riesling paired perfectly. The hotel is a less than 10 min walk to the promenade and pier area and about a 20 min walk to the Binnenalster Lake area. Harbour Tours are plentiful but you can really save if you buy tickets in advance. We plan on going to the Lake area in a bit and have a beer and sausage at Hofbraü Hamburg. 
Cheers,

Laurie

Edited June 14, 2023 by Lauranne

[LAexNY]

Lauranne,

 

Enjoy your time in Hamburg.  We are staying on for the next leg.  Should be great.  The ship and staff are wonderful.

[LAexNY]

Christianso Island today.  Very scenic little island.  Lots of birds, frogs and seals.

[LAexNY]

Chris and JP on Christianso.

[bitob]

11 minutes ago, LAexNY said:

Christianso Island today.  Very scenic little island.  Lots of birds, frogs and seals.

Is Laura in bird heaven???

[lincslady]

Nice legs - both jp and Chris and the frog!😉

 

Lola