Each time we land back in Abu Dhabi, it’s like discovering a new international airport in the midst of a tear-down/build-up. We have an idea of what it looked like when we first arrived — one sort of antique-looking terminal, an Arabesque style, built in the round, with about a dozen gates. That was enough […]

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And so the Baltic cruise ends where it started … in cosmopolitan, friendly Amsterdam. The ship docked early, just after 6 a.m., because Celebrity had to offload 2,100 passengers … clean up a bit … and then load another 2,100 to head back out the same day at 4 p.m. Those who appreciate logistics probably […]

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I am convinced a potential bestseller is waiting to be written. “Life Below Decks: The Secret Lives of Cruise Ship Staff”. In which a veteran employee of the cruise ship industry, preferably someone with a job that puts them in daily contact with passengers, dishes dirt on the cruisers as well as fellow crew and […]

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It seems as if humans are never quite satisfied with their portion of sun. At this moment, in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, the consensus certainly is that entirely too much of ol’ Sol is irradiating the parched landscape. While in Stockholm, which is closer to the North Pole than it is to Abu Dhabi, […]

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What a little treasure, is Helsinki. Granted, we can’t speak of much personal experience. The Celebrity Constellation’s time at port, in Finland’s capital, was a total of nine hours, beginning at 8 a.m. But our brief time ashore yielded a particularly positive impression of Helsinki. Personally warm. Visually pleasing. Tidy. Sedate. Orderly. Helsinki is attractive […]

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For decades, I thought I was meant never to see Russia. In 1980, I was to have been part of a three-man Gannett News Service team covering the Moscow Summer Games. But the Soviets went over the border into Afghanistan and President Jimmy Carter leaned on the U.S. Olympic Committee to boycott the Moscow Games, […]

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This is one of the main reasons you do a Baltic tour. To see the capital of Estonia. When is anyone not from this part of the world going to be in Estonia? Exactly. Sadly, we did not catch Tallinn at its best.

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A cruise in the Baltic, in the first half of May, is a crap shoot. Investigate the average temperatures in May for cities such as Helsinki, Stockholm and St. Petersburg, and numbers like “high of 62, low of 48” will come up. The first few days of the Celebrity Constellation’s lap of the Baltic came […]

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This was not the first place in the city we visited. Nor was it the second or third or fourth. And we came close to not visiting at all. But the reality, at least among English speakers, is that one of the first questions we would be asked about Amsterdam, when back in Abu Dhabi, […]

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This was one of those days that seemed overly ambitious, afterwards. From Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam. Via cab, plane, train and tram. Ending with a “slow food” dinner in the suburbs of the capital of the Netherlands.

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