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------------ Rostock, Germany ------------
Rostock is home to the International Garden Exhibition and Fair, which is held every ten years. 2003 happened to be one of the years. This is one of the floating gardens, the sculptures are a fantasy replication of the plant's reproductory apparatus with the yellow tubes representing the flow of pollen.
We continued downtown to St. Mary's Church, home of the famous astronomical clock. Our guide did not offer to explain how it works, but it does look impressive.
These building restorations in the downtown, have been completed within the last ten years. We thought they were quite well done.
------------ Copenhagen, Denmark ------------
This was one of many bridges we went under on our harbor tour. The boats are made to just barely fit under some of them.
I took this picture from the bus. The many bicycles are a way of life here. Mostly they are left unlocked and are much more in use than cars here. We learned that the government tax on a new car is 180% of the purchase price. Taxis are charged at 25% but can't be sold as non-taxis for three years.
Tivoli Gardens. This concession looks like a version of bumper cars, only with boats. This amusement park was the inspiration for Disney Land in the US. It's been in operation for 160 years and shows no signs of slowing down.
One of several playhouses at Tivoli Gardens with a performance in progress.
A must see in Copenhagen, the "Little Mermaid" at Langelinie. The light was very poor but that didn't slow down the crowd. We would guess that three rolls per minute were being shot.
From here we sailed back to Dover, a bus to Heathrow Airport, and our flight back to Seattle. Crossing the North Sea, our ship experienced 55 knot winds and 18 foot seas during the night, but Annamarie never woke up and we arrived in Dover right on schedule. That's certainly one advantage of a large ship.
So once again, we had a wonderful cruise. Getting to meet and know our dinner companions was also part of the fun of the trip.