Warnemunde/Rostock, Germany

We are practically intrepid. It was rainy this morning and we were a little worried about our touring plans but we set our anyway, just after my previous post, around 8:30am. The town of Warnemunde was a quick walk but the train ticket machines, which took credit cards, proved beyond our german speaking abilities. Adrienne tried to buy tickets at a ticket counter but they would not take credit cards or American dollars. So we waited for the bank to open at 9am and bought some euro. We assumed the price of the ticket to Rostock was going to be 4euro each way so we bought enough for that price. It turns out that the price was 4 euro for a round trip ticket, luckily we found many uses for our left over euros.

It was an easy train ride over to Rostock and once there Adrienne seemed to know where she was going, so we followed. This was probably the easiest city to push mom’s wheelchair in, there was a little bit of cobblestone, but mostly it was flat with paved or brick walkways. We walked a long way through residential neighborhoods and I was beginning to doubt that Adrienne knew what she was doing, but I should have know better because soon we were at a large outdoor mall/park/shopping area. There were no cars so it was really easy to get us and mom around. We walked through the whole mall area and I was getting pretty tired, we ended up sitting and having a drink and some French fries at Burger King, not bad for a city that used to be part of east germany.

The picture of the gelato was taken in a Galleria mall off of the main mall. Adrienne found a record store and was busy listening to some CDs while mom and I waited outside watching this gelato store. The mounds of gelato were amazing; I have no idea what flavor that red one is supposed to be. The line for this place never stopped once in more than a half hour. They just kept scooping and people kept coming, if we had had any euros left over I would have tried the one marked “nougat;” how bad could the inside of a milky way taste in gelato?

Just as we were contemplating our walk back to the train station we ran into some British trivia buddies and while chatting they asked if we had taken the tram from the train station. Tram? Why, yes, there is a tram right at the end of the square that goes right to the train. Yay! We ran into some others from Holliday Park after that and they were also happy to hear about the tram service. We hopped on and we were back on the ship in no time.

We have had incredible luck with weather. Most days have been sunny all day, but even days that have started out as rainy or cloudy have cleared up for us as soon as we stepped off of the ship. Today was no different, we carried our umbrellas through the whole town but did not need them once. But as soon as we got back to Warnemunde the rain started to come down. Mom and I left Adrienne to do more shopping and we headed back onto the ship. We have become such a regular site, the porters were very surprised to see just two of us and not three.

Right now it is 8pm and again our trio has split up. I am exhausted, but mom and Adrienne plan to stay up for a late show tonight at 10:45. Tomorrow we will be docking in Copenhagen. We have a tour to Tivoli Gardens in the late afternoon and evening. It is supposed to be spectacular in the evening with over 100,000 lights. Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you that it got dark last night; really, really dark. What a difference a few degrees can make. So we should be fine for our lights and fireworks in Denmark tomorrow night.

I understand there have been some problems with the pictures. I will try to load them again as soon as I post. If I forget to compress even one picture, none of them will load.