Kotka, Finland

 My first question was "Where the devil is Kotka?".  I'm not sure I know even now.  Well, I know WHERE it is (about 30 miles from the Russian border!), but WHAT it is is still a bit of a mystery.  Our tour was City of Kotka and Maritime Museum.  We drove around a bit and made a stop at the Kotka Church which is impressive.  The whole town is about 50,000 people, so this huge church seems a bit out of place.  Our impression was of an industrial town that has not much charm.  It's very green, but seemed sort of cold - and not only in a temperature way.

These sweet sisters were our greeting party welcoming us all to Kotka.

And here was the musical welcome.

We passed a drive-up Covid testing site with a few cars waiting.  I didn't see any residents wearing masks anywhere.

The Neo-Gothic church finished around 1890. 

Our guide was very sweet but struggled a bit with her English.  Next she took us to a "waterpark" which turned out to be a lovely park with a lake and small waterfall. She kept pointing out things that were sculpted, or designed, or painted always by a "famous" so-and-so, who of course we had never heard of.  She did mention Johan Sibelius and that name I recognized because of the lecture the other day.

The park had a pretty lake and waterfall amongst all the trees and planted gardens.

Another pigeon showing no respect for this poor sculpture of a person(?).

The man-made waterfall was a nice touch.

The last stop was at the Maritime Museum which was an impressive building and had some nice wooden ships inside, but we gave it a walk-through and decided to walk back to the ship with Sarah (a single passenger on the Grand Arctic with us) since it was just a 20-minute walk back. The only picture I took, and it's out of focus, unfortunately, is of the Australian Olympic team's rowing boat from the 1952 Olympic Games held in Helsinki.  They elected not to ship the boat home again.

Finished with 8/15 in trivia which was not enough to get the third place points.  We hung around the cabin watching a little TV until dinner.  But first we visited with Patty and Gordon over a drink in Galileo's Lounge.  There are a number of staff members leaving now.  Many of them have been on for 8 months.  It can be a bit of a challenge to replace them so some have already been extended.  But those who have definite departure dates are so happy to be going home that it's contagious.  

The entertainment was a comedian, Mark Palmer from the UK, and he was really good.