Baltic Cruise - Day 7, Helsinki

Joshua has decided he never wants to travel where English is not the first language. We spent about 2/12 hours walking in circles, or at least the taking the long way, to find the information center. The maps on the cruise ship were pretty useless, and the data plan for Dan's phone did not have a useable GPS.

We finally found our way to the ferry port, where we boarded a ferry for Suomenlinna, the sea fortress off the coast of Helsinki, Finland.

Helsinki Cathedral, the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral

Statue of Luther in the Cathedral

Suomenlinna Church built in 1854

Waterfront at Suomenlinna

Walking on more Cobblestones

Inside the Military Museum

Fire Station

Yes, Discerning History did a little A-roll

Submarine Vesikko, launched in 1933

We caught the ferry near the submarine, and it only took about 30 minutes to get back to the ship. We made it back with about 5 minutes to spare before they pulled up the gangplank. Did I say it was a brisk walk?

Bahamas

A few weeks ago my parents went on a few day cruise to the Bahamas. Here are some pictures that they took:

Part of the room

This is the Queen's staircase which led to the fort. It was built by slaves to honor Queen Victoria's help in the abolition of slavery in the Bahamas.

They visited Fort Fincastle, which was built in 1793 to protect the city.

The fort, with the ship in the background

Day 11 - Vigo

On the eleventh day of our cruise, we docked at Vigo. There was a fort at the top of the hill (like most ports) and since there was really nothing else to do we went up there. There was a fort half-way up the hill too, which was pretty nice, but we kept on going to the top. At the top there was a monument to three Spanish warships which were destroyed when Drake raided along the Spanish shore. Most of their valuable cargo was got on shore, but the ships sank. One neat thing about it was that it had the three anchors, one from each ship, and five cannons which were also recovered. At the top was an abandoned hotel built to look like a castle, which looked like part of it had been burnt. There were a few walls, but it was mostly gardens and fountains inside of it. After that we went back to the cruise ship to eat lunch. Then, Mommy, Daddy, and Joshua went shopping. Joshua bought a couple replica pistols, but Mommy and Daddy did not buy anything. Here are some pictures:

The outside of the fort

Me looking into one of the watchtowers

The courtyard of the castle (Mommy and Rachel liked the snapdragons)

The opposite side of the bay

Some flowers in the garden

Scotland - Day 10

This day we went to St. Andrew's Castle and Cathedral and the Discovery, which is a ship that was built in Scotland and then went from there to Antarctica to explore. First we went to St. Andrew's Castle.

This is a sketch of St. Andrew's Castle.

A castle was at St. Andrew's at least in 1189, and maybe before. The castle was taken by the English in 1296, but then recaptured by the Scots in 1314. The castle was once more taken by the English in the 1330's. The English were strengthening the castle around 1336, and then Sir Andrew of Moray recaptured it after a three-week siege. The castle probably remained in ruins and deserted until Bishop Walter Trail started rebuilding it.

This is a picture of the Castle from the Cathedral.

The castle was completed about1400. Bishop Trail died there in 1401. There was a mine and counter mine built there when the castle was being sieged between 1546-7.

A picture of the mine in St. Andrew's castle.

We spent about 1 1\2 hours there and then we left and went to St. Andrew's Cathedral. St. Andrew's was first built as St. Rile's church, and was very small. The church was claimed by the Augustinians, and soon they decided it was too small for what the bishops desired. They started making it bigger and ended up building Scotland's largest cathedral. The work actually took 150 years to complete. Shortly after the cathedral was completed, half of it was blown down by a gale. When John Knox preached a sermon there the people got so angry they started destroying the furniture. Later the cathedral was destroyed by siege.

This is a sketch of what the cathedral might have looked like.

After we had been at the cathedral for 1 1/2 hours we left to go to the Discovery. The Discovery was built in Dundee in 1901. Captain Robert Falcon Scott took Wilson and Shackleton with him. They headed for Antarctica and reached it in 1902. The Discovery was frozen in ice until 2 rescue ships went out there to rescue them. We spent about 1/2 an hour there since they were about to close.

Captain Joshua trying to sail the ship

I really liked the Discovery because it was like the real ship, and because you could actually go on it. We ate dinner at a hotel on our way to the condo outside of Inverness in Aviermore in the Highlands of Scotland.

Scotland - Day 5

On March 13 we got up and drove to Stirling, a town in the middle of Scotland. There was still very much snow on the ground, so there were not many people there. I enjoyed this a lot. Here is a picture of the front of the castle, from the parking lot. We took this picture when we came back later in the week when the snow had melted.
To the right, out of this picture this is a statue of Robert the Bruce. Robert the Bruce was one of the very famous early kings of Scotland. He was made king after William Wallace died, who I will talk about in a little bit. Here is the statue in the snow looking over the town of Stirling:

Bruce and his father were on the side of the English at the beginning of the war, but they switched when the Scots won. When he decided to finally be on the Scot's side, he was continually being beaten in the battles. He tried seven times to drive out the English and free the Scots, and seven times he was defeated. When he was in hiding in a cave, he watched a spider on the wall trying to spin a web. It tried seven times, and the eighth time is succeeded. Therefore he was encouraged to try again and he succeeded. This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. It was taken a few days after the previous one:
Here are some pictures from inside the castle:
First a picture of me in front of the Forework built for King James IV in the years around 1500. This is from the first time we went there:
Some guns on the Grand Battery, which is part of the Outer Close which is one of the two main courtyards.There where statues of Kings on the wall of the palace which was built for James V and was started in 1538.
During one of the sieges of the castle, some of the statues were knocked out of place:

We video-taped (or thought we did, more on that later) one of the speeches I did to our family on Scottish history. Here are a few good scenic pictures we took at various times from there:

After spending 4 hours there, we went to Wallace Monument, a monument to the Scottish hero William Wallace. When we got there, they were not selling tickets at the bottom of the hill, because the walkway was icey and slippery, and many people were turning back before they got to the top, but the Horns pressed onward and upward.

At the tower there were three levels.
There was a room about William Wallace's history. They had Wallace's sword in a case:
There was a room of Scottish heroes, and one about building the monument. When you climbed 220 feet and 246 steps you reached the crown, or top. It was very cold and windy there since it was sleeting, snowing, and freezing rain. I got really cold when I did my speech on the battle of Stirling Bridge out there.

Stirling Bridge was Sir William Wallace's first large engagement with the English. He had fought in several small battles, one of which we visited later. The English held Stirling Castle and Wallace was on Abbey Craig, the place where the Wallace monument now stands. The English decided to attack the Scots over a narrow bridge. Here is a picture of the battleground: (the old bridge is right next to the new bridge, which is in the middle of the picture).

Wallace waited until some of the English went over the bridge, and then attacked. He drove them into the loop of the river and destroyed them. The other English which had not crossed retreated back to England. This was one of my favorite battles. I enjoyed this day of our Scotland vacation.

Fort Building

Stephen and I have recently been working on a fort in the woods. It was originally just trees knocked down by storms. A few years ago we built a barricade. Then that fell down and we dug a small trench. Two Saturdays ago we began to work some more on the fort.
Here is a picture of Stephen in the new fox-hole:



Here is a picture of the wall I built:



A picture of the front of the fort from the inside:



Here is the last wall which is on the left if you are inside facing the front (This picture is not up to date) :
We will probably be working more on this fort in the future.