We started early on Tuesday morning to get from Copenhagen all the way across to Stockholm in Sweden to make our tea-time ferry crossing from Stockholm to Tallinn in Estonia, our next port of call for two nights.
Our train from Copenhagen to Malmo, a relatively short journey across the bridge joining Denmark and Sweden, ran 20 minutes late. Not a great start! But we made our connecting train to Stockholm ok.
It was late afternoon by the time we arrived in Sweden’s capital and the central train station was difficult to navigate amid the thousands of tea-time commuters. We eventually got ourselves on the underground, and connecting bus, in the right direction of the ports and checked onto the M/S Victoria I with some 30 minutes to spare.
The overnight ferry left Stockholm at 6pm and was due to arrive in Estonia the following morning at 10am. Our ensuite cabin was on the top passenger deck and after dropping our bags off we went to explore the rest of the vessel.
The 2,500 capacity ship boasted a two storey cabaret bar and casino, a pub, a nightclub, two restaurants, a fast food restaurant and a duty free shop that caused mass excitement amongst Estonian travelers. I’m talking men with hand-trolleys stacked head high with slabs of beer and women racing around with shopping trolleys packed with 3 litre cask wines (aka. ‘Bag in a Box’).
It would’ve been rude not to try some of the tastings on offer in the Duty Free shop - a couple of very average wines (some kind of C-Grade Chilean stuff giving the region a bad name) and Barcardi Melon.
We spent the rest of the daylight hours on the sundeck at the rear of the ship enjoying a bottle of Peter Lehmann Shiraz. As the sun and temperature dropped outside I think people thought we were pretty hard sat out there drinking. In reality we’d found the only wind sheltered spot on the deck!
In the evening we watched the live entertainment being served up in the cabaret bar. The show was a musical of “We Will Rock You” by Queen performed by a young group that was so out of sync with their dancing it was hard to believe!
Before and after the show a live band played to a dance floor of predominantly older folk and young kids shamelessly throwing themselves around the stage. This was definitely more entertaining than the show! It seemed pretty quiet about on the ship. The bartender confirmed later the ship was less than quarter full.
Our night ended up in the nightclub at around 1am and the fact that there were only a dozen or so people didn’t stop us from letting loose! It was a pretty fun night but slightly regrettable the next morning with a bad hangover and heavy packs to lump into the old town of Tallinn to find our hostel.
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