Visit to Ven

  Holiday in Sweden at last! So we are off to Sweden again. We delayed this trip a number of times due Covid and other events but now we are off. It is 3 August 2022 and we are driving to North Shields to catch the Amsterdam ferry. We were slightly early so had time to watch, from the top of the ferry, latecomers clearing passport control and Customs before boarding. Also seeing the dockworkers loading the big trailers etc. 15 minutes before sailing I spotted a car dashing to the passport control. However they had closed as had Customs, so the poor people missed this sailing! Hope their travel was not critical. The ferry was far from full so there was no mad rush to the restaurants. The North Sea was very calm so it gave us a good night's sleep. Clearing the passport control and Customs in Ijmuiden the following morning took nearly one hour but then we were off. We had decided to go the northern route through Netherlands, i.e. via the Dyke keeping the North Sea out. Very soon we...

Tallinn visit summer 2019 (NB If you are new to blogspot you can view the photographs on their own simply by clicking on the first one once) Copyright@L D Breitholtz. All rights reserved. Our family association arranged a visit to Tallinn 10 years ago but we did not go that time. This year however we have decided to go. So we dropped the car off at the long term car park, caught the shuttle bus to the terminal and soon Air Baltic flew us across the Baltic. We flew in a de Havilland C400 which is a turbo prop aircraft for 76 people ( as per spec) Being overhead winged it gives you uninterrupted view when taking off and landing. It was less than half full so we had a relaxing 50min crossing. As per schedule it should have been 65 minutes so maybe the pilot was in a hurry to watch a thriller on his 52” TV at home? For us it was somewhat more than exploring a new city as our family has connections with Tallinn since the 14 th century, or Reval as it was then named. Our p...