In the morning we had real Baltic weather -6C and fog. I could just about see windmills through the fog.
Aurora had been blowing her fog horn all night. The light was very bright but visibility was still poor.
Our Baltic cruise on P&O Aurora would take us to Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Denmark and Norway.
Monday 15th May we cruised on the Baltic on our our passage through the Great Belt and under the bridge to Gdynia in Poland.
Monday morning in the Baltic
We again were ‘late’ for breakfast with just 10 minutes to spare before closing. We had an interesting conversation about river cruising. This was a trip down from the centre of France to the Meditterranean which sounded very interesting.
Through the Great Belt and onto the bridge
Aurora slowed to take on her pilot for the Great Belt before resuming speed. Multiple layers of clothes plus hats and gloves were all needed out on deck. It was cold not only because of the air temperature but becasue of the wind chill.
Later in the morning the sky began to clear and the sun could break through the clouds and mist. The air temperature slowly began to rise and away in front of Aurora the bridge could now be seen.
The Great Belt Bridge
Another ship was passing underneath the bridge and passed Aurora on the port side as we approached the bridge.
We had a short announcement about the bridge and the starboard side of Deck 13 was now very busy. That side of the ship offerred views of the bridge as we approached the centre span. Slowly Aurora centered onto the bridge’s centre span and we could now see clearly the the bridge.
We now had a rugby scrum of passengers jockeying for position along the port-side railing. Linda receiving several barges and jabs until she gave up and walked away – not very friendly on this cruise.
After passing under the bridge we moved to the stern of Aurora and watched the bridge recede into the distance from the Pennant Bar.
This was helped by a glass of white wine and a pint of Peroni. A lady joined us and told us about her adventures in the Chilean Fjords and the Antarctic Peninsula. This made up for all the earlier hassle as we came near the bridge.
And into the Baltic proper
We passed other ships and passed close to a port.
Dinner
We were in the Peninsular for dinner at 8.30 pm. Afterwards we all went to the Vanderbilt room for the traditional P&O syndicate quiz. I let the team down for not remembering about the IT term “DMA”. I did recover slightly by correctly working out that Eurostar started services in 1994. After a tense hour our team won the contest after two elimanation questions.
Our prize? A bottle of house red.
The clocks on Aurora went forward overnight by an hour to match the time in Poland.