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The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 7 of 9

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Seven

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 28 (Sunday, Day 21, Dublin, Ireland; €1 = $1.43; $1 = €0.70) -

Dublin

Since the ship was docked in Dublin until 11 PM and the stores didn’t open until noon, we decided to leave the ship around 11:30. That meant that Snookums had plenty of time for the 7:30 “Circuit Training” class. It was sunny and around 62 but Filbert’s Dublin radio station said storms were expected. We decided to not take any umbrellas with us.

The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 6 of 9

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Six

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 24 (Wednesday, Day 17, Dover, England; £1 = $1.63; $1 = £0.61) -

The Prince Albert Pub, Dover

We woke up during one of the many announcements letting disembarking passengers know what tag color could leave. It didn’t bother us too much. However, the two crew members that walked across our balcony around 8 AM surprised us since we hadn’t been notified about balcony maintenance. Luckily Snookums was still in bed and Filbert was fully dressed! Filbert decided that he needed to notify the front desk of this since he wasn’t sure that the ship knew we were staying on board. (In the past, we’ve always received notes the day before whenever there was going to be maintenance to our balcony.) The front desk man didn’t seem too bothered by it, but apologized to Filbert and said it wouldn’t happen again.

The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 5 of 9

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Five

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 19 (Friday, Day 12, St. Petersburg, Russia) -

In the Hermitage

The tour group met at 8 AM. The day was sunny and looked 100% different than yesterday. We drove to a boat for an hour-long boat ride along the rivers and canals with room temperature champagne and chocolates. Filbert joked that in Russia the vodka is cold and the champagne is room temp. (That didn’t stop him from drinking several glasses of it, though!) We passed most of the places we drove by yesterday, but today we could actually see them. Snookums found a 10-kopek coin on the boat, too, keeping intact her skill of finding money in foreign countries.

The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 4 of 9

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Four

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 18 (Thursday, Day 11, St. Petersburg, Russia; 1 ruble = $0.03; $1 = $29.14 ruble) -

Eurodam, rain, St. Petersburg

Snookums arranged to take a tour with an independent tour company. We normally don’t like tours, but Russia requires a $250 visa unless you are with a tour group and then you don’t need a visa. So, we signed up for a two-day St. Petersburg tour for $256 with http://st-petersburg-tours.ru/. (The ship was charging $400 for the same thing and took people in big buses. Our tour group was limited to 16 people.)

The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 3 of 9

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Three

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 16 (Tuesday, Day 9, Cruising the Baltic Sea) -

Show girls

Snookums woke at 7:15 and hustled to the 7:30 fitness class. Only one other person was there and the fitness instructor went ahead and held it. Snookums was on cruises before where the policy was that at least three people had to show up for a class to be held. Snookums is very impressed with this cruise so far. It was another 30 minutes of good torture and during the class Snookums found out that the instructor is from Zimbabwe and played professional rugby in Zimbabwe and in South Africa. Then he decided that his body couldn’t take the punishment anymore and he got a degree in Exercise Science before training various Olympic athletes. Now he’s on a cruise ship training non-Olympic athletes! After the 30-minute class she used the elliptical for 30 minutes and was sweating through her gray T-shirt by the time she was done.

The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

August 8-September 10, 2011

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise (from Holland America)

The Holland America Eurodam (from Holland America)
This is the table of contents for the online version of our trip journal. Here are the chapters:

Part One - To London

Part Two - Dover, Copenhagen, Warnemunde

Part Three - Tallinn

Part Four - St. Petersburg

Part Five - St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Nynäshamn

Part Six - Dover, Amsterdam, Bruges

Part Seven - Dublin, Tórshavn

Part Eight - Greenland

Part Nine - St. John's, Halifax

The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 2 of 9

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Two

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 12 (Friday, Day 5, Boarding ms Eurodam in Dover, England) -

Suite, sweet suite

We woke up, packed what little we had in the roll-aboard and enjoyed our last full English breakfast. We took the tube to the coach station in order to take the coach (i.e. a Greyhound bus) to Dover for $14 per person. (Holland America’s charter bus was $70 per person.) During the 2.5-hour ride we went through various parts of London that had shops with boarded up windows from the riots. We also stopped in three towns, including Canterbury. Most of the people on the coach got off at Canterbury. The people left were going to the cruise ship. The coach was supposed to drop us off in “downtown” Dover, but the driver realized that all of the passengers were cruise ship passengers so he took us directly to the ship. That saved a cab ride and got us there faster.

The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 1 of 9

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The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise (from Holland America)

The Holland America Eurodam (from Holland America)

The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part One

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 8 (Monday, Day 1, Flying to London, England) -

We arrived at KCI just fine and found out that the flight to Chicago was delayed. We went to the American Airlines lounge and enjoyed the free sodas and chips. The receptionist made an announcement that the flight was boarding so the lounge emptied out but the gate agent then said that O’Hare was in a ground stop so we wouldn’t board for another 30 minutes. Back to the lounge we went. We weren't worried since we had a 2-hour layover in Chicago. We finally boarded the flight and landed in Chicago and enjoyed 20 minutes at the O’Hare Admirals Lounge – just long enough to use nice bathrooms and get a quick snack.

Missouri voters could boost unemployment

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Summaries for petitions for a minimum wage increase proposal for the 2012 ballot in Missouri have been approved by the Secretary of State, meaning we'll see earnest, well-meaning, economically illiterate people with clipboards out in public places, asking for Missouri voters to put their signatures on petitions to approve a statewide vote to increase the minimum wage--and thereby put even more low-income people out of work.

We do this because we care so much about the poorest among us.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

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"Their" "democracy" anyway. From the New York Post:
The Zuccotti “cops” had just spent an hour and a half tracking Bezabeh through goat paths in the park armed with a description from the manager.

“We cannot take him in by ourselves, the cops have to come!” reiterates the OWS security force member.

They call the NYPD -- and it becomes abundantly clear that the cops down there are sick of the antics.

“Every single night it’s the same thing. I mean, some guy was a victim of rape!” an officer snarls. “There comes a time when it’s over. This is a disaster. It’s all we’re doing, every two seconds, is locking somebody up every time. It’s done.

“It’s done,” he repeats. “Occupy Wall Street is no longer a protest.”

Scenes like this -- and far worse -- have been playing out since the Zuccotti Park “occupation” began on Sept. 17.

The parcel is now a sliver of madness, rife with sex attacks, robberies and vigilante justice. . . .

“I’m in a tent that keeps getting flooded, ransacked and robbed,” fumes a transgender group leader -- a female who identifies as a male.

He said that the transgender group would create its own police force for transgender protesters and females, since an immense distrust loomed over the OWS-created authority. . . .

A day later, a female-only “safety tent” would be erected to shield women from predators.

Organizers plan to add a medical tent, as well as others designed to provide safe sleeping for gay, transgender and co-ed groups.

The threat of rape is very real here -- for women and men.

Sitting in the McDonald’s just moments after Bezabeh was hauled off in cuffs, Lauren DiGioia, 26, tells me about how she became one of the growing number of victims on her very first night in the park.

Via Instapundit.

This is what their "democracy" looks like. The strong preying on the weak simply because they can. The legitimate use of force to protect life, liberty, and property being completely suspended because someone, somewhere within that "democracy" might become offended that their "rights" (by which they mean their whims of the moment) are being violated--while at the same time aggressively and maliciously violating the actual human rights of countless other people in a myriad of ways--beginning by squatting on privately-owned land which does not belong to them.

This is what a steady parade of Democratic Party leaders ran to the microphones, stood in front of the media's cameras, and loudly and repeatedly praised with great praise, deceitfully and disingenuously comparing this mob of brigands, arsonists and rapists to Tea Parties that consistently left their demonstration areas cleaner than they found them. (And, by the way, not a single rape occurred at any Tea Party. Ever.) This is what a steady parade of Democratic Party operatives masquerading as objective reporters and journalists tried to sell to the American People as a genuine outpouring of grass-roots concern for the future of the country.

Yes, there are a lot of genuinely concerned people who have been sucked into the "Occupy" madness. They are nothing but useful idiots. Which should cause you to ask the question: who's using them?

Who started this "Occupy" thing? Who fanned its flames? Who benefits from mayhem and chaos? Who believes a crisis should never go to waste? Ask questions. And then, and this is important, ask the next question.

The root cause of many of our problems today is that people--especially elected officials, never ask the next question.

It's your country. It's your responsibility.

ASK THE NEXT QUESTION.