Hey lovelies,
Happy Friday ♥
I hope each and every one of you had a nice Valentine's day. We stayed home with pizza and TV shows, and went to bed early to welcome the free Friday with an ease. I had two deadlines to cover today, so getting up early was a must.
Luckily, last week gave a nice education when it comes to waking up waaaay too early. Like mentioned, me and a big bunch of fellow students were visiting Stockholm to broaden our horizon and to learn about foreign business and such. And boy was the trip fun! I was going to put everything in one big post, but for your sake, I cut it down to smaller bits.
And here goes the first one:
Our trip started early on Tuesday night last week, when we were packed in two buses and transported to the port of Turku. There we got into this big new ship called Viking Grace, which is supposed to be more cool and classy than your average cruise ship to Sweden.
For those who don't know, Finns tend to go on these cruises to Stockholm or Tallinn, party quite hard, and some poor chaps leave quite a mess behind. That's why I personally don't care so much about cruises, but I was hoping for this trip to change my mind about that.
After getting our things into our cabin, me and my girls May and P headed to get some tax-free shopping done. We chose candies, snacks and drinks, most of which was gone after the night. But the tax-free store itself was a tiny bit nicer than in the average ships, which was a pleasant surprise for me.
We were told that at Grace, they aim for super nice and warm service, and that the target is to create a pleasant experience for the customers, so that they would keep coming again and again. We were lucky enough to share the ship with quite much older people - pensioners and such - so we could actually enjoy the ship when there were no excessive partying going on everywhere.
The girls and I wanted to test drive the restaurants of the ship after hearing many nice things about them, and even though I was pretty skeptic about the prices, I was happy to notice they weren't as high as I had thought. And when the sandwich bar alone looks this good, who could resist eating a little something there? :D
My "dinner", if you can call that one. I totally loved the smoothie, it was definitely worth every penny.
I think I'm still on the fence whether the mix'n'match design of the place was super fun or very confusing. You might notice from the photos that the ship is quite modern, and it has these different-colored lights all over the place, combined with different sorts of designs. This particular wall was dividing a games corner away from the eating space.
Quick look on the spa that I unfortunately couldn't try out (it requires a beforehand reservation, though what I saw, it was pretty empty all the time we were in).
Bar. I totally loved the look, the bar seemed very fresh and classy. If more bars were like this - rather than noisy, dirty places with sticky floors and screaming people - I might hang in them a bit more.
The mandatory selfpic, with duckface, through mirror, and making sure my fabulous camera is showing. (insert a proper amount of irony into the sentence)
Even the hallways looked like a night club or something. Very disturbing, but at the same time pretty cool.
Black Jack host playing with his cell. The poor guy didn't have customers because....
...the seniors were too busy to disco. Apparently the older people party harder than I do. They weren't drunk, but boy did they dance like it was they're last chance to do that. Like we said to each other, we're lucky if after 40-50 years or so we are able to make a similar trip together, with our husbands, and we can dance our hearts out to our favorite band.
All in all, the ship was a pretty nice experience. I need to make another trip to really be sure what I think, but considering I'm willing to go again (I hate being on ship as I get so easily sea-sick), they have gotten something right with their concept.
And last but not least, one of my favorite pictures from the trip. (Taken by our friend P) I really had the best time, not just on Grace, but otherwise as well, with May and P. Of course others were fun company as well, but without these two, I would've been quite miserable. Thanks girls! ♥
If you're interested in Finnish blogs, written in Finnish, you should check out the one May writes. She has such a fun personality, and inspiring personal style, and I'm sure there are many individuals reading my blog who would totally enjoy hers. So go on, visit her!
Next time I'll be covering more about our trip, so if you are interested in Björn Borg (a fun Swedish fashion company), you should definitely check the next one out.
Have a lovely start for your weekend! ♥
Blog ya later,
xoxo
Johanna
P.S. There's at last something new in the food blog, be sure to check that out, too!
Happy Friday ♥
I hope each and every one of you had a nice Valentine's day. We stayed home with pizza and TV shows, and went to bed early to welcome the free Friday with an ease. I had two deadlines to cover today, so getting up early was a must.
Luckily, last week gave a nice education when it comes to waking up waaaay too early. Like mentioned, me and a big bunch of fellow students were visiting Stockholm to broaden our horizon and to learn about foreign business and such. And boy was the trip fun! I was going to put everything in one big post, but for your sake, I cut it down to smaller bits.
And here goes the first one:
Our trip started early on Tuesday night last week, when we were packed in two buses and transported to the port of Turku. There we got into this big new ship called Viking Grace, which is supposed to be more cool and classy than your average cruise ship to Sweden.
For those who don't know, Finns tend to go on these cruises to Stockholm or Tallinn, party quite hard, and some poor chaps leave quite a mess behind. That's why I personally don't care so much about cruises, but I was hoping for this trip to change my mind about that.
After getting our things into our cabin, me and my girls May and P headed to get some tax-free shopping done. We chose candies, snacks and drinks, most of which was gone after the night. But the tax-free store itself was a tiny bit nicer than in the average ships, which was a pleasant surprise for me.
We were told that at Grace, they aim for super nice and warm service, and that the target is to create a pleasant experience for the customers, so that they would keep coming again and again. We were lucky enough to share the ship with quite much older people - pensioners and such - so we could actually enjoy the ship when there were no excessive partying going on everywhere.
The girls and I wanted to test drive the restaurants of the ship after hearing many nice things about them, and even though I was pretty skeptic about the prices, I was happy to notice they weren't as high as I had thought. And when the sandwich bar alone looks this good, who could resist eating a little something there? :D
My "dinner", if you can call that one. I totally loved the smoothie, it was definitely worth every penny.
I think I'm still on the fence whether the mix'n'match design of the place was super fun or very confusing. You might notice from the photos that the ship is quite modern, and it has these different-colored lights all over the place, combined with different sorts of designs. This particular wall was dividing a games corner away from the eating space.
Quick look on the spa that I unfortunately couldn't try out (it requires a beforehand reservation, though what I saw, it was pretty empty all the time we were in).
Bar. I totally loved the look, the bar seemed very fresh and classy. If more bars were like this - rather than noisy, dirty places with sticky floors and screaming people - I might hang in them a bit more.
The mandatory selfpic, with duckface, through mirror, and making sure my fabulous camera is showing. (insert a proper amount of irony into the sentence)
Even the hallways looked like a night club or something. Very disturbing, but at the same time pretty cool.
Black Jack host playing with his cell. The poor guy didn't have customers because....
...the seniors were too busy to disco. Apparently the older people party harder than I do. They weren't drunk, but boy did they dance like it was they're last chance to do that. Like we said to each other, we're lucky if after 40-50 years or so we are able to make a similar trip together, with our husbands, and we can dance our hearts out to our favorite band.
All in all, the ship was a pretty nice experience. I need to make another trip to really be sure what I think, but considering I'm willing to go again (I hate being on ship as I get so easily sea-sick), they have gotten something right with their concept.
And last but not least, one of my favorite pictures from the trip. (Taken by our friend P) I really had the best time, not just on Grace, but otherwise as well, with May and P. Of course others were fun company as well, but without these two, I would've been quite miserable. Thanks girls! ♥
If you're interested in Finnish blogs, written in Finnish, you should check out the one May writes. She has such a fun personality, and inspiring personal style, and I'm sure there are many individuals reading my blog who would totally enjoy hers. So go on, visit her!
Next time I'll be covering more about our trip, so if you are interested in Björn Borg (a fun Swedish fashion company), you should definitely check the next one out.
Have a lovely start for your weekend! ♥
Blog ya later,
xoxo
Johanna
P.S. There's at last something new in the food blog, be sure to check that out, too!
