Eating in a box

Our second port of call is Tallinn, Estonia. We spent our day in the city center historical districts with it's old cobblestone streets and beautiful architecture. We found the oldest still operating pharamacy. It was pretty neat being part museum and part pharmacy, I'm sure the native population gets pretty annoyed whenever the ships roll in and clog up their place to pick up prescription medication. They had examples of medicinals, equipment (such as a ticture making device), and plant pressings with their medicinal usages all of them look older than say my whole country (which from anyone but the US point of view isn't that big a deal, but it's still a neat statment to make). Wandering up this very steep hill found the King's garden, which would have overlooked the whole town if not for the modern buildings and condos (the price of progress). It looked more like a castle/fortification than a garden but it was meant to be open to the people, they convert...

We've started off to Europe for a wedding in Belgium but first we're taking a cruise around northern Europe. We arrived in Amsterdam a day early to make sure we had plenty of buffer time for "just in case" moments so we wouldn't miss our boat. This worked out well since the airline managed to lose my luggage between checking in and prior to boarding our plane leaving home (I have no idea how that happens). As a result we got a late start in Amsterdam (above is the Amsterdam Central train station) but we did manage to take in a few sights and grab dinner. We wandered into this rustic looking pub "De Haven von Texel" that turned out to be quite a popular destination. The table next to us was telling us they had been searching high and low for the place and gave us a few tips as to what to try and helped us translate a few things on the chalkboard. For starters we ordered the Dutch Pea Soup served with smoked sausage and bacon on rye bread. The b...