On Tuesday, June 27th, Regent Splendor called on Visby, Sweden. Visby is a place I’d never heard of when I booked this cruise, but it’s actually a pretty cool place to visit. Located on Gotland Island, off the eastern coast of the Swedish mainland, Visby is a well-preserved walled medieval town, with beautiful gardens, historic homes, and a huge, majestic church.

It looks like there were only two tours offered during our Visby stop. We ended up taking the Medieval Visby tour, which appears to be very much like the other tour, Visby Walk & Historical Museum, except the tour we were on did not include a visit to the museum.

I kind of liked our tour guide, an older lady who was a native of Visby. She was very knowledgeable about Visby, and enthusiastic about her job. I heard her say that she taught classes in a university. I could believe it. She really knew her stuff, and she was entertaining, too. We were all given headsets that made it easier to hear her. The one I had didn’t seem to work very well and with every step, it bounced against my boobs, so I just listened to her live.

Although Visby has a walled in old town, most people no longer live in the town proper, as the historic museum has a lot of rules about what people can do to the historic homes there. There are rules about construction, painting, and even what kinds of windows people can install. Our guide showed us the smallest house in Visby, which she said sold about ten years ago for about $200,000. It’s so small that one can’t even stand up straight in it. The guide, who appeared to be short like me and said she couldn’t stand up in the house, explained that the buyer was actually the next door neighbor, as buying the tiny house was the only way to have more space at his house!

We learned that Visby used to have a train, but it was stopped in 1960. People are apparently still kind of bitter about losing the train, but the guide explained that it wasn’t really practical to have it. Using buses is more efficient. The old train station still exists, and is now used for a different purpose.

We also learned that there are homes in Visby that are built entirely of wood, including the nails holding them together. And when Visby was conquered, residents were encouraged to build stone houses. They were given excellent tax incentives to use stone, rather than wood, as the wood was a valuable commodity for sales abroad. Some residents tricked the tax authorities by covering up their wooden homes with stone facades. To this day, it’s possible to spot homes that are actually wooden, covered up by stone to fool the taxmen.

As interesting as Visby is, I think some people on our tour were a bit frustrated, as the guide moved at a slow pace. I heard one woman loudly complaining to her husband that the guide only went a few yards at a time before she would stop to tell a story or explain something. Also, I know some of us really needed to pee. At one point, I followed a fellow passenger to a restaurant, which kindly allowed us to use their facilities. The toilets were pretty nasty, though, especially the one the other lady used. It reeked of something very foul! She looked horrified when she came out. I held my breath and was spared much of the olfactory torture.

We were only able to visit the chapel in Visby Cathedral, as the main part was not open. I understand there are toilets at the cathedral, too, but they weren’t open, either. I think people who didn’t go when I did used another restroom at a restaurant.

My favorite part of the tour was probably the botanical garden, which was very beautiful and well-tended, with many different trees and smaller plants. We also visited Gallows Hill, and our guide explained how condemned people were treated back in the day. The hill is located well outside of the walled city’s gates, which our guide told us were closed every night, and made it impossible for people to go in or out. For many years, no one lived outside of the walls of the old city, so much of the island was “wild”. Obviously, that’s no longer the case today.

Below are some photos from Visby!

The photos are actually a little bit misleading. Visby was pretty crowded when we visited. I couldn’t help but think that as charming as the town is, I would think all the tourists and tour groups would get very old for the locals. But I guess they do provide some valuable economy for the island. Below are some more photos I took… and as I look at them now, I’m amazed by how pretty they are. Visby is very interesting and charming, but like I said, quite populated with people like us– tourists! However, everywhere we went, except for that one bathroom, smelled heavily of fragrant flowers. The roses and linden trees were especially intoxicating.

After our tour, we went back to Splendor and prepared for our 6:30 PM dinner reservation at Chartreuse, the ship’s French specialty restaurant. I got the feeling that of the three specialty restaurants, Chartreuse might be the least popular. I enjoyed it, although I felt the food was a very Americanized version of French cuisine. I was especially delighted, though, to get somewhat early reservations. Bill and I are not night owls. I probably would be more of one, if not for Bill, but he’s very much an early bird. His brain goes down with the sun. 😀

Here are some photos from Chartreuse…

As we were leaving, the waiter presented me with a little box. Inside were two fresh pistachio macarons. Very nice, but since we live next door to France, it probably wasn’t as exciting for me as it is for other passengers. But they had no way of knowing that! 😉

After dinner, we had a nightcap in the Observation Lounge. I had some of my favorite Armagnac. Bill had a gin and tonic. We rushed back to the stateroom so I could get shots of the incredible sunset. That was when we noticed the “mail” in the slot by the door… an “invitation” to the following night’s dinner in the other speciality restaurant, Pacific Rim. We also got one for Chartreuse, and I’m sure we had one for Prime 7, too. I just neglected to take photos.

The sunset really was incredible…

We decided to try breakfast in the room on Wednesday, so we made our selections of what we wanted and hung the sign on the door. More on that in the next post!