Aalborg Denmark

This morning we arrived in Denmark for a morning visit to the charming town of Aalborg.  It is perfect for touring from a cruise ship which can dock right next to the town square.

 

           Cafe where we stopped for a tea next to the beautifully preserved renaissance home.

Armed with the map Viking provided, we set off to walk through town on our own.  We strolled the streets taking photos, stopped for a tea break in the middle of the morning and returned to the ship after visiting the remains of the castle.  Aalborg reminded me of Solvang but was missing the bakeries and cute shops.  I did go in the shop of a Greek-Danish woman named Athena who makes her own jewelry.  Very pretty jewelry and scarves but expensive.  It is expensive here.  A commemorative troll doll (remember those?) was $46--sorry Nancy.

HIghway 66?  I learned from a Venetian shop keeper some years ago that traveling Route 66 is popular with Europeans.  She had driven right through our town.  I also heard Sir Paul has driven the route and was spotted pumping his own gas.

 Outside the troll doll gift shop

In the late afternoon I hung out in the spa and Tom relaxed in our room reading.  The spa has a large indoor hydrotherapy pool with jets.  The jets were almost strong enough to allow you to swim against them, not quite swimming in place.  I skipped the steam room followed by cold bucket of water to dump on yourself and I skipped the snow room.  That would be a NOPE.

In the ports a pilot comes on board to guide the ship in and out.  Last night Tom got some good photos of the boat that came along side to pick up the pilot.

Old friends

This was the day I was really looking forward to--Gothenburg Sweden and visiting with my high school friend Betsy.  After college Betsy moved to Europe and eventually met and married Tomas who is Swedish.  In the 1980s friends and I visited them at their home and I would see her when she visited her father who lived in Southern California.  We made a plan to meet at the Gustav Adolph Square.  She was easy to spot with her long red hair--she hadn't changed much in 50 years since high school.  Our first stop was the beautiful botanic gardens where the roses were in bloom.  After strolling around there we began our tour of the city with Betsy who had directions from friends.  As with Oslo there was much construction and we couldn't get to some streets we wanted to.  I had hoped to stop for a cup of tea and a good chat but it was difficult to find any cafes.  Betsy was trying to find us a nice bakery with tables and beverages but no luck.  Finally we found something and chatted until they began to be busy with lunch.

                          Those are serious-looking thorns that seemed to be on all the roses.

More walking and circling back to the place Betsy's Canadian/Swedish friend recommended for lunch.  We all had beautiful cod steaks, potatoes and vegetables.  As we were leaving the Viking food tour followed us into the little restaurant. 

We walked along through the shopping section finally making our way back to the square where we would meet our bus and Betsy would walk a little farther to the train station to make her way home.  Betsy is in amazing condition and nearly walked our legs off but it was wonderful to see her.

                                                 Betsy & Renee in Sweden 2019

This day, June 27, was also Tom's and my wedding anniversary.  We had been given a bottle of champagne by Viking and took it with us to dinner that evening.  The Restaurant is the main dining room on board and we got a little dressed up for it.  We had a lovely window table and a good dinner.  A nice relaxing end to the day.

Oslo Day 2

We have enjoyed a lovely end to our second day in Oslo (Wed June 26).  The weather was sunny and warm and we stood on the balcony to watch as the ship pulled out of Oslo and sailed toward Gothenburg Sweden.  We had dinner outside on the aft deck to enjoy the sun and views of the islands and shores we passed.

Today we explored on our own.  After breakfast we had Viking's Customer Service call a taxi which took us to the Bygdoy Peninsula.  We could have used the hop on/off bus that stops at the cruise ship terminal but the route would have taken us the long way around back up to the ski jump.   The peninsula houses several museums and we were hoping to visit at least two of them.  As we were waiting I overheard 2 young women say they were trying to get to the Viking Museum and offered to share our taxi which had just shown up and was a minivan.  Room for all of us and we split the cost.  We started at the Norwegian Folk Museum which was in a beautiful forested setting.  Many old structures from across Norway have been relocated here to help preserve them including a wooden stave church, old farm buildings and a town street.  You could picture the same sod-covered cabins on the Midwestern prairie in the 1800s. There are also recreations of some buildings from the Finnmark Region where the Nazis used a scorched earth policy as they retreated from Norway in late 1944.  Among the gardens and farms represented was a French styled garden and a medicinal garden outside the apothecary's.

 

Stave church and a woman wearing a bunad, the Norwegian folk costume. 

Elephant above the apothecary shop but no signs or anything to indicate why an elephant.

At mid-day we asked at the museum cafe if they had any gluten-free items and were directed to 2 different desserts.  As much as I would like a chocolate tart for lunch I have learned I have to research restaurants ahead of time so we walked to the cafe I had located from home weeks ago.  It turned out to be a good choice with a flower-filled terrace, good food and helpful service.  It was however the second address we have tried to locate in Oslo that is not actually where the address indicates it should be.  Thank goodness for phones and data plans.  After lunch we walked to the Viking Ship Museum which is adjacent to the Folk Museum.  The museum houses 3 ancient Viking ships that had been buried as part of burial rituals and unearthed in Norway centuries later.  The clay helped preserve them and many artifacts with the ships.

Oslo

The ship arrived in Oslo before breakfast and docked near the fortress.  There was a huge Royal Caribbean ship in the primo spot a little closer to downtown.  After breakfast we met with our group and boarded a bus for a drive-by tour of Oslo.  There is a lot of building going on with streets torn up impacting traffic.  The guide said the population is over 600,000 and growing.  They need to build housing but are restricted from building any further out in the forest so now they must go up.  A strip of new skyscrapers along the harbor are called "the barcode".  We passed the red brick city hall, Nobel Prize headquarters and royal palace on our way to the Holmenkollen Ski Jump.  The ski jump was pretty interesting and if we had had more time I might have enjoyed the ski jump simulator.  We watched a few people zip-lining along the ski jump and there was youth biathlon training going on below our view point.

We also visited Vigeland Park with hundreds of sculpture by Gustav Vigeland.  Apparently he worked out a deal with the city to create these sculptures to decorate the park for the citizens.  One question I thought of later was did he bring a proposal to the city of Oslo or did they approach him?  Seems like he got a sweetheart deal.

After the morning tour we returned to the ship for lunch just as it began to rain.  Later in the afternoon it hadn't let up so instead of walking we took a taxi to shop a little downtown.  It was easy to find a taxi rank among the shops even though the guy at Viking's customer service desk said there weren't any.  Hm?  Maybe Viking needs to give staff a little refresher.  If you go to Norway there is no service by Uber which is not allowed here.

Our ship spends the night Oslo so we have a full day to explore more on our own tomorrow.

 Oslo's new skyline

I like the movement expressed in this sculpture

 

What?  Vigeland left no titles for his work so we'll never know what he was thinking.

 Vigeland's centerpiece

Holmenkollen Ski Jump

The grey building will be home to a new Munch museum next year.

  It seems a lot of people were off the ship during dinner tonight which made the dining room quieter and allowed us a seat in the Explorer's Lounge to listing to a string duet.

Stavanger

This small city of about 130,000 people is the center of the petroleum industry in Norway.  Since oil was discovered under  the sea off Norway in 1969 it has become one of the world's wealthiest countries.  After breakfast we met our group in the Star Theater and joined our guide for a walk through the city to the Petroleum museum.   The old wooden city center was quite charming but it was very quiet as this was Sunday morning.  Once at the museum we decided to tour it on our own.  The history was pretty interesting and has changed the wealth of the country in a short time.  There was a film about the development of oil that the guide and guidebooks touted but it seemed to be a way for some people in Norway deal with the guilt they must feel over this wealth.

After the museum we strolled through town and headed back to the ship for lunch.  In the afternoon we walked back to the view the inside of Stavanger's Cathedral dedicated to St. Swithun.  It was begun around 1100 and suffered a fire in the 1200s so the architecture in the rebuilding was more gothic than Romanesque.  It is small compared to cathedrals we have visited such as Notre Dame and York Minister.

Across from the ship's dock is an area of old wooden houses which seem to be typical of some Norwegian cities and they have efforts to preserve those that have not burned down over the years.  In Stavanger they are painted white.  In the old harbor area of Bergen they are mostly shops and painted different colors.  We enjoyed the sunniest weather of the trip so far.  Too bad most of the shops were closed on Sunday in Stavanger as I would have liked checking some of them out. 

 Jewelry shop in one of the old houses.

Shop selling traditional Bunad dresses

 Stavanger Cathedral

Our ship in the back ground

Eidfjord

When we booked this cruise months ago one question we had was how we would handle the motion of the ship.  We seem to be pretty good sailors.  We came prepared with seasick patches from our doctors but have not used them,  We traveled the open sea last night and could feel the difference from the fjords around Bergen but it was kind of fun.  Anchored off the little town of Eidfjord we can see whitecaps this afternoon and feel more movement at anchor than this morning.

At the end of our day in Bergen yesterday we stopped at one of the customer service desks to ask about what to expect being tendered for our excursion today.  The young woman answered our questions including what time to be ready and what deck the tenders leave from.  What she forgot to tell us is that we would be assigned to a group and that group would first meet in the Star theater.  Since we were on the 9:30 tour to the Norsk Nature Center she recommended we be there at 8:45.  We go down to deck 1 at the appointed time, board the boat and in Eidfjord ask one of the Viking staff where we go next.  He was a bit snarky in his corrections when a simple "Perhaps there has been a mix-up" would have done.  I was surprised to find a Viking employee with attitude having never encountered one on our river cruise a few years ago or in the months leading up to this trip.  Let's hope he's the only one.

Since we were so early we enjoyed the front seats on our group's bus.  The ride to the nature center was short but we drove through what must be one of the longest tunnels I have ever traveled through.  The nature center was at the edge of another small town and consisted of two buildings; the very modern looking center and across from it a large log building with a restaurant, gift shop and 3 little goats grazing on the roof.  Based on all the photos being taken those goats were the highlight.  The center helps explain the history and unique terrain of the fjords.  It included a panoramic film flying over the fjords much like "Soaring" at California Adventure without the sense of motion.

Bergen

After a restful night and good breakfast we walked into the historic center of Bergen, the first stop on our cruise.  It wasn't raining so we decided to take the funicular up Mount Floyen for the view which was amazing.  Easy to get there just walk east from the cruise ship, turn left at Starbucks and head up the hill.  Even with cloud cover we could see the islands in the distance and how spread out city of Bergen is.  When we came down we were glad we did the funicular first thing because the line was now making it's way down the street.

After lunch we strolled through the old town area called Bryggen, checking out a few shops and taking photos.  We were still pretty jet lagged and returned to the ship to rest before our muster drill.  No life jacket fashion show like on the Viking River cruise but everyone on the Viking Sky seemed to take it pretty seriously.

Finally it was time for dinner.  The night before in World Cafe the staff were really pushing the fresh fish buffet.  That told us to dine in the Restaurant and it was less crowded as we expected.  While at dinner the ship began the trip to Eidfjord.  Between the rocking of the ship and jet lag we are both having difficultly staying awake so more later.

 

It wouldn't be Europe without scaffolding

Our ship is on the right

Rain in Bryggen

Sailing away at dinner

Safety drill

This is a drill right?

We made it to Norway

It's been a long 3 days but we are enjoying our first full day in Norway.  We were so trashed from the long flights that we didn't expect to sleep as well as we did.  And we discovered, if it weren't so far from everywhere else in Europe, that Bergen is a good place to begin a cruise.

Wednesday June 19:  Air France flight 65 from LAX to CDG in Paris went without a hitch.  We have taken that flight a few times and treat ourselves to premium economy.  This time I could identify and eat the gluten-free meal so that is an improvement over 2 years ago.  Unfortunately neither of us slept well which is unusual for me.  We had a 3 1/2 hour layover in Paris before boarding a 2-hour flight to Bergen.  Thankful it was only 2 hours because the passenger space on that flight is pretty meager.  Viking staff met us in Bergen, directed us to a small bus and we rode to the ship.  Check-in for the ship was easy with TSA style security clearance and we were soon in our cabin.

We decided to upgrade one level and are very happy we did.  As first-time cruisers we had no idea how cramped the smallest cabin might feel after the first week.  This cabin is a bit longer and wider with additional seating.  We don't have to squeeze around the bed to access the closet or the desk/dressing table.  Will, our steward, gave us a quick tour of our cabin and how everything works then we went off to World Cafe for dinner.  This is Viking's buffet and it is nicely done.  I rarely eat steak but enjoyed a very petite filet mignon and a small baked potato along with veggies, salad and gelato--mmm.

We were thrashed and went to bed early to be ready for our first day as cruisers.

Countdown to Cruise

From the Viking website.  I'll report if we actually see this view

It's getting close to cruise time, we leave next week.  Temperatures have warmed a bit and we are seeing some highs over 70 F.  In a recent email Betsy warned us that it rains in Bergen at least a little nearly every day then the sun comes out.  Bergen is where our cruise begins.  It sounds a lot like Kauai only not as warm.  We have a full day to explore Bergen and plan to do this on our own.

We bought a small chrome book to replace my old iPad mini and now I have a keyboard.  My thumbs do not want to peck away on a screen anymore.  We hope to "easily" transfer photos from camera to chrome book to post here.  If you don't see any photos you'll know that didn't work!

You can follow our ship online at www.marinetraffic.com and search "Viking Sky" under Search Map.  We are scheduled to join it on Thursday June 20.