6/25–Back in Copenhagen

Ah, parting is such sweet sorrow.  Last morning breakfast, all four of us saying goodbye to Krizzy (who definitely didn’t get the “borrow” part of the gloves, btw, they are now hers now, which is all fine and good, she can use them, and I have tons of others) and everyone in the lounge.  Collecting all our stuff, marching down to the meeting point to be taken off the ship – which is sort of a zoo – but Karen eventually gets us to our luggage and we bid her adieu as well.

Out on the pier, we join the taxi cab line – which surprisingly isn’t all that bad considering there are 7 ships in port today.   It takes less than 10 minutes to get ourselves and our luggage deposited into a taxi and then off we go – out of the massive port facility, through the city, past Tivoli then on the highway to the Crown Plaza airport hotel.  Hugs and kisses and safe travel wishes all around as we grab our gear and wave to Maggi and Richard as they head off to the airport and their afternoon flight home.  We have all day here then an entirely too early (6am) flight tomorrow.

The hotel check in isn’t until 2, so we have hours to kill and there are no early check in rooms available. But this place is massive – with a huge convention area or something attached – which is like an indoor garden.  The hotel stores our luggage, and we take our kindles and phones over to a comfy seating area to begin the long wait for our room.  It takes until 2 – bummer – but we are finally assigned a great room way up high with views all the way to the water – and the port. We can see all 7 ships from here.  That’s a bonus!

There is a metro stop right outside the hotel, so we could go back into town easily if we wanted, but we don’t.  There is  also a mall right next door, however, which is huge bonus.  The hotel has a restaurants and bars, but the mall has this huge food court – with real restaurants, not just fast food outlet chains.  Ed finds a great place called Dalle Valle which has 1/2 off all food (except their buffet) from 4 to 10 on Saturday. Good deal!

We catch up on email for a while, I download my book, freshen up, then head over to the restaurant early – since we have to go to bed by 8 to get up at 3:30 for our 4am cab.  Eek.  The restaurant is huge and busy even though we’re pretty early.  We decide not to do the buffet (it looks great, but we don’t need that much food) and go for the half price options:  Ed has a burger that is monstrous and I have the Dalle Valle salad which is huge as well, with strips of sliced filet, pine nuts and pesto dressing.  So good – and the cheapest meal we’ve eaten in all of Norway!

Stuffed and hydrated (that’s what I call a beer!!) we head back to the hotel to read and relax before our early evening bedtime.  Nice way to end a great trip.

6/24–Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous photos that don’t really fit in anywhere, but bear mentioning (posting).

The collection of the origami animals Jay made while at his 5 O’clock Somewhere Bar, complete with our names on each of them.  The bunny is my favorite, but that darn frog is also adorable and you can make it jump really far…

 

Pictures of the midnight sun….sort of…or an off-season aurora borealis….or not…

Real pictures of the midnight sun….

6/23–Bergen

Ah Bergen!  We’ve been here plenty, so today is sort of a sea day for us. We had originally booked a car here, but then decided there wasn’t anything we really wanted to do outside of town – especially when Bergen itself is so wonderful and it is Maggi and Richard’s first time here.  So – we decide to just do our own thing, exploring the town on foot, on our own.

The day starts out overcast, but not too threatening. I’m taking no chances though, and have my back pack full of rain jackets and umbrellas as Ed and I have decided we are just going to walk around and get our morning exercise outside instead in the gym.  We have a leisurely breakfast, then head off around 10ish.  We noticed from the balcony some sort of festival set up across the harbor, and then when we leave the ship, there is a sign for Bergenfest load-in at the back gate of the Bergenhus fortress.  Might be something to do, we’ll see what we can find out.

We amble down the broad promenade on the water side of Bryggen, marveling at all the people.  Holy cow – there are tons of people milling about.  It’s crazy, but we manage to snap a few decent pictures of Bryggen as we make our way around the harbor to the fish market.

The fish market is, as the rest of town, seething with people. We meet a candle maker on the corner who is just setting up, his candles beautifully done.  He explains that he used to work a full time job, but decided it was too stressful and didn’t want to work that hard anymore, so he “retired” and started the candle making business.  Sounds like our kind of guy!

We dive into the masses, passing by multiple stands of sausage and cheese sellers. They all have these great reindeer sausages we are dying to buy and bring home (there is also whale sausage – we try some and it is really good – but it probably won’t go over really big with our US customs agents should it be found).  But, we are sailing NCL, with their incredibly strict policy of no food allowed back onboard – we’ve already been busted with sausages on another trip where I asked them to keep them for us until we disembarked and was emphatically told no – throw them away now.  So – no 18 Euro sausage for us – because we’re not in the mood to lose it again.  Oh well –the tasting was good.

The seafood vendors are up next with their brilliant array of shellfish, fresh and salt water catches and this huge King Crab specimen just waiting for someone to buy,  boil and eat on the tables inside the vendor’s tent.

 

We’ve had our crab, so it is easy to pass on by, after the photos are taken.  We venture into the TI to see if we can find any Bergenfest information – which we cannot. It is packed to the gills in there too – everyone on the wifi.  Honestly!  We are looking for wifi too so I can download a book on my kindle, but this is not even remotely worth it – I can wait until Saturday at the hotel in Copenhagen, thank you.

The only benefit of going up to the TI was the restaurant we saw across the street while walking down the stairs….

…how wild is that?  We are relatively certain the food wouldn’t be as cheap as actually being in Chiangmai though.  LOL.  We’re not eating off the ship, so we have no desire to visit, but thought it was funny.

Back out on the street, we wade through the humanity to make it back to Bryggen and run into Maggi and Richard. They are exploring the old town and just wandering around themselves.  We chat for a bit then head our own way – us back to the ship – M&R off to the market and around the harbor.

We walk up to the Bergenhus, looking for the festival. But it looks like they are breaking down (as it turns out, we find out later that we missed the music festival by 5 days.  Darn – or not – it was probably more of a zoo than it is today).  As we are looking around for Bergenfest info, it starts to rain. Ed and I make the executive decision to go back to the ship.  We’ve been to Bergenhus before, we’ve got nothing to do or see and we aren’t in the mood to wander in the rain.

Back aboard, we hang out in the relative dryness of our balcony, reading, organizing and generally just relaxing.  Last sea day tomorrow – can’t believe how this trip has gone by so lightening fast.

6/22–Molde in the afternoon

…Molde town is a nice looking, compact place with shops and banks and cafes.  We are of course not hungry in the least, but we want to stretch our legs, so we wander down the main street, looking in stores, scamming wifi at the bank building.  Maggi finds a Norwegian flag to buy, then we just wander around the town, stumbling upon a fantastic building covered in ivy – I love it – and a beautiful fountain with a woman holding a basket of roses – Molde is considered the rose capital of Norway with more rose gardens then anywhere else in the countr .

We continue our exploration, heading upstairs, following signs for the rose garden.  The stairs deposit us onto the steps of the Cathedral, a double-nave Gothic style church built in the late 1950s. An interesting feature is that the bell tower is free standing – something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Inside, the church is huge.  It seats 1,000 and is close to cavernous. The stained glass is beautiful though, as is the mosaic above the entry doors.

Outside, atop the town hall, is the rose garden.  Close to being in bloom, we can just imagine how beautiful this will look when all the buds are in full bloom, red, pink, yellow and white against the backdrop of the harbor and the “alps” across the water.

Heading back to the ship, Maggi and Richard split off to catch up on emails, and we hit the cabin.  We spend the next few hours at dock, on our balcony taking way too many pictures of the gorgeous scenery off our aft.

Sailaway is equally beautiful, with again, far too many photos of our wake and the waning midnight sun.

Then it is off to another evening full of good food, good drinks and even better companionship.

6/22–Molde

Today is our last day for driving.  We have a car booked (at the airport – and they won’t come get us) and are going to go tour the Atlantic Road, which is known as the “road in the sea” because it winds its way over rocks and reefs, with bridges and causeways, built right over the mouth of the fjord.  Workers suffered through 12 hurricanes to build it.  Sounds impressive to us!

Fortunately we are early docking, because our biggest dilemma is how to get to the airport to get the car.  We don’t know about the taxi situation, but there is a bus we can take. The challenge there was that it leaves at 10:15, and we weren’t scheduled to dock until 10.  We have some leeway now, but as we are leaving the dock area, we spy a taxi-van right by the gates.  People are getting in it, but I walked up and asked where the driver was going.  Don’t ask why, it was one of the weird brain synapse things where I think I thought it was like a Song Tao in Thailand or something, a shared taxi.  Whatever made me do it, it worked great, because the 3 other people inside were going to the airport as well.  So, we all piled in and then got to split the fare.

We collect our car with no problems, and make our way out of the  airport – it’s easy – a straight shot right out of the airport and up the E64.  Our plan is to visit Bud – the “idyllic” fishing village, then skirt the coast up to Kristiansund and come back down through the center of the island.  The drive to Bud is lovely – we take a little detour through the hillsides (to avoid the toll tunnel) and meander our way through Skaret, a truly one horse town (or village) with a restaurant that looks like it is right out of the wild, wild Norwegian west.  The road gently descends as we make our way back down to sea level, passing through grazing fields with cattle and horses. 

We reach Bud easily and quickly, driving through the teeny town, up and around the Fort at the top of the hill.  This is Fort Ergan, a German WWII fort built as part of their “Atlantic Wall” defense system.  We circle back and park in the lot underneath the fort, where Richard explores the rock garden, Ed finds an old bunker and I climb up to the top of the hill to see the fort (and neglect to take pictures of the fort – I only had eyes for the scenery).

After stretching our legs, we continue our tour out ot the coast to begin reach the scenic Atlantic Road.  First though, we stop at all the scenic pullouts as well as this wonderful little church in Hustad.

A few short kilometers later, we reach the Atlantic Road. It is truly built into the sea – with amazing architecture, soaring bridges and lovely causeways. (Yeah, pix don’t really tell the story)

We pass by scenic stops with little cafes – all jam packed with tourists.  We’re enjoying the ride, so we just keep watching out the window as the fjords slide by, fishing boats ply the waters and the bigger freighters sail out to the open sea.

The coastal road ends too quickly, and we are rapidly thrown back into the farmland and grazing fields as we saw on our way here.  We drive toward Kristiansund, but realize that we really don’t want to go into the city – it looks gorgeous from the brochures that have birds eye pictures, but from the ground level, we’re not really interested.

So, we have an executive meeting and make the decision to reverse course, hit a grocery store for picnic supplies and head back to the Atlantic Road for an al fresco lunch.  we’ve noticed there is a grocery store every few kilometers (kid you not – there are tons and tons of supermarkets), so finding supplies is not an issue.  We stop at a Rema 1000 and stock up on salami and bacon cheese for us, little cheese appetizers for Maggi & Richard, and chocolate for all of us for later (hey, its good and cheap here!).

Back on the road, we pass a couple of the scenic spots, but they are even more packed with tours now. So we choose this little cafe that only has a couple of motorcycles parked out front and lots of concrete picnic benches to eat our snacks.

Very scenic place to picnic.  Sunny gets into the act as well, enjoying the waves hitting the rocks way behind him.

After lunch we debate getting a waffle from the cafe, but decide it isn’t worth the wait, the money or the carbs. So, we move on.  Back through the hills and farmland, across the island, passing more busloads of tourists (and crew from the ship) heading toward the Atlantic Road.  We’re pretty happy we did it early enough to avoid the bulk of the crowds.

We navigate back to the airport quite easily and turn in our car, but then can’t get a cab back into town.  The Hertz guy called the cab company. No answer. Gave us the phone number, we called, no answer.  What’s with that?  We asked the Hertz guy about the bus and he said it would come in 45 minutes, up on the road above the airport.  Hmmm…that’s not the bus we were talking about which leaves every hour from within the airport.  But, we are sort of at a loss, so we troop up to the main road, trying and failing to hail the one empty cab we saw, locate the bus stop and stand there, hoping the bus can take credit cards, or at least Euros. 

Ten minutes into our wait, Richard finds a cab.  Yes!  He hails him down and we hop in for the ride back to town. The taxi driver is so sweet, he asks us about the ship, talks about his camper (of course!) and how he is planning a trip to NordKapp later in the summer.  As we are getting out of the car, he gives Ed a $5 bill, saying to take it and use it for a drink or something. Ed tries to refuse it, but the taxi driver says it is of no use to him, it would cost more to try to exchange it.  So nice – really everyone throughout this entire trip has been lovely.

Our adventures continue, back in town…