Cruise to Norway (part 1 of 4)
We were so looking forward to our trip to Oslo, Norway. But as the time for departure approached I almost wished we hadn’t booked it. First, the weather forecast was horrible. We were only going to be in Oslo for one day and the prediction was for a high of only 62 degrees. Worse was that it was supposed to be raining all day long.
Then my daughter got a migraine headache the morning of the day we were going to leave. This was her first of the trip. She has had migraines in the past but not in the last few months. They tend to come in bunches for her which meant that she’d probably be getting them on the ship and in Norway. The thought of these potential migraines meant that she wouldn’t have any fun and we probably wouldn’t either. Plus, she tends to vomit with her migraines and we were going to be packed like sardines in a little cruise ship cabin.
My daughter took a nap as we weren’t going to be leaving until afternoon. After she woke up we road our bikes to the dock on the north end of Copenhagen; by the time we got to the ship her migraine was gone. Luckily, for all of us, she didn’t have any more.
The views from the top of the cruise ship were spectacular. We had some interesting vantage points of Sweden, Denmark and everything in between including the wind turbines. The cruise begins in the late afternoon from Copenhagen. It arrives in Oslo, Norway at about 9:30 the following morning. The first and last couple hours are the most interesting in terms of views as you can see Denmark and Sweden at the outset. You can see Norway and the fjords for the last few hours.
The passengers were an interesting mix. There were about 140 students from all over the world from Copenhagen Business School. I’m guessing that the rest of the 1,000+ people on board were about 55% Danish, 30% Japanese tourists, 10% Norwegian, and 5% from other places.
We had a nice dinner and then the kids went to the cinema to see Indiana Jones (in between checking out all of the other activities like foosball, Legos, disco dancing, etc.). My wife and I socialized with the two other faculty members who were on board. One is from Maine and his wife is Danish. The other is from Australia.
As far as I could tell the sky never completely darkened, although I suppose it did for a few hours after midnight. When I turned in at 11:30 there was a beautiful reddish, orange glow (not really a sunset) in the north. I didn’t have my camera with me at the time.
I woke up early, after not having slept much with all of the college students “sleeping” in nearby cabins, and went up top to see the Norwegian Fjords. It wasn’t raining, like the forecast said it would be, but there were only occasional breaks in the total cloud cover. The views were amazing.
You could spot scenes like the above of fishermen in the fjords. There were loads of little islands, some with cute houses or other buildings on them. In the distance you could also see a couple of cruise ships trailing us.
The next two days I’ll post some pictures and discussion of Oslo; the fourth entry on Oslo will be our journey back to Copenhagen.
