Skagen, Denmark was our first port of call and our last stop in Denmark. We had booked a walking tour of the city which turned out to be more of a marathon tour! About two-thirds into the walk which wasn’t very exciting, we bailed out of the tour and walked back through the town and back to the ship. That left enough time to go swimming (the hot tubs for me) before changing into formal wear and going to dinner. Tonight is the first of three formal nights on this cruise. We’re missing the captains reception going on right now. That means a missed opportunity to have our picture taken with the captain of the ship. No shaking hands, mind you, only standing somewhat together while the photographer takes a picture. We’ve already had our picture taken twice today, so that’s enough, I think.
The hand shaking ban has to do with the flu virus that some cruise ships are plagued with. The virus is passed person to person either through direct contact orf by touching something the infected person has very recently touched. At every opportunity there is someone standing around waiting to squirt the passengers’ hands with Purell hand sanitizer. I’m quite satisfied with not getting sick, so they can squirt away as well as not shake hands. Even better is to miss the event all together.
There will be several opportunities to get our picture taken tonight and again on the other two formal nights. We’re hoping to find one good picture out of the lot. We both look pretty good tonight!
Skagen is on the northern most piece of Denmark and at the place where two seas come together. It supposedly has very good light and was the home of a number of artisans late in the 19th century. Today tourism makes up all of the economy of the town. We didn’t leave much money behind, however. I wanted to buy some Sprite at the grocery store, but they didn’t have any cans, only 1 1/2 liter bottles. So that was our contribution to the local economy. Now were headed to Stavanger, Norway and will be there about 8 a.m. tomorrow morning.
Continued! I couldn’t get this sent!
The computer satellite connection has been very sporadic. It seems that we’re so far north that any little thing that comes up on the horizon blocks the connection. At this rate we’ll be hard pressed to use up our minutes, I’m afraid. The second stop on our cruise was in Stavenger, Norway. We had a delightful bus tour around the countryside from the seashore up into the mountains. This sure is beautiful country … and it all sits on a granite foundation. On every side are towering granite mountains. There are also trees everywhere. According to our tour guide, all homes are made from wood except the very poor people or fish canneries which are made from stone. She was pretty emphatic about the distinction. She definitely gave us a few quotes which we’ll use over the next few years to remind us of the time we spent learning about how Norway became one kingdom under Harold FairHair. The weather has been cooperative.
The day today was spent in the area of Flam, Norway. What a beautiful, quaint little town. Someone said there were about 500 inhabitants in the town with another thousand or so in the area. We took a train up to the top of the basin surrounding Flam, spent a couple of hours there and came back down. The waterfalls are spectacular. Some video of one of them will definitely end up on YouTube. We have plenty of pictures of hillsides, waterfalls, and houses. Digital cameras are good (you can take lots and lots of pictures) and bad (you can take lots and lots of pictures)! So far I’ve got about 700 pictures that I’ve downloaded from my cameras! A few of them will definitely go away. We’re now cruising back out to the ocean and will be sailing northwards all day tomorrow. We could well be late getting into the next port of call due to an interesting issue today.
The trains in Flam are electric. A woman with a hot cup of coffee sat her cup down to cool off and tipped it over into a switch box for the train on its way up the mountain. The train had to come back down (carefully) and be repaired. That left a group of passengers stranded for quite a while at the top. They were about an hour late getting down, so our departure was delayed from Flam. Further, another 200 passengers were waiting downstream to be picked up after their all-day excursion. We were about an hour and a half late picking them up. Before all of this occurred, the ship was going to have to make an average speed of just over 20 knots (about 23 mph) to arrive on time. The boat is only capable of about 23 knots, so unless there’s a shortcut, we’ll be late. Yet another reason for not drinking coffee….