At Sea

On our last night in Dover we had an intruder in our room.  Woke up and heard a noise in the bathroom but when Ron checked, he couldn’t see anything.  In the morning we discovered Ron’s toothbrush on the outside window ledge and the dental floss sticks.  A bird, probably a gull as there are many around, had decided to do some thieving.  Guess the noise we heard was the toothbrush on its way out the window.

 Boarded the Sea Princess on Friday afternoon and unpacked.  Not sure how the contents of our cases can also manage to fill all wardrobes and drawers in our room.  Where did it all fit!  Trouble is – it has to go back in the cases again (but not for a little while).

In Rotterdam we had a tour out to the Windmills of Kinderdjik. These are the traditional mills we see in photos, but their purpose was to drain the fields, not mill grain.  There are 19 of them and it is now a National Heritage site.  Saw some very narrow houses in the old Delfhaven area.  Apparently they were taxed on the width of the house so this was kept small but the houses are quite deep to compensate.

  

In Copenhagen we visited the Little Mermaid again and had a bus trip around the city.  Sightseeing buses had free wifi but was fairly patchy, only managed to clear the junk from emails without sending anything.

Not good internet access in this area, so including a few ports.  In Oslo we went  for a trip to the Viking museum and saw three long boats from around 800AD.  Two had been restored, one was as found.  Huge number of burial gifts, beautifully carved were found in the burial mounds with these ships.  Went to the Holmenkollen ski jump to see scenic views of city before going to the Vigeland Sculpture Park.  Over 200 statues, all except one ‘au natural’ depicting the Circle of Life.  Wonderfully made in great detail.  Most were bronze casts, but the central monolith display was marble.  This was completed after Vigeland’s death following plaster casts he had made. 

No port stop for Faroe Islands because the weather was unfavourable.  Had travelled through fog for some time and the wind was coming from the wrong direction to make berthing easy and widened the turning circle of the ship.  Now on a seven sea days to New York.