Today we have to shuffle things around in our luggage and get ready for another overnighter; this time on a ship to a new country, Denmark. We have breakfast at the hotel, check out and store our luggage. Then we are off for our last day in Norway.
We start with a stop at the bakery here, that has the best school bread we have found in Norway.
Pat bought us tickets to tour the Royal Palace last night online (since the King and his family are now at their summer place, we can now tour here). Glad he did because they were telling people the tickets were sold out for the next five days.
I'm glad we didn't miss this palace. It's smaller than a lot of European palaces, but decorated much nicer than a lot of them. Not richly decorated with wood carvings and gold, but painted in a Norwegian style. Just beautiful. And the guards are the cutest here too!
Picture (no pictures were allowed) dental molding and casings outlined and then designs and flowers and birds were added. The scenes painted in the Bird room were showcasing the beautiful areas of the Norwegian countryside.
We also saw the council room where the council members meet with the King every Friday, all year, except July and August when the king has time off.
Our guide told us how, when electricity came into the palace, they sold off all the chandeliers and now they have bought most of them back. She emphasized that this is a working palace. The King and Queen and family live and work here, have meetings, and entertain heads of state. All that happens here every day, except July and August when they do these tours.
After the tour we wandered back down Karl Johans Gate, stopping for lunch in a bakery. We each had grilled ham and cheese. This sandwich was an open face sandwich and very good. It came with a salad which we didn't eat.
We stopped at 7-11 to get two waters and a Coke to take on board with us. Picked up our luggage at the hotel and headed to the bus stop near the train station to catch bus 60 to our DFDS boat to Copenhagen.
They checked us in right away, gave us a cardboard ticket that was our room key card, then we headed for what I thought was security. He checked our passport and our tickets and told us boarding would begin at 3:15. It was about 2:45.
They started boarding right at 3:15. No announcement, just take your luggage and get on board. As we walked on the ship, I realized they never scanned our bags or had any kind of a security check.
We waited for the elevator just steps inside the ship. We needed the 11th floor. We splurged on this cabin (it's only one night) and got us a balcony on the Commodore level. We have a very nice room with a mini refrig, seating area with a couch and a chair. It's very spacious compared other cruise ship rooms we have had. I think all the windows make it seem even bigger.
Our small deck has two chairs (and room for one more or a table). Just outside our room is the Commodore Lounge with complimentary snacks and drinks. They had Coke and water bottles, OJ, chips and salsa, peanuts, fruit, and little chocolate frosted cakes with strawberries on top.
After watching sail away for an hour from our deck and our room we went to dinner at the Italian dinner place.
Karen had spaghetti with meat sauce and Pat had lasagna. It was very good, as Karen ate most of the meat sauce and about one fourth of the noodles.
After dinner we explored the ship including the kid’s area, the arcade, and the clubs. There's no big theater, but there are three good-sized show rooms.
The store was huge. It had women's clothes, men's clothing (we are not talking souvenir clothing; there were no souvenir items, except postcards) and underwear, and bras. There was an electronic section that even had DVD's, the normal perfumes and jewelry, a big cosmetics area, and food snacks, pop, lots of chocolate; a good variety of it.
The kids had their own shop of clothes and toys. They made an announcement and we were able to buy our Tivoli Gardens tickets for a good discount at the Guest Services Desk with no wait. She also helped us decide how we could get to our Copenhagen apartment from the boat dock.
Then we went to the 9:00 pm show. First it was a solo guy who was good at singing Frank Sinatra songs, but not as good at his George Michael number. He sang with canned music.
Next was a guy who played the keyboard and a lady singer. Neither were good singers, but they did fun songs.
Next we went out on the deck on our floor aft to watch the sunset at 10:30. We have a front to back rocky motion going on. No white caps, but some good sized swells. We will sleep well tonight.
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