We were booked for the "mini-cruise", but the line is also an active transportation line and ferry between Norway and Denmark. Tickets, even with the cost of a room, are cheaper than flying, and the ship also carries cars. So, after years of reading sea-stories, and a fair bit of time spent on the water recreationally, I finally spent my first night at sea.
We awoke in the Oslofjord - a sound about 100 kilometers long with beautiful little rocky islands and hills (hills, Gandalf!) in golden October colors. The rocky islets and inlets look remarkably like parts of the San Juans, except with more broadleaf trees and cute Norwegian houses. Unfortunately it was overcast so the photos look like shit.
Once in the city we got to wander around for six hours before getting back on the boat. We checked out Akershus Fortress, was the first real castle I've gotten to visit, the Edvard Munch museum, the Botanical Gardens and got pretty decent hole-in-the-wall Indian food for lunch before navigating back to the port without the aid of a map or cell-phone service.
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| The title "I found a castle!" on instagram lead folks to think I'd just bought it |
As we left the harbor again I enjoyed the view from one of the aft-deck hot tubs. I stayed in there for an hour, and thought maybe I could just stay in forever, but decided that this would not work out.
The cruise ship band was not very good, and the piano bar pianist kept playing awful songs, but hey, at least they were live musicians, in a world where even recorded music is increasingly organized and distributed by algorithmic whim. I bought some duty-free Akvavit once we left port and enjoyed this and beers with Andreas, while we shared stories about the peculiarities of our homelands (he is German) and the places we have lived.
We arrived back in windy, flat, dear Copenhagen Monday morning, and promptly got back into the familiar groove of being distracted and stressed.
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