Port of call: Oslo
After a day at sea aboard the cruise ship, we find ourselves
moving inbound to Oslo. I awoke at 5:00 a.m. and discovered
to my surprise that dawn was already upon us. Bear in mind
that the sun set at about 11:00 last night, and you start to
get an appreciation for these short northern summer nights.
On the way into port I can see that we're traveling through a passage similar in many ways to the "inside passage" we took on our Alaska cruise two years ago. Not as mountainous, but green -- very green indeed -- and rocky. During the course of the next 10 days I will not see a coastline that isn't rocky, and will gain a new understanding for why people consider the Florida and Caribbean beaches attractive. Why, they're sandy! (I grew up with this stuff, so it's just sand to me.)
I shower quickly and go out in search of the elixir of life. Suitably fortified I venture out on the pool deck with my cameras. The weather is overcast, maybe about 50F, and with a windbreaker it's just comfortable enough to stand outside. Bing Crosby croons from the outdoor sound system and the landscape slides noiselessly by. A lone jogger bounces past, making the first of a dozen laps of the deck. I snap a couple of photos of the coastline and am surprised when the SD card announces that it has filled up. Dang. I trundle downstairs to offload the photos to the Apple whilst my family gets ready to greet the rosy-fingered dawn.
We score a window seat in the dining room, and we enjoy our breakfast while the rocky Norwegian coast slides by. The water is glassy and a handful of small craft operates around us. We pass a number of islands, many of which have little houses on them, but no way on-or-off without using watercraft. Your sailboat is the only way to get to the nearest Safeway, or its Norwegian equivalent.
Within an hour we eat, the ship docks, and we're cleared to disembark. The ship's handling is remarkable; at no time during the cruise were we ever aware of docking or leaving. The cruise tech has become very, very smooth, and you might as well be in a hotel for all the movement you ever feel.
The family clamors off and we walkabout Oslo. The first thing we spy is a 250-year-old fortress that sits right next to the ship, across the street. Everybody else who gets off the ship starts trudging the few blocks into downtown, but we spy a stair that leads up the steep hill to an opening in the citadel and just have to check it out. Bernice is a little dubious, looking skeptically at the steep stair, but she follows us up, not wanting to be left behind. As I mentioned above, everything is a luxuriant green and the weather is crispy cool. The overcast is beginning to yield to the sun, and birds are making happy noises. It is a great time to be here.
There are uniformed lads in ceremonial military garb, who patrol the fortress in threes, marching slowly in stiff-legged goose step. I drop my video camera down to my side as they pass, deliberately not taking a picture. (When we visited Granada years ago I began to take a photo of police officers in a similar citadel -- and they complained quite forcefully. So I don't take pictures of uniformed people anymore when I'm in a strange country.)
Kristen, my firstborn and our resident visiting biologist, points out that the crows have white bellies.
We circle the fortress and come down on the side next to downtown. Things are really dead just now; Sunday morning is a quiet time in Oslo. Nothing is open, there's no traffic on the streets, the only people on foot are folks like us who have just gotten off the cruise ship. This will change in an hour or two, but for now it looks like the tourists have completely taken over the city.
The streets are lined with brick that looks like it might be granite? Trolley tracks stretch down the avenue, but we've yet to see what uses these tracks.
A little park square, with a stone lion keeping eternal watch. Kristen poses for a photo next to him, while a couple of bums sleep nearby on the park benches. A lady out walking her pooch curbs her dog within two feet of one of the benches. A lone trolley finally approaches and lumbers by, a great beast whose motors make a loud whiney complaining noise.
Bernice has a map that she got from somewhere, and is consulting it, declaring that she wants to see some cathedral or other. We set off in the direction she wants to go, and stop at an intersection. There is no traffic, but the light is against us and we don't know what the local laws say about that... so we sit tight. A local passer-by notices us and encourages us to go ahead, just be sure to watch for traffic. "And also watch for pickpockets", he adds, "though perhaps not this early!" We smile our thanks and hop across the street.
We cruise by Bernice's cathedral, which was nice enough but small by midtown London standards. It is Sunday, remember, and well dressed worshippers were beginning to congregate out front, and so we decide not to take a photo. (You're not missing much; it wasn't all that interesting.) However we did take a picture of some nearby ducks. We LIKE ducks.
Most stores and signs are foreign to me but there is some English posted here and there. We've seen a Burger King, a McDonald's and a 7-11. This last store is a small shop, with wood paneling inside and rock music piped into the street. There are slot machines just inside the door. Now that's weird.
A pair of stone cherubs seemingly standing in mid-air support an overhang on a building corner. I observe that you can see right up the butt cracks of those cherubs, and Allison slides me a disgusted look and says nothing. Man, I love jerking her chain.
A bell tolls somewhere. It's 9:15.
The sun is coming out in force now, and I'm beginning to warm up in my corduroy shirt and windbreaker. We turn left, steadily up a long incline until we come to a big hill. The street up the hill is lined in lilacs, and leads to the royal palace. We take the palace, circle around the grounds, and come back down the hill on the other side, landing squarely in embassy territory. There are some really nice digs up here, and I want to walk farther into this neighborhood. But Bernice is becoming antsy because we have wandered off her tourist map and she is out of sight of the port, and she has some other mission that she wants to accomplish. So we head back in the general direction of the ship, and eventually find the waterfront and the Jewel of the Seas. Now she's happy; since I sort of got lost in London she doesn't trust my sense of direction all that much.
We decide that after three hours of hoofing it around it'll be good to get back on board for a pee break and maybe a bite to eat. The lunch break turns into a lazy nap break, and while one or the other of us sleeps the others steal off the ship to hunt souvenirs.
Too early it's time to leave. Captain Scheisskopf wants all
his passengers back on board by no later than 1/2 hour before
sailing. He's quite adamant about this, and emphasizes that
if you miss the boat... you're screwed. (A couple of
guys found this out the hard way in Tallinn, but that's a story
for another blog entry.) The girls find their way down to the
cinema to take in a chick flick, and Bernie and I sit on the
pool deck as the ship drifts away from port. A lounge lizard
is playing Elvis tunes, the sun is still shining bright (and will
be doing so long into the evening), and I've tried to ruin my
dinner with a handful of oatmeal-raisin cookies I found somewhere.
All's right with the world. Tomorrow: Copenhagen!
posted at: 17:00 | path: /dailies | permanent link to this entry
After a day at sea, during which we did little else but sleep, we find ourselves docking in Oslo atbabout 7:30am local time. But I get ahead of myself.
A few months ago Bernie got the itch to go cruising again (though actually, she always has that itch). She presented some suggestions, but I was lukewarm - we'd already been to all the places she mentioned, and I wanted to see something new if we were going. "Maybe we should spend a week somewhere in Europe?" I asked hopefully. "It'll cost about what your damnable cruise will."
She cogitated for a few days, and then made a counter proposal: "We could cruise in Europe." I likely scowled, and said that it would likely be pricey. "But knock yourself out, see what it'll set us back." I figured she'd see what it cost, freak out, and that would be the last I heard of that.
But she got to planning and thinking and she struck me at a weak time. We talked about making the trip a true - and possibly last - family vacation. That meant a very small window following spring semester, and she warned me: if we do this, it won't be cheap. "What the hell... shoot the works" was the exact phrase I used.
Sweet freakin' Bog, she shot the works!
So I find myself in London two days after Allison graduated, and in Oslo two days later. It's day 3 of Bernice's 12 day shoot-the-works extravaganza. I never asked what it cost, and don't have a need to know.
posted at: 02:25 | path: /ontheroad | permanent link to this entry