Cruising to Norway

Dh won a cruise. No, we’re not gambling people. We’ve taken the mini-cruise to Norway a couple of times and they sent us an email where you play a quiz. Dh took the quiz and won. He took the quiz two more times and won two more times. I think he must have been the only one taking the quiz–because— winning 3 times in a row?

Anyhow, the free mini-cruise included two cabins and two nights stay on a cruise ship. This did not include food AND since we were on a very tight budget we brought most of our meals with us.

So, back to the cruise ship. We boarded the ship in Copenhagen Tuesday afternoon (a 45-minute train ride from our home) and were pleasantly surprised that our cabins, for once, were not below the car deck. The last two times we have gone, we have been placed in steerage class (and I mean steerage!). The cabins are just fine–it’s just the smell from the engines that’s get to you. I also have to admit feeling vaguely like I was in the Titanic and that we would be the first to drown should the ship hit an iceberg. But this time we weren’t so economy, economy class.

The kids were so excited to explore the ship. There are tons of kids activities on board so we followed them around as they enjoyed the play. We decided to buy tickets to Ratatouille and had a ball watching the film on board in a private theater where we were the only viewers.

Then we went to bed. Our ship must have hit some stormy seas because the ship rocked quite a bit. I don’t get seasick so it felt like I was being rocked in a cradle–very soothing. Dh, on the other hand, suffers from seasicknesses, so he did not enjoy that aspect of the night.

The next morning we splurged on a buffet breakfast. It was a great blend between the traditional Danish/Swedish breakfast and a hearty English breakfast. By that I mean that there was a fantastic selection of breads, cold cuts, cheeses, bell peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes (for the Danish/Swedish portion) and then scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, miniature sausages, beans, hash browns, and fruit. I forgot the yogurt with a nice selection of musli and other fixin’s! There were also Danish pastries and some donut-type pastries. It was very filling and very good.

The kids were set on a full afternoon on the ship swimming and doing the kid activities so we decided to spend the morning in Oslo. Oslo is Norway’s capital city and lies nestled in the mountains, very much like Salt Lake City. But unlike SLC, the ocean laps at the edge of the city. It really is neat to eat your breakfast while sailing along on the ocean watching mountains guarding the passage.

We had two main objectives for our visit to Oslo (we had already seen the Viking Ship museum and other attractions on previous journeys). We wanted to visit Åkerhus Fortress (the a with a circle over it is pronounced like a long O) and possibly visit the Norwegian Resistance Museum. And we wanted to buy some Norwegian sweaters for our nieces and the baby.

We walked to the fortress and found the musuem. I convinced the boys to go inside–to make the time go faster. I admit that I am a nerd and I take my kids to museums because I LOVE museums. If we had a choice between Disneyland and the Louvre, I would totally choose the Louvre. Dh wanted to spend some time reading the information. The boys were antsy, so I took them on the whirlwind tour of the museum, reading the information and explaining the hard words to them. I tried to make it as interesting as possible and we all ended up with a real feeling for what happened in Norway during WWII.

Norway was a neutral country but Hitler issued a surprise attack on Norway in April 1940. The Norwegian people were completely unprepared for the assault. They fought desperately in different areas of the country, managing to get their King and government officials to England before they surrendered to the Nazis. We followed the exploits of various resistance groups as they worked to develop a cohesive resistance against Hitler. We saw the clothes prisoners of war, political prisoners, and Jews had to wear. My boys were sober as we talked about what the prisoners had to endure. The boys were most fascinated with the methods the resistance used to pass newspapers and information. We thought the microdots were so cool! Dh was really intrigued by the two year operation of the resistance to destroy the German heavy water plant in the mountains of Norway. When we came to the end of the journey, we discussed how the people felt as they gained control of their country.

A museum worker was doing some work while we were talking about the resistance. The boys were asking good questions and were really focused. The worker said to me “I’m so impressed!” and told the boys a little more about some of the photographs.

It was a great visit and I really learned a lot and gained a deep respect for the Norwegian people as they lived through such a difficult period. The best part was also that they boys enjoyed themselves. Trent told me it was his favorite part of the trip and that’s saying a lot!

From the museum, we walked to the city center where the shopping streets are. I walked past Designer stores and peeked in the windows. I think that is the closest I’ll ever get to such items. But they were definitely posh stores. The walking street is fun and has a lot of shops, both trendy and quaint. We found the shop where Dh had bought my Norwegian sweater the last time he was there. Once we saw the selection we had a big debate about what colors we should get. And then I started to worry that perhaps our nieces wouldn’t like it. While discussing this quandry, we were getting cold and the boys were starting to fight. We ate lunch at the Burger King (remember we’re on a tight budget–and food wasn’t the main focus of the trip) and decided to call dh’s mom. You have to remember that there is an 8 hour time difference so we had to wait until the right time. But we couldn’t get dh’s mom. So we tried his sister. Yes, we called her at 6:00 a.m. for a sweater question! Once our pressing sweater questions were answered we went back to the store and bought 4 sweaters for all the granddaughters on dh’s family’s side.

With our sweaters in hand, we went back to the ship. Our afternoon and evening was pretty much a flurry of fun kid activities: swimming, bouncing on the air castle, making necklaces and bracelets, drawing pictures, eating dinner, meeting Jack the Pirate, going on a treasure hunt and getting some fun Jack the Pirate things.

Then it was back to the cabins where we put our very exhausted children to bed and the ship once again hit stormy seas. I love that rocking in the cradle feeling. The next morning we arrived back in Copenhagen and went home.

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