Our Viking River Cruise

I love these buildings on the canal, all similar yet different.

The equipment shown in this photo can impact the water in the canal.

The Int Aepjen bar is one of the oldest remaining wooden buildings in Amsterdam. See the front window in the photo below.

What a fascinating place this bar is. Sailors were said to pay their bills in monkeys picked up on their travels, hence the stuffed monkeys in the windows.

This beautiful old building, once a manufacturing facility, has now been repurposed as a pricey apartment complex for young couples.

Amsterdam has 160 canals and this is a typical view of a narrow one. It has it all: Lots of bicycles, a coffee shop with umbrellas, beautiful buildings, and a power boat meandering down the canal accompanied by (chasing?) 4 anxious swans.

A lovely door for Denise.

Yes, these are those houses. They are so quaint and Norwegian. Actually they’re shops.

I liked these houses too and we can see these from our ship. Our guide said that 60 of the homes in Bergen are protected by UNESCO but I’m not sure if these are the ones.

Interesting architecture. And colors.

This little Museum boat in the harbor was really cute. Not sure what they use this boat for since it looks like there can’t be any more than 10 seats aboard.

We spotted this as we passed a pretty city park.

This is the outside of the church.

And here’s the inside. It’s tiny inside, only room for about 35-40 people. There was only one small window in the church, which allowed lepers and pregnant women to hear the service from the outside of the building since they were not allowed inside.

The toilets for tourists had fern roofs. Cool.

It was about a 5-minute walk from the parking lot to the church and we walked through this beautiful wooded area that looked like something out of a rain forest.

Loved the trees in here.

The Griegs’ house.

Grieg’s house didn’t have plumbing. This was their outhouse.

The living room in the house.

Friends of Edvard and Nina gave them this grand piano for their 25th anniversary. Both Edvard and Nina played the piano and Nine also sang.

Nina wanted a rose window so they had this one constructed.

Edvard also had a little house down by the lake where he composed his music called the composing house.

Museum and gift shop.

Portraits of Edvard and Nina in the museum. The couple were actually cousins and both were under 5 feet tall.

This life size statue of Grieg stands in one of the gardens.

This metal memorial is hard to see (bad photo!) but brilliantly executed. To the far left can be seen Grieg’s profile (facing to the left), and to the far right is Nina’s profile (facing to the right).

This is the concert hall with the grass roof I’ve been trying to photograph.

And this is the Lupine I’ve been trying to photograph. (Ah, finally, all is well in the world.)

The concert hall is as amazing inside as it is outside.

And this is from the pianist’s perspective. This is not a video, this is actually the lake that can be seen behind the piano. We got to hear a recital of Grieg’s music given by a music professor from the Grieg Academy at the University of Bergen.

When docking at Eidfjord, we just pulled up to this little dock with the rubber tires attached to it. It was amazing to see a  ship this big parked at a dock that small.  I didn’t even know this was possible.

Building this 4,500-foot suspension bridge across the fjord came with much reluctance on the part of the locals because it eliminated the ferries which were a big part of their way of life.

When going across the suspension bridge, you can see a hole to the tunnel you’ll soon be entering. It’s a little eerie.

Our guide says that Norway is referred to as the land of a thousand tunnels. And some of them are very long. Indeed on our train trip up the mountain we passed through no less than 20 tunnels. Norwegians think car tunnels are safer than the roads that cling to the side of the mountains which can deteriorate and crumble. Two of the tunnels we went through on the bus even had roundabouts in them like this one!

This is an old school house but still used today. Our guide says that Norwegians get 10 years of education before deciding if they want to go on to advanced education: primary school is grades 1-7, and secondary school is grades 8-10.

This is a moss roof which is different from a grass roof. But I think it’s very pretty and I’ll bet it has the same excellent insulation properties.

We took the bus to Flam where they had another one of these elegant old hotels right at the harbor’s edge.

One of the bigger summer farms.

At Flam we caught the train up the mountainside. This long train had 2 bathrooms and one of them was out of order. People got a little…um…restless, shall we say.

In this clearing is one of the summer farms we saw from a distance.

We went from the fjord where our ship landed in Eidfjord to another fjord and eventually to Flam which is actually located on a smooth-as-glass lake. The view of that lake was the most incredible scenery we’ve ever seen. Unfortunately the best views for photos were on the way home when I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus.

This is Tvindefossen, or twin falls, one of the two huge waterfalls we saw. Tvindefossen is just over 500 feet tall.

From up on the mountain, we could see snow on the higher elevations.

This is our TV showing the bridge cam. This was how we could tell it was really raining outside.

I knew the rain was bad news because when it rains, this is how the bus window looks.

From the boat we could see Gamie Stavanger, which is Stavanger’s Old Town,. The cobble streets are lined with the continent’s highest concentration of wooden buildings that date to the 17th and 18th centuries. There are almost 250 houses in this area and they’re protected from developers by a conservancy.

I took this photo of an upscale Scavanger neighborhood through the front window of the bus. She has windshield wipers!

Speaking of our bus driver, it’s a woman and this cool Teddy Bear in his bus driver suit sits up front with her.

We stopped to see the Swords in the Rock, the site where Norway was founded in the 800’s.

This graceful bridge across the harbor overlooks a really nice community with boating facilities.

This long shop is a meat market. Wish we could have gone inside – bet it was interesting.

We drove out into the countryside and saw lots of black sheep and white sheep. The guide says the wool from the black sheep doesn’t need to be sheared, it just falls off or can be pulled off. And it’s very high quality wool.

Low clouds hung over the area and came and went very quickly. It was very green and gorgeous.

We stopped at a small place by the lake that used to be a working farm but now seems to be more of a camp and tourist spot. They fed us wonderful waffles which we slathered with homemade strawberry jam and sour cream. I recommend these highly.

The area outside of the tent where we were served waffles overlooked the lake and it was gorgeous.

It’s hard to capture the beauty of this area. Hopefully we’ll get another chance tomorrow.

We’ve heard that this area has ogres and sure enough we saw a severed ogre hand laying on the grass.

And we saw this door into a rock with 9 keyholes. Yes, 9. Clearly ogres are in the area.

When we got into port, we found workers building these bleacher seats on the other side of the pier from where we docked. We can only assume that upon completion they will fill the seats and welcome us to Alborg. What nice folks! (Later on we discovered there is going to be some sort of musical festival in Alborg this coming weekend and they’re expecting something like 40,000 people. I think maybe they need to re-think those 64 porta-potties we saw at the end of the bleachers.)

This is the view from our room. The tiered concrete mounds in the center of the open space are fountains that do their thing periodically.

They are justifiably proud of their modern public library complex.

On our walking tour of Old Town Chuck decided to test out some exercise equipment we saw in a little park.

Most of the old streets are named after the professions of the people who lived on them, like shoemakers and tailors. And all of the names are l-o-n-g and unpronounceable.

Love these quaint little historic streets. Our guide said that these little houses are in such big demand that they sell for upwards of $1 million dollars.

We visited this old catholic church called Church of our Lady. It’s hard to get back far enough to get a good overall photo because the buildings in this area are so dense.

Like most of the churches we’ve seen along the way, this one is beautiful in its simplicity.

Intricate chandeliers throughout the church.

Beautiful organ pipes in the back of the church although I never did spot the organ. Wish we could have heard the organ play.

Hanging from the high ceiling was a line of chandeliers down the main aisle of the church and right in the middle of the line was this Viking ship.

There were 2 small rooms off the nave, one in the back of the church and one off the front, that contained crypts of wealthy church members from long ago..

Lovely streets…

A little artists’ colony. The little white dog in the front belongs to an artist there and he came out to greet us.

This was a side window of the Luksus Baby store. Are those mannequins not amazing?

Never miss an opportunity to plant a tree!

This elevator is the only entrance to a museum that is entirely underground. (I call this woman “Ms. Yellow Jacket.” When I look at my photos, I swear she’s in at least 25% of them. How can this be? The group has left, why is she still standing here? She looks like she’s posing but there’s no one else here. This is kinda weird.)

I can’t believe we never got back to visit this chocolate shop after they opened.

This elegant brick building is the old post office.

This is the tower on the old post office. See the 9 holes on each side? Until the 1960’s, their telegram delivery pigeons lived here.

I like this building for it’s date on the front.

A lovely city square. In the summertime it’s full of tables and chairs and in the wintertime they use it for an ice skating rink. (She’s not kidding us, is she? The square is not flat, it dips in the middle and goes up at one end. How do they make the ice level? there must be something I don’t understand here.)

This was the Monastery of the Holy Ghost which had both monks and nuns. Eventually things didn’t work out so well for that kind of an arrangement, and a couple of people were sent to a nunnery and a couple others lost their heads, but they certainly had beautiful surroundings.

Here’s one of the courtyards for the monastery.

Apparently 2 brothers had a competition to see who could build the most beautiful house. I believe this house won the battle.

This is art. This water bottle looks 3-D but it’s actually painted on this flat wall. I left the man’s head in the photo to help give it perspective. It’s huge.

We were treated to a little Viking show. These 2 men were issuing the invitation.

This Viking gave us a taste of mead and snacks and talked about manly Viking stuff.

Then he absconded with our tour guide, Sarah, and took her away to his tent. Fortunately we were able to free her to finish the tour.

This group of buildings in Old Town has been here since 1536.

We saw several of these toddler transporters in Denmark. There are seats for 4 kids and this one has an older 5th child hanging on the back.

Houston, we have a wardrobe malfunction! One of the toddler’s hats has come off and the daycare worker is trying to fix it without losing stride.

Oh dear, I see that hat has come off again. It’s going to be a long day!

Time to leave for Stavanger, Norway, our next port. While at sea this evening, this ship ran along our starboard side for quite a while and I can see the name on the bow is Fountainhead. According to a report on Shipspotting.com, someone also reported seeing Fountainhead in this area yesterday. Fountainhead is a Cayman Islands ship home ported in Georgetown. It’s owner is Edward Lampert, #810 on Forbes Magazine’s list of richest men. Nice boat, man.

Alborg’s old City Hall was built in 1762 and it still a very striking building where special events are now held.

This is a close-up of the Alborg City Hall front door. In the 1700’s, when anything important needed to be passed along, a note was pinned to the city hall’s front door and you can still see the pinholes today.

This was a side entrance into the monastery. I wonder where this hall leads?

These were the steepest, shallowest steps leading down to a very small door. Strange!

This was one of the doors from the area of Old Town where the houses are now so expensive. In that area, it’s traditional to list all of the past owners of the home. In this home, there have been 14 owners since 1787 with the current owners living there since 1998. Just for fun, why don’t we all list all of the owners of our houses on the front door?

Where is OSHA when you really need them?

The Scandinavian Rhythm Boys.

Here’s their leader. He always had a smile on his face and I think he really enjoys entertaining and his music.

A really unique bridge.

I love the way they plant trees in between the buildings.

These 2 couples were having a little picnic on their boat in the middle of the canal.

The sign on the left says these white slips of paper tied to the trees are artwork. Good to know.

This was some kind of a brewery with outside seating for people to enjoy the canals while they eat and drink.

We gladly shared the canal with this pair of swans out for a swim with their adorable offspring.

At one point, we took a side canal off of the main canal and like other areas of town, it was a whole different world down there. We went from upscale canal-side homes to some on the other end of the spectrum very quickly.

Hmm…interesting boat house.

And these bring new meaning to the word houseboat. The one on the right is literally a boat with a “house” built on top of it.

And then the fun had to come to an end and we reluctantly disembarked. What a fun night.

Rosenborg Castle

This was Christian IV’s winter room, which is kind of a sitting room next to his bed chamber. the paneled art on the wall was interesting, especially the way it even covered the doors, making them almost disappear when they were closed. This clock was especially memorable.

This was Christian’s own personal toilet, something almost unheard of in those times. Note the dutch tiles covering every square inch of the walls.

The great hall with the 3 silver lions and the king’s and queen’s thrones.

This magnificant silver baptismal was also in the throne room. All members of the royal family were baptized using this baptismal.

A tapestry on one of the walls in the great hall.

The ceilings in every room were different and amazing – – real works of art on their own.

One of the elaborate chandeliers. The palace had a wide variety of beautiful chandeliers.

There was a second throne at the other end of the great hall.

In the basement were the gifts that were displayed by the king for his guests. These items were beautifully displayed and were works of art on their own. This is a pair of pistols with diamond studded handles.

This set of pistols was a gift from Abraham Lincoln to King Christian in 1861.

A mirror framed in amber.

The queen’s crown. Unlike the gold room in the Heritage, photos were allowed in this palace’s gold room.

There were 2 small rooms with china on the walls floor to ceiling that had been received by the royal couple as gifts. There must have been 6 or 7 full sets in different patterns. These sets have never been used, since the royal family also has other sets, of course.

This was one of 2 saddles on display. Both were incredibly detailed and looked like they were very heavy.

This is one of the two main entrances to Tivoli Gardens

A statue of Niels Volkersen, who worked as a mime at the park for 50 years beginning on the day they opened.

The Chinese Theater.

The Indian complex which includes a hotel.

The gardens in front of the Indian pavilion.

The large performance stage in the park. Multiple types of performances are held here during the summer, including rock band concerts on Friday nights.

The roses were just amazing. How do they get them to bloom only on the top?

There was a long winding lake on one side of the park that had lots of meandering trails and wildlife.

There were glass dragonflies in the big lake and a seagull was visiting one of them. These seagulls are a bit different from the ones we’re accustomed to seeing here.

These two performers were entertaining eager children of all ages.

There was even a chicken house in a large cage. I’ve never seen a chicken coop like this one before!

More roses!

A white peacock.

I’m guessing this is her first visit here and she is positively in awe!

This ship was a restaurant.

Bumper boats!

This is my favorite. These two boys were really into their ride in an antique car. Notice their outfits, complete with matching sunglasses!

We could see this unique building from our room. I call it the Swiss cheese building because I don’t know what it really is.

This is the famous Little Mermaid in Copenhagen’s Harbor . The Mermaid has been vandalized off and on over the years and just recently was painted. But when we saw her she had been all cleaned up.

This is a local nearby restaurateur’s version of the little mermaid. Local officials have encouraged him to remove it but he’s decided not to. Certainly his customers like it and it’s great advertising.

This is a huge trash to energy plant. After it was built, they discovered it was much bigger than necessary. So they fired the government official responsible and then solicited trash from other areas in order to use the facility to capacity. In the wintertime, the rooftop is used as a practice slope for beginner skiers (it must be true, our guide said so).

This impressive sculpture and fountains show a fabled woman who was promised all the land she could plow in a day so she turned her 4 sons into these 4 oxen so she would be able to plow more land.

Next to the statues and fountains is a beautiful Anglican church.

I saw this beautiful water bird in the marshes out behind the Anglican church. We’re calling it a Danish Crane.

In the same marshy area, we saw this mother swan with her 4 babies. Swans are the national bird of Sweden.

I think this is a church but I don’t remember which one. But I do recall the guide saying the stairs on the outside are usable and people are allowed to climb up them.

The opera house.

Guess what this is. Wrong. It’s a 3-story underground/underwater parking lot.

This is the royal palace. There are actually 4 large palaces like this in a circle. The queen and her husband live in one of the 4 and their son and his family live in another. Our guide gave it to us on good authority that the queen (77) and her husband (82) are on the outs right now. I hope they can work things out.

All guards at the Royal Palace are the same height. And in order to make that happen, the height of the fur on their hats is adjusted.

This unusual church is no wider than the dome seen here. There are no side wings or buildings. This is all there is.

This is one of the fun, busy canals lined with colorful buildings fronted by shops, restaurants and boats.

Another interesting streetlight.

Now this is strange. I noticed this building on a side street as the bus went through the intersection. What is all that orange stuff? I’ve enlarged it and I still have no idea.

This is a multi-screened movie theater. It’s painted in many colors and as a result, it has no graffiti on it. Our guide says that all movies are shown in their original language with subtitles in Danish, which means that most movies are in English.

These are rental bikes waiting for new temporary owners. They can be rented through an app on your smart phone. You too can experience the exhilaration of running over unsuspecting tourists at high speeds.

There are 6 million bikes in Copenhagen and every year 75,000 of them get stolen. Everybody rides bikes, even business people. This gal is riding her bike wearing a very nice suit.

We’ve seen several of these big bears around the city and each is decorated differently. You can even find smaller versions of them in the gift shops. But I’m not sure what their story is.

Here’s one section of what’s left of the Berlin Wall which divided East from West Berlin from 1961 to 1989.

This looks like a ship under construction, right? Well it’s actually the headquarters for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Angela Merkle’s political party.

Locals call this the President Carter Gateway because it looks like his smile.

City artwork.

Copenhagen has lots of canals like Venice. However, while Venice has 140 bridges, Copenhagen has over 500.

This new library is gorgeous! When you’re sailing by in just the right spot, you can see right through it. It must look amazing inside.

When we cruised the Spree River on our luncheon boat trip, we discovered the banks were lined with office buildings, new apartments, and lots of green space like this one where people can come out, claim a chair and stretch out for the afternoon.

Several places around the city display these white crosses which commemorate the people who lost their lives trying to cross the Berlin Wall.

This old theater wagon was parked was on a bridge we crossed under on our river cruise.

This lady entertained us with her distinctive hurdy gurdy music as we passed by her on our way to catch our train back to the ship.