Day 12 - Monday, August 1 - in Aalborg, Denmark

 Today is Amelia's birthday!

We sailed into Alborg in the morning just after sunrise. It is another pleasant although breezy and rather cool although hopefully it will warm up. There are hundreds of wind turbines actively spinning around and also two large coal-fired power plants which they are trying to supplant with wind. 

 We went for a short walk through the historic area that has a number of “Tudor-style” buildings from the 1500s, similar to those in Shakespeare’s Avon. It is interesting to see McDonald’s, Burger King and Subway in the first floor of these historic buildings.

We then headed to the north-west coast through the countryside, passing large fields, some of which were bordered by beautiful beds of flowers. There were fields of corn, barley, wheat, flax (we think) and something that looked like a weed that we couldn’t identify. We then went to a coffee shop for Danish which was quite different from the round pastry we are familiar with, with apricot, cheese or cherry filling in the middle. It was more like apple strudel. We were told that during the baker strike in the 1800s, bakers came from Vienna and their pastry was modified to be similar to what we had.

Then we went to a small town filled with galleries where we watched glassblowing by professionals – a bit different from what we did.

Then off to the Rubjerg Kude Lighthouse which was built in 1900. It was originally hundreds of feet back from the cliffs but by 1989, the sand dunes were so high that it blocked the light from the sea and the light was discontinued. Then after 2000, it was in danger of falling into the sea and in 1969 a local mason moved it back from the coast about 240’, stabilizing it for another 30 years – it was quite a feat. We walked over the dunes up to the lighthouse in fierce wind that made it hard to stand. The wind was blowing sand into our eyes and we weren’t able to stay up there very long. I was interested to find a number of shards of flint in the sand. The wind was so strong that a number of the trees were almost horizontal.

Back at the the ship we enjoyed more sparkling wine on our balcony and watched the ship cast off from the shore, heading out to sea towards Copenhagen.  


Wind turbines along the shore


16th century Tudor-style  building

Carmen - can you see her?


Rudberg Knude Lighthouse

Windswept tree


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 19 - Monday, August 8 - Stockholm

Image
 At 4:30 this morning there was a beautiful sunrise over the islands to the east in the Stockholm archipelago.  At 7am we are sailing into the port passing many islands - Stockholm is famous for its many islands which have regular ferry service to all of the larger islands. There are over 30,000 islands although many are pretty small. We had an excursion this morning to the Viking museum and to the National History museum. The Viking museum is a commercial enterprise that has many replicas of Viking gear and what life was like. One part of the museum has ride with cars on a track that go through different scenes and story tellers of a Viking family where the husband has to go abroad to get more silver in order to avoid selling their daughter. His travels have many pitfalls but in the end returns triumphant. It was quite well done. We then went to the national museum which was opened just for the Viking cruise visitors in order to see the actual artifacts of the Vikings stored ...
Read more

Day 20 - Tuesday, August 9 - In Stockholm

Image
 We got up and had our final breakfast on the ship in the World Cafe, meeting our friends Greg and Candice. They live in Southern California and we hope to meet up with them when we visit the girls over Christmas. Then down to find our taxi outside the ship. We had reserved one for 9am but waited for about 20 minutes and it didn't come. In the meantime, some other taxi driver had shown up whose customers didn't show up so he took us to the hotel. We were lucky when we arrived at the hotel as we were told that we could get a room immediately if we would accept twin beds, otherwise we would have to wait until 3pm. We said ok and were surprised when we go to the room that it actually had a double/queen bed! Our first plan was to figure out where the airport express train was which was a bit challenging but eventually found the correct platform and bought tickets for tomorrow morning. The trains leave about every 20 minutes and take just 20 minutes to get to the airport, stopping a...
Read more

Day 17 - Saturday, August 6 - Karlskrona, Sweden

Image
 This morning we are moored in the harbor of Karlskrona, Sweden as there isn't a dock for the cruise ship. We will be taking a "tender" to the shore. The "tenders" are also the life boats and are suspended from the side of the ship. The water is quite choppy and they are bobbing like corks in the water this morning - I've taken extra Dramamine! Karlkdrona is a city founded by the Swedish king in 1682 as a base for the Swedish navy so it is quite "new" in historical terms. We took the tender in at 9:30 and it wasn't as bad as I was afraid of - made it without getting sick. We were fortunate that we came into the tender dock and not the main ship dock as we arrived right next to the naval museum. We arrived at the museum just as it was opening at 10am which was fortunate as it became very busy. It is an amazing museum, especially as it is free!.  There are two full-size submarines in one wing, one from the 1930s and a recent one from the 1980s th...
Read more