I don’t remember if I mentioned it on the blog, but last Christmas Santa surprised us by leaving our family a DFDS minicruise to Oslo under the tree. He did this in the form of a gift certificate we could use at any time in the 2016-2017 season (barring certain blackout periods). We would have liked a summer cruise, but our August calendar was too crowded, so we took the earliest weekend we could and hoped the weather would be kind to us.
(Technically the weekend we booked, September 9th through 11th, is still summer, but astronomical precision and the caprice of Scandinavian meteorology are rarely in agreement on what to make of September.)
I’d like to say the picture below is Maddie getting excited about the trip, but I think she’s just reveling in the latest Pokemon conquests.
This is purely a travelog kind of blog post, but we did hit a major milestone the week before and it seemed worth mentioning here in the permanent record.
Look:
You know why that car seat is sitting there in the foyer? Because Maddie’s summer growth spurt pushed her beyond carseat requirements. For the first time in a dozen years we no longer have a kiddie car seat in the car. That’s a major milestone.
But let’s get back to the minicruise.
Our departure was on a Friday, meaning the girls had school and Trine and I had work.
Here’s how the morning looked when I got into the office:
Can you see the heat? The day would get up to about 25C (80F) in Denmark that afternoon.
Here’s a view of the ship from our office — later you’ll get to see a view of our office from the ship!
Our plan to meet at Nordhavn Station and walk to the terminal together went off without a hitch, and by 16:00 we were aboard, had ditched all our bags in our cabin, and were able to saunter around the decks at our leisure in anticipation of our 16:30 departure.
The building in the upper right is of course PensionDanmark. At this distance it’s hard to see all two hundred employees waving to us, but of course they must have been.
As seen on Facebook:
We were off!
The girls love nothing better than a buffet, and they were pleased with the offerings in the Seven Seas dining room. They actually asked me to take pictures of our plates.
Molli’s:
Maddie’s:
Mine:
I don’t know why I don’t have Trine’s. Maybe she was too ashamed to let me because she had just piled her plate with about two kilos of French Fries under half a liter of Bernaise sauce.
We were all intrigued by Maddie’s dessert plate:
Meringue, frosted mini-muffin, and jello. How does one not add fries to such a plate?
We were well out at sea by the time the sun set, and despite my coastal upbringing and despite my having lived on islands for the last 18 years and despite my travels, I was shocked to realize I had never seen the sun set out at sea before. It was spectacular. There was a great ball of fire sitting directly on the horizon; a moment later it was a mere hemisphere of fire shimmering at the end of the world; and a moment after that it was gone and only its glow remained. Darkness ensued quickly.
Cabin quarters were a little tight. We had four individual bunks, two on either side.
Late at night, in the vast emptiness of Skaggerak, a ship passed us traveling in the other direction. Since the night was overcast, it was the only source of light in the universe as far as we were concerned.
We continued on our way, they on theirs; we were like two ships that passed in the night.
No, wait, that’s actually what we were. Never mind.
Trine and I ended the day with a nightcap in the nightclub.
We woke up to the Norwegian fjords. . .
And a buffet breakfast at which Maddie discovered the secret of happiness: slathering pancakes with Nutella.
And there was Oslo. . .
Now, I don’t do links from this blog, because then the spiders would find this blog and it would be searchable from the search engines, which is something that must never happen. But if you go to Google and search with the phrase “Oslo Moron Hell,” one of the top 5 or 10 results will be a link to “4½ Hours in Oslo,” a post I did on the old Moron’s Almanac. It’s actually quite a popular post, one of the most widely-read Almanac posts I ever wrote. That was my first impression of Oslo, and nothing in the intervening years, during which I have visited the city about six or seven times, has changed my mind.
But I tried to be upbeat with Maddie and Molli Malou; I may have said I thought Oslo was a little dull, and a little expensive, but I didn’t trash talk the city to anywhere near the extent it deserves.
So here’s my little beloved trio set loose on Norwegian soil.
I’d been to the opera before a couple of time — I think there may even be pictures of it on this blog somewhere — and I thought the girls would enjoy hiking up onto the roof of a building, so we made that our first destination.
The next shot isn’t from a construction site: it’s a monument or memorial or display of some kind. There are many kilometers of this pipe beneath the city of Oslo, and they call it “Midgårdsormen” (the worm of Middle Earth) after the giant worm of Nordic mythology. So they have this section of it on display on a hunk of municipal land fronting the harbor beside the Opera.
Why are the girls so absolutely hysterical? Because Molli had been trying to be all cool and sophisticated, and had articulated some frustration with the lack of coolness and sophistication being evinced by her little sister’s behavior, when all at once Molli lost her footing and landed flat on her butt. And suddenly everything turned to hysterical laughter. Look at them: that laughter from both of them is so raw and real and joyful!
From there it was just a moment to reach the Opera.
From the roof it was apparent that Oslo was still under construction.
Maddie said, “Daddy, why don’t we get a picture of you for once?”
So I gave her my phone.
Thanks, hon!
Oslo seems to consist of three things: old buildings of historical imporantance to Norwegians, over-priced stores, and a whole lot of statuary.
Actually, I have to confess that times have changed: Oslo is no longer more expensive than Copenhagen. That was sort of a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it meant we weren’t getting kicked in the groin every time we bought anything. On the other hand, it meant there was no legitimate argument to stop the girls from shopping all over.
Funny story about the picture below:
It was supposed to be just a kind of “establishing shot” of the main drag leading up to the dour castle. As such I wouldn’t even have included it in this post under my new advanced policy of No Stupid Unpeopled Establishing Shots Unless Extremely Well-Shot or Relevant. But while skimming through the photos on my phone later in the day, Trine reacted curiously to this photo: the woman in the left foreground had apparently caught Molli Malou’s attention because, although it’s hard to see at this resolution, the woman had clearly had so much plastic surgery and botox injected into her that she looked more alien than human. Molli Malou and Trine had talked about the woman at great length — and there she was in my photos folder.
I love when those sorts of things happen because they reinforce my otherwise stupid belief that I should almost never delete any picture, no matter how awful, because they might have a relevance I don’t yet appreciate: you never know when your lousy and otherwise eminently deletable photo is going to help the Feds find a terrorist, or a parent find their abducted child, or help law enforcement put together a timeline establishing the innocence of someone unjustly accused of a crime but otherwise unable to prove it. Bad pictures could save lives!
In any case, I clearly remembered my rule about no establishing shots immediately after taking the accidental Too Much Botox Lady photo, because the visual record shows I promptly lined the girls up to get them in the picture. (Molli Malou is finally getting out of her “stop taking pictures of me” phase, but Maddie is showing symptoms that she herself may be approaching that phase.)
The Norwegian parliament gave a few more photo ops.
As did the fountains in the little park in the center of town — the square fronted by Parliament on one end and the castle on the other.
I have no idea why the public toilets in the park were designed with a French theme… and I only just now noticed the gigantic iPhone stuck to the side of the red one. I wonder what it was all about?
Out of curiosity, I just now Googled and discovered these were, believe it or not, an art installation designed for Norway’s centennial a few years ago (the preparations for which I complain about so vociferously in my 2005 post). It’s complicated and hilarious. I can’t link to it, but copy this address into your browser and you can get the whole story in English (but even if it appears below as a link, do NOT click on it! You must copy and paste or you risk ruining our anonymity here!):
https://www.nrk.no/kultur/liberte—in-english-1.5044195
We almost had lunch at a TGI Fridays fronting the park, but we wisely looked over the menu before asking for a table. I don’t know if the chain has gone crazy upscale, but it looked like it was around thirty dollars per plate. We were unwilling to pay so much for a basket of hot wings or a plate of ribs and fries at a chintzy American-themed restaurant in the middle of Oslo. Fortunately there was a little sit-in deli a few doors down where were able to get four lunches and four drinks for less than the price of a single TGIF entree.
It was on the corner of Rosenkrantz Street:
…but the girls wouldn’t go along with my suggestion of following that street until we found the intersection with Guildenstern Street. (A little research has subsequently shown me that those two names were sort of the Smith and Jones of Scandinavian aristocrats in the 16th century.)
After we ate we decided we’d pretty much had enough of Oslo, so we agreed we would visit three more stores, then wander by the harbor and get back to the ship. It was a simple plan and we stuck to it. (Mercifully I have no pictures of our shopping.)
I didn’t know there was a statue of FDR overlooking the harbor.
I don’t know if the missing nose is accidental or deliberate (in a country where the centennial is honored with an art installation of public toilets, who can know?) — maybe it’s just to lend him a Sphinxian air of wisdom?
But we’re not about FDR in this blog. We’re about Molli Malou and Maddie.
In the old days the harborfront used to double as a fish-market. Here in 2016, there is just one fishmonger remaining.
The Alfred Nobel Peace Prize Center is still being built.
The Oslo Harbor Promenade is nine kilometers long (and, as one superfluous sign pointed out, “much of it is still under development”). It’s a pretty enough harborfront. In the map of the Promenade below, we covered the ground from just to the left of the “5” all the way around to the “9,” where the Pearl was docked.
Most interesting, we thought, was the area leading north from the “6.” It was obviously a ferry terminal, but its layout and sheltered stops were more suggestive of bus stops. Like an outdoor Port Authority. Ferries of all sizes, from those that could carry cars and hundreds of passengers down to those that could maybe shuttle a dozen passengers around, were parked in their berths, alongside which were shelters where passengers could await their ride. Timetables were posted for all of them and there was a central ticket office kiosk and ticketing automats were placed liberally throughout the area. It’s easy to see why such accessible ferry service would be needed: the fjord has so many inlets and peninsulae that one could have a home within about ten minutes of downtown Oslo by boat, yet be a good 40-minute car drive away.
Finally we simply lost steam, or lost interest, or both, and made our way back to the ship.
We had all agreed on the way out that we wanted the experience of sitting in one of the hot tubs as the boat made its way out through the fjords on our return voyage.
Our berth was on deck six and the hot tubs were on deck ten, but once the girls were in their suits they were like a blur rushing up to the hot-tubs.
Okay, not like a blur: they were a blur. Trine and I could barely keep up.
But we succeeded: we managed to stake our claim to one of the hot tubs before it filled up!
Unfortunately, in our haste, we hadn’t taken into account the fact that we’d climbed into the hot tub about 45 minutes prior to sailing time. So we were pretty well boiled by the time the ship embarked. Of course, having boiled ourselves half to death just to keep our spots in the hot tub, we were damned if we were going to surrender our places as we made our way through the fjords: we toughed it out and were rewarded with the experience we’d wanted: clipping through the gorgeous fjords while simmering in a hot tub. It’s an experience I highly recommend, although I’m not sure the forty-five minute lead-time is necessary…
We’ve had more than enough buffet shots for the post already, but Maddie’s dessert on Saturday night captured our attention:
Strawberry jello on a bed of … well, something sweet and sickly green (pudding? melted pistachio ice cream? key lime yogurt?). Backed up with a soft-serve ice-cream with sprinkles.
Maddie wanted to swim again after dinner, but the hot tubs and pool had been taken over by drunken idiots — about 20-30 young men and maybe 2-3 young women drinking and smoking and being generally loud and obnoxious.
Maddie’s heart was broken, so I agreed that if the drunken idiots weren’t out of there by 20:00 we could pay to go down to the indoor swimming area, which also had a pool and two hot tubs but was reserved for children and their parents and certainly did not allow drinking and smoking.
At 20:00, however, when I went to go check on the drunken idiots, I found that the whole outdoor swimming area had been closed up and sealed off. At first I thought maybe the drunken idiots had ruined it by barfing or spilling drinks in the water or something, but it turned out the seas were a little choppier than usual and the water was therefore slopping around like crazy.
I wasn’t in the mood to swim, so I was sort of secretly pleased: “Come on,” I told Maddie, “let’s go check the indoor pool and see if they’re open.” I knew they wouldn’t be.
Maddie wasted no time getting ready. Molli Malou opted out.
My expectations of being turned away at the door to the indoor pool area (“The Bubble Zone”) were dashed. They were open. But the waves of the widening fjord were rocking it side to side enough that the water in the pool was sloshing around pretty violently, which made the little kiddie pool (about one meter deep) a hell of a lot more fun. There was only one other family in there, so it ended up being a positive experience.
The pool closed at 21:00, so Maddie and I dried off, changed, and took a little tour of the ship.
And then the sweet little creature simply conked out.
…at least, we thought she’d conked out. The idea was that Molli, Trine, and I would play cards up on in an open seating area on deck seven and that Maddie could easily come get us if she needed anything: we didn’t want her to feel alone and neglected sleeping by herself in the cabin.
Naturally she came running up about five minutes after we had sat down to cards; Trine went down with her and was gone so long that eventually I had to go down and see if anything was wrong. Nothing serious was wrong, but by the time Trine and I got back to Molli Malou she herself was upset because things kept being interrupted.
It was that kind of night, so I think Trine and I were very happy to once again end the day at last with a nightcap in the nightclub.
Like a fool, I had promised Maddie to set my alarm for 7:30 so we could take advantage of the Bubble Zone’s availability from 08:00 to 09:00. I realized only after waking that it would take her two minutes to pull on her suit and rush down to the Bubble Zone (which was on our deck), so I went up and got a cup of coffee and enjoyed the fresh morning air — and noticed a familiar site off to starboard.
I woke Maddie and brought her out on deck to see:
It is very, very hard to discern at this scale, but if you look very closely at the coastline just to the right of Maddie’s windswept locks, you may be able to detect Kronborg Slot (“Elsinore”). We were finally back to Sjælland!
We hurried down to the Bubble Zone — only to find that they’re serious about opening hours. It was 07:58. We had to wait two minutes to be allowed in.
But what a treat! We had the whole place to ourselves!
Maddie invented all kinds of games, few of which made much sense to me, and most of which sooner or later involved my having to pick her up and throw her across the pool. I could do it, but I’m sad to say we’re nearing the point where both my daughters are too big to toss around like beach balls. (Says the sad man who moments ago was happily celebrating the end of the Child Safety Seat era.)
We dried off and met Molli and Trine in the buffet, and enjoyed our last meal at sea while the ship navigated its way into Copenhagen harbor. Not long after that we were sitting at Nordhavn again, waiting for the train home.
…and we were all just bursting with energy!
Oslo is still my least favorite European capital, but the weekend wasn’t really about Oslo anyway. It was just a very enjoyable weekend escape for the family. Best of all, it proved we can survive a whole weekend without any real internet connection to speak of — which I had been starting to doubt.
The day we got home was the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, the opening Sunday of the 2016 NFL season, and Trine’s Birthday Eve, and the week ahead was full of handball practices, swimming, choir, dance, and meetings with contractors, so our careless 48-hour idyll was quickly swept away. It already seems as long ago and far away as the trip to France that preceded it by only six weeks.
But hey — just 3½ weeks from today until we fly off to Portugal for a whole ten days!
