On July 5, our excursion to see Bundhusdalen glacier left at 8am. The description of the excursion was a little misleading: did not tell us we would be hiking almost 2 miles uphill!! The glacier far away and unimpressive but the scenery up to the glacier was breathtaking! I took some beautiful video but the…

So our first port was Kristiansand. We hopped on a RIB boat, an inflatable, and sped through the Olaf Strait to a small island, Vara Battery, that was occupied by 200 Nazis and 500 Russian prisoners. They built a fort, Movik Fort, and a huge highway of tunnels throughout the island to support their cannons…

Onboard today about 1:00. Found out that the port stop for tomorrow was cancelled due to weather and that we were not even leaving port until tomorrow. Oh well. They did have a shuttle that would take us to see the front of the Little Mermaid so Jackie and I headed out. Cold and Rainy…

The changing of the guard at the Amalienborg Castle happens at Noon so we Ubered over there to catch it. Since the Monarchy was not in residence, it did not include the Royal Band. To be honest, the whole thing was pretty boring, long times when they just stood there.  We got our Smorrebrods for…

The short one hour flight to Copenhagen was uneventful (tho the A/C was not turned on until take off and it was really hot in there!) Met our driver and headed to Bryggen Guldsmenen Hotel where we have a family suite: 2 bedrooms and a living area. It is nice to spread out a bit after…

We headed to the train station and hopped on the 7:45am train for the 30 minute ride to Zaanse Schans, a neighborhood in Zandam, Netherlands. What a charming little village! Adorable traditional green cottages line the River Zaan. 6 windmills are still in working condition and there are 12 more that are part of the…

I have taken off again!! I boarded a plane (or 2) to meet my sister (Jackie) and brother-in-law (Paul) in Amsterdam, our first stop. Arrived about 9:30 am on Friday in Jordaan, a charming neighborhood along one of the 42(ish) miles of canals in Amsterdam proper. It is sweltering hot right now: real feel of…

The excursion left quite early this morning: 6:15am. We docked near Naples (didn’t see much of it but what I saw was not very nice) and drove to Sorrento. This is a cool “beach” town with the beach backed by sheer cliffs. Sorrento is famous for its lemons and had very cool lemon “nurseries” all…

Malta is an island country in southern Europe in the Mediterranean Sea. It has been independent since 1964 but has been ruled at various times by the French, British, Arabs, ad Italians and more. I felt that the Italian influence was the greatest however. The architecture, especially, was very Italian. My excursion did not leave…

Today was the day I was most looking forward to, excepting Santorini. I was going to travel to Mt Etna, an active volcano, on the island of Sicily. We drove about about 2 hours to get to the “top” of the volcano but actually the volcano starts much lower and there are towns and people…

What a beautiful island!! I have only seen 3 of the Greek Islands but this is by far my favorite of the three. It is green and mountainous surrounded by gorgeous blue water. We drove on the bus for about an hour to Lake Melissani. It is a crater with a collapsed roof and is…

We were scheduled to stop in Athens which I was very much looking forward to. But there was some kind of boat strike and the ship could not dock there. So Mykonos was added. I chose to go to Delos for my excursion and so glad I did. What a cool place! Delos is a…