Day 15 - at sea

The Eurodam is a ship of flowers - large, beautiful arrangements are found throughout the ship. These are just a few of them.
Every table in the Lido Restaurant had a beautiful blooming orchid on it.

The Lysefjord

We wanted to share some of our photos from the Lysefjord cruise. The pictures do not convey the beauty and the magesty of the fjord.. We cruised very close to the foot of 2000 foot cliffs. In one place during the cruise we saw a plateau that people use to sit on – they sit at the edge of the “Pulpit” and dangle their legs over the side. Apparently Norwegians have no fear of heights.

Hopefully the pictures will give you an idea of the splendour that is Norway.

Day 14 - Stavanger, Norway and the Lysefjord.

Day 14 has been absolutely unforgettable and amazing. We are in Stavanger, Norway. The fire boat greeted us with a water display as we sailed into the harbour.This morning we took the opportunity to explore the town which is the fourth largest town in Norway. Late this afternoon we took a cruise through the Lysefjord and saw some of the most spectacular scenery that we have ever seen. We both agree that this tour is the best shore excursion that we have ever taken. Cruising along the water and staring up at 2000 foot cliffs above us was awe-inspiring. We stopped along the way at a lovely restaurant where we had coffee and Norwegian waffles. The waffles were delicious – served with jam and cream. We met a very strange Norwegian. He was having a ball with everyone. At the farthest point into the cruise, we stopped at a mountain spring waterfall . The boat staff collected water from the waterfall and shared it with us all.

Day 13 - Oslo, Norway

Day 13 has been the highlight of our cruise so far – Oslo is by far the most beautiful city that we’ve seen so far. While not as old as many of the other cities that we’ve visited, it is a city of statues and green spaces. Norway is a fiercely nationalistic country which pays great honour to the men and women who died during WWII – especially the members of the Norwegian resistance. Oslo is at the end of a beautiful fjord and our first taste of the absolute beauty of this Scandinavian country.

We spent most of the day exploring the old fort which guarded the end of the fjord.

Oslo is a city of history and beauty.

Charles de Gaulle Airport

I could not resist posting this - gee, I wonder why we missed our connecting flight at Charles de Gaulle airport. Our first flight arrived at 9:05, we had to change terminals within Terminal 2 and our flight to Copenhagen left at 9:40!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the most frightening things in travel today--a tight connection at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG).

I know better than to try, but on my recent trip home from Venice to Houston, I tried anyway.

The only other connection would have required my family to wake up at 3:30am, leave our cruise ship for the airport at 4:30am and lay over for five hours at CDG. I decided to live on the edge.

I took the connection offered by the airlines when I booked my tickets--one hour and 10 minutes. By the time my flight from Venice arrived in Paris, my flight to Houston had already departed.

All travelers know that sooner or later your number comes up and something goes awry, but attempting a short connection at CDG, Europe's most-delayed airport, is like playing Russian roulette with no empty chambers in the gun.

CDG is France's own Bermuda Triangle, where people and their luggage go quietly missing in huge quantities on a daily basis, only to emerge later, unable to explain what happened or where they have been.

At any given time, there are enough people lost or stranded in CDG to line the entire course of the Tour de France, elbow to elbow. In fact, if you took all these travelers and stacked them on top of each other...well, that's probably not a good idea.

We queued up at Air France's service desk, and when I reached the front of the line, the agent confirmed what I already knew, that there was no other flight that could get us to Houston that day and we'd be spending the night.

I asked about our luggage, and she seemed surprised to hear that people traveling from Venice to Houston might check bags.

"Ohhh," she winced, shaking her head as if a grave mistake had been made. "You will need to go to baggage services to retrieve your bags."

Where is that?

"Take a left and walk 10 minutes."

I learned long ago that most people who work at CDG have given up on providing complete directions to anything that is not already within sight. They seek merely to move you along. I had been given the standard directions to anything and everything at CDG.

Eventually, in baggage services, it was explained that bags "in transit" cannot be retrieved. Why? It's simple:

"If these bags could be retrieved, they would no longer be in transit, and these bags are in transit, making retrieval impossible."

So rather than disturb our bags, presumably still enjoying some forward momentum, we were each given a small box with one white T-shirt, a toothbrush, a razor, an impenetrable pouch of shaving cream and laundry detergent--in case we decided to wash the clothes we were wearing in the sink in our hotel room.

We stepped outside and joined all the other misconnected people waiting for hotel shuttles. As vehicles of all sizes pulled up, we heard the song of the frustrated over and over again.

"Is this the bus...?"

"No."

"Is this the place...?"

"No."

"Do you know where...?"

"No."

To be clear, I don't blame the people who work on the airplanes or the people who work in the airport for the way the airport operates. These are problems that cannot be solved at the individual level, and possibly not at the country or planet level. This is inefficiency of galactic proportions, and a galactic solution may be required.

And please don't get me wrong--I like France and the country's new, no-nonsense, pro-American president, Nicolas Sarkozy. He has pledged to clean up the inefficiencies and out-of-control bureaucracies that stifle the French economy.

I even like Air France, mostly. I have enjoyed good crews and clean, modern planes with this airline. I believe they are hampered by the sad reality that most of their flights begin or end at CDG, Europe's most illogical airport.

For example, what are the airlines at CDG hiding from? There seems to be no signage outside or inside the terminals that lists airline ticketing/check-in locations.

Security checkpoints could also use some attention. Earlier in our vacation, standing in a very long security line for a flight to Barcelona, I couldn't help noticing that each conveyor belt was allocated TWO trays, which meant that only one person at a time could go through the laborious process of emptying their pockets and removing their metallic objects.

Maybe it's a job creation project since it results in lines that move at about 1/5 the theoretical rate and thus requires 5x as many conveyor belts--and operators.

Then there's Terminal 2, a series of loosely connected buildings identified as 2A to 2F. They all sound so close, but that's just one of the inside jokes CDG plays on travelers.

Terminal 2 covers an area roughly the size of Belgium. Strike out walking from 2A to 2F and your passport will likely expire en route.

My advice: Always allow extra time for connections at CDG if you can. Never take the last flight of the day to connect to a cruise or tour departure--where the penalty for a missed connection or cancelled flight is so steep. If you want to live dangerously, do it on the way home.

So, President Sarkozy--and I really am pulling for you--where should you begin such a massive undertaking as making CDG consumer-friendly?

I'd go straight to the airport and ask disoriented travelers what they're looking for and how long they've been at it. I'd try to find out why so many jetways sit vacant while so many planes park in the hinterlands and bus their passengers to the terminal.

I'd watch what's happening at Air France's self-check-in kiosks, which time out after two seconds of inactivity and force everyone into an "exceptions" line manned by a single agent.

I'd talk to the shuttle drivers and service managers that aid the helpless and hopeless and finally, to that guy that works in the information booth--as soon as his break is over.

"How can we improve this system," I would ask, and I can almost hear his suggestion:

"Take a left and walk 10 minutes."

Followers

Just wanted to ask that those who regularly follow our blog add yourselves to our followers list on the right side at the top.
It's always nice to know who is keeping track of our adventures.

Thanks.

Our Handfasting Day

So far I’ve been writing about the honeymoon and have written nothing about our wedding day.

Before that however, I have to tell you the tale of our marriage license. Because Graham was divorced in the US, we had to go through some major hoops to obtain a marriage license. We had to have a lawyer write a “Letter of Opinion” stating that in her opinion Graham’s divorce was legal in Canada. Then we had to send the letter, our divorce decrees and our marriage license application to Thunder Bay. We did all of this about 4 weeks before the wedding. The week before the wedding, we still hadn’t received anything back. I called Thunder Bay and they really weren’t able to tell me much except that they had the application and they knew that our wedding date was 2 August. We met with Greg Currie, our officiate on Thursday evening and we discussed the fact that we didn’t have a marriage license. Luckily he was quite nonchalant about it – said that we could do the legal stuff at the kitchen table later on. Friday morning we received a call from Thunder Bay stating that our paperwork was done and asking if we wanted it faxed to our local clerk’s office. They did indeed fax it and we were able to go and get our license. Close call!!

Our wedding day dawned warm and sunny and the weather forecast was good. Krista, Jamie, Deb and I left the house at 8:30 to go to the hairdresser’s. We took food and drink and turned it into a party. We each had our hair and our make-up done. We did have a bit of a crisis – the girl who did our headpieces used Krista’s head as her guide. Unfortunately, Krista’s head is a lot bigger than most peoples. Jamie’s headpiece fit “okay”, but for Deb and I they kept dropping down around our necks. We ended up going to a florist shop down the road where a very kind young lady cut pieces out of the headpieces and then put them back together again. Disaster averted!!!!!!

About 2:00 we all started to head for the Elmhurst Inn. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the temperature was perfect – a beautiful summer day for an outdoor wedding ----------NOT!!!!!!! About half way to Ingersoll the sky became very dark and it started to rain – just a few sprinkles to start and then an absolute downpour. Many cars pulled off to the side of the road because visibility was so bad. The downpour lasted for about 10 minutes and then stopped. Shortly after we arrived at the Inn, it poured again so Graham and Ryan checked the weather radar on the Inn’s computer – it showed thunderstorm after thunderstorm hitting the Ingersoll area. With regret we made the decision to move the wedding indoors and were delighted to discover that the Inn always has a Plan B. They had a lovely room all set up for us – we just had to add the handfasting touches. One wall of the room was all windows so there was a feeling of being partly in the outdoors. As it turned out, it poured with about 10 minutes left in the ceremony.

Graham had his own issues on the big day - the company that they rented the kilts from sent the wrong size kilt for the groom. Poor guy was held together with pins and his sporran. As a matter of fact, when he took his sporran off that night, his kilt fell to the floor. His shoes were also too small - during dinner, he had to take one off as his foot had become totally numb.

Our ceremony was wonderful – everything that we had hoped for. Our priestess, Apryl and our officiate, Greg were an awesome team. They made our day absolutely wonderful and memorable. The best thing about the ceremony was the chalice. Apryl put it outside to fill it with rainwater. Unfortunately, prior to starting the ceremony, she forgot to bring it back in.I'm not sure how many people were able to see her face when she realized what she'd done, however Apryl is a true priestess and improvised impressively, turning the bell upside down and creating a chalice. All we heard were rave reviews about the ceremony – we hope everyone was moved by it.

Needless to say, my 2 year old grandson, Austin stole the show in his kilt outfit - he was absolutely adorable.






Here he is "walking Nana
down the aisle"








Two year olds have very little patience for standing around having pictures taken. Austin found this old tree stump close by the gazebo where we were having our pictures taken and had a ball playing in it.









Here are some pictures taken on our wedding day.

Apryl and Greg, our awesome "Priest" and "Priestess"

The altar prior to the ceremony

The happy couple

The wedding party minus Austin who long ago decided that he's had enough of this picture-taking nonsense

Our new family including my mother, Joan

The entire wedding group

Day 12 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Day 12 found us back in Copenhagen, Denmark where we started from 10 days ago. While passengers were coming and going today, we chose to take a tour to the Dragoer Fishing Village, just outside of Copenhagen. This fishing village was the salvation of many of the Danish Jews during WWII. The small fishing boat called the Elizabeth is still in the port – this boat was used by its owner to smuggle Jewish refugees into Sweden where the population and the royal family protected their Jewish population and refused to turn them over to the Germans. The gentleman who owned the boat also smuggled his own family out of Denmark and was returning to Denmark to pick up another group of refugees when he made the decision to return to Sweden. As it turned out, the Gestapo were waiting for him in his home.

The village today is a very high end suburb of Copenhagen and not the quaint little village that we were expecting. It is a lovely little village though. Many of the homes have thatched roofs.

This is a picture of the famous Little Mermaid. Over the years this statue has been beheaded twice, had her right arm amputated and was blown into the water once. She has always been repaired.

This afternoon at shortly after 5:00 we set sail for the next stop on our journey – Oslo, Norway.

Day 11 - Aarhus, Denmark

Today is the last full day of the first part of our cruise. Tomorrow, we dock in Copenhagen again and 75% of the passengers aboard will change. A whopping 25% of those of us aboard are staying aboard until we reach New York.

Today, we spent the day in Aarhus, Copenhagen – the second largest city in Denmark and another very old European city full of cobblestoned, narrow streets.

For those of you who are taking the time to look at our blog, you will notice that I haven’t been including pictures in the last several posts – on board, it takes a very long time to upload photos and internet time is very expensive. When we return home, I will add pictures to all of the posts.

Day 10 - Warnemunde, Germany

Day 9 finds us in Warnemunde and Rostock, Germany. We chose not to take the 13 hour journey to Berlin and instead did a Road, Rail and River to Rostock. First we took a bus from the dock to Rostock where we boarded our own private tram (you should have seen the faces of the people at the tram stops when the doors didn’t open to let them in). The tram took us on a tour of the city. We then had an opportunity to walk around this beautiful old city. Those of you who recall Mel’s Moose will appreciate the many colourful griffens that were situated around the city. We then boarded a boat and cruised down the river back to our ship. All in all it was an enjoyable day.

Day 9 - at sea

Day 9 is another wonderfully relaxing day at sea. We were able to sleep in and then enjoy a day spent just wandering around the ship, playing blackjack, eating (there go the waistlines) and dancing.

Day 8 - Stockholm, Sweden

I've been informed that I've been extremely remiss in posting to the blog, so I will make some entries today and the rest I will add after we return home.

Day 8 and we’re in Stockholm, Sweden. We never realized until today that the city of Stockholm is built on 14 small islands. We spent our time ashore on an island called Gamla Stan – this island holds the “Old Town” of Stockholm. Narrow, cobblestoned streets and quaint little stores were the norm. Apparently, however, Stockholm has some very strange residents!!