Our Cruise to Denmark, Norway, and Germany

We had a splendid adventure of traveling to Europe and boarding the cruise ship, The Vision of the Sea," for nine wonderful days of exploring Denmark, Norway, and Germany.

Here we are with our friends and fellow traveling companions (the Golds, Hansens, and Oyamas) on our arrival at the airport in Copenhagen, Denmark at 7 am in the morning. We had just completed 17 hours of flying and waiting at airports and so we were pretty tired but also excited to board the ship. While at the airport, we bought two small cups of hot chocolate from Starbucks and the total came to $20. Yikes! Denmark's sales tax is also .25%. I guess we won't complain about paying $2.50 for a similar cup of hot chocolate in Oregon.

We hired taxis to take us from the airport to the ship to check in our luggage. We had to wait until later in the afternoon to get on board.

Since we had quite of bit of time on our hands, we decided to take a sight seeing bus of Copenhagen that was picking up tourists by the port. We ended up staying on the bus for about three hours and seeing the highlights of the city over and over again.

Denmark is a pretty flat country with some rolling hills here and there but no mountains. It was very green and reminded us of Oregon.

Because it is so flat, many people ride bikes to get around (plus cars are extremely expensive). It was fun to see the many ways parents cart their children around on bikes. We saw children in carts in front of the bike and also behind the bike. Here's a clever one with a child sitting on a welded extension of the main bike.

This is Tivoli Square, an amusement park in downtown Copenhagen. We wished we had time to enjoy the park but it was closed and not opening until later in the day.

Down by the boat dock we saw a lot of wind mills producing electricity out in the ocean.

This is the famous statue of The Little Mermaid from the story by Hans Christian Andersen.

There are boat rides that you can take on the many canals around the city.

We loved how these trees were trimmed in a rectangle shape to shade the picnic tables below them.

We saw some very old buildings and . . .

some very new buildings. This is the opera house that is close to the port.

This is a popular area known for its graffiti. It's the "hippie" part of the city.

Here we are waiting patiently with the Oyamas inside the cruise ship boarding area.

Our second night on the ship was formal night and so we all dressed up for dinner. Dave and I enjoyed dancing to live music after dinner until 1 am.