Baltic Sea 12 Day Cruise

ah...what an awesome way to end our tour of Europe before moving home - a cruise of the Baltic Sea. Two other families we know took the same cruise, so we all had fun hanging out. The kids really liked having school friends on the boat.

Our ship, the Norwegian Jewel (NCL)

Our rooms were behind the little life boats with "an obstructed view"! The life boats are the red and white small boats hanging across the side of the ship.

My kids love cruising because 1)endless ice cream, and 2) the independence they have picking when to go to kids club, when to swim, when to go to the shows, etc. They love it.

We left out of the port in Dover, England. I really appreciated not having to fly before we boarded the boat. Just drove right to Dover and hopped on.

The "white cliffs of Dover"




The fun area of the ship. Pools were so heated that they felt like a "hot tub".
Note the winding steps of the yellow slide. L fell on those on our last day and busted his knee. Needed stitches but through a complicated situation, L refused the stitches and instead chose to have knee bandaged and has to keep it straight for 10 days to let wound heal. Had I been in that room, he would have stitches in that knee!!!




Leaving port in Dover.




First stop, Copenhagen, Denmark.


We chose to do a bike ride in Copenhagen. It was different than our other city rides in that the leader wasn't at all concerned with us keeping up with him. Made for a much more challenging ride. It was also about 20 miles (we think). The kids were really worn out and had not eaten a hearty enough breakfast to get them through that ride until 2:00pm. They just about revolted to escape to a 7-11 store we saw. I think they thought a slurpee would be tasty.


Copenhagen is famous for being the home of Hans Christian Anderson. We rode by his grave site. It's in a less than wonderful part of town. He wrote the story of the Little Mermaid, so there is a very famous statue of the little mermaid by the sea.

It's a little strange because she sits with her back towards the sea. There is some story about Denmark "having it's back to the world" and it's associated with this statue, but our guide had such a thick accent that we didn't really get the whole story about it.


Lunch at the Hard Rock. Of course the kids bought t-shirts. L wouldn't smile here, he was too hungry.
Town Center

Here we are trying to figure out the public bus system. There's a problem in that there are 2 bus #26s and only ONE of them goes to the pier where our ship was docked. We got on the wrong bus and really, really, really cut short our time getting back to the boat. We had to run the last 1/2 mile and that was after our long bike ride. I believe there were only 2 other people out of 1800 that got on after us. That is cutting it too close.

PS. the boat will leave without you!