Oslo, Norway!!

This weekend my friends and I went on a mini-cruise to Oslo, Norway and it was fantastic! While we got on each other's nerves a bit (which was a little stressful, but a good wake-up call and preparation for spring break when I travel with the same people again), we really did have a wonderful time. It was also my first time on a cruise ship, so it was a trip of many firsts!

I went with three other friends: Daniel, Danielle, and Marie. We were looking for a fourth person for a while because all of our other friends couldn't make it for various reasons, but I asked Marie (who I knew from my survival Danish class) and she said yes! So it was a good group of people. The mini-cruise is nicknamed the "booze cruise" probably because there is a duty-free store on board and bars and restaurants. But it's not like they give out free alcohol. The boat left at 5:30 pm from some terminal in Copenhagen, so my friends and I decided to go food shopping after class on Friday because the restaurants on the boat are little expensive. We went to Netto, which is the cheapest food store in Copenhagen, and bought fruit, crackers, juice popcorn, nutella, rolls for breakfast, and of course, booze. We then got bagel sandwiches to have for dinner that evening, and chocolate croissants at Saint Peter's Bakery to have for breakfast the next day, yummm. We went back to DIS to drop off our school stuff and pick up our overnight bags, and then we went to the terminal to get on the ship: Crown of Scandinavia!

The funniest thing was when we got on the boat, super excited about the ship and our room, and when we got to our room it was the smallest, narrowest "room" we had ever seen! But, Danielle had splurged the extra 10 dollars per person(yes, we paid her back), to get a room with a view of the ocean, so we had a wonderful view! Thank goodness she did that, because otherwise we would have been in a room BELOW the car garage, under sea level, somewhere near the engine of the boat! Each room also had its own private shower (thank goodness!) which came provided with soap, towels, bedsheets, comforters, and pillows. It saved a lot of packing room! We threw our stuff down, went up to explore the boat (three or four restaurants, a bar, one nightclub, and one discotheque, a movie theater, a kids corner and play area, and a Baresso (one of the coffee chains in CPH), and then we outside to the top deck of the ship to watch the sunset over Copenhagen and watch our departure. Already our trip was off to a beautiful start!

Soon after the boat departed, we went down to our cabin (after making some quick purchases at the duty-free shop), because it was very windy and quite cold on the deck! We ate our delicious sandwiches for dinner, and then decided to take a nap. It was too early to get the party started, I was also a bit sick from having migraines all week including on Friday, and Danielle was a little loopy from her Dramamine pill.

After our naps we got the party started in our room with a little help from the duty-free booze we bought. We then went to explore the nightclub. Awkward. First was karaoke (the music was way too loud), followed by lots of techno music. It was fun for a bit, but not enough to stay there til 3 in the morning. We called it quits pretty early in the night, I guess around 1, since it was a little lame and we had to get up early for Oslo!

We woke up early the next day to experience Oslo from the boat: beautiful snow-covered mountains, with little houses on the hillsides. It was absolutely breathtaking and didn't look real! The water was beautifully iced too. Oh yeah, it was going to be a cold day. Our plan was to go Tobogganing (sledding!) at Frognerseteren (a sledding and ski area 30 minutes from the city center of Oslo), then to the Vigeland Sculpture Park (Norway's top attraction and outdoor sculpture park), then to the Evard Munch museum to see The Scream, and then shopping for souvenirs and a light lunch in town. We didn't have time to do everything because the sledding was SO MUCH FUN! Though it made me sick (I didn't have goggles or sunglasses, so if I was behind a person on a sled, all the snow from their sled went all over my face, so it was kind of like a shower PLUS sweating because the sun was beating down on you and you had to walk up hills to go back up), but it was well worth it! It was a huge toboggan run, that at full speed only takes about 10 minutes, but it goes pretty far, you have to take the tram back up to the top! Plus the location was absolutely gorgeous: at the top of a huge mountain overlooking the water and the city of Oslo! So we did the big run twice, and then did a little run, which was all bumps (got some bruises from that!) then returned our sleds and took the tram back into the city. We had to cut the sculpture park (not enough time) and quickly made our way over the the Munch museum. Only, The Scream wasn't there. Yep. I think it was still being restored from when someone stole it last year or a couple of years ago. But they had the The Scream in pastel, which was still wonderful, and we saw some of his other works of art which were equally beautiful. We then quickly went into the center of town and finally found a souvenir shop filled with all sorts of chachkis( sorry, can't spell Yiddush words correctly!), apparently Norway is big on trolls, so there were lots of troll chochkis, which were just creepy. The best were all the tacky Norweigan sweaters! I bought a shot glass, and a moose or reindeer keychain (I really wanted to go reindeer sledding, so I bought it to remind me of Norway lol). I also bought some Edvard Munch art postcards at the museum. A quick stop at Burger King (we were hungry!) and then back to the cruise ship!

We decided to eat dinner on the boat that night. The plan was to take a 4-hour nap (5-9) then have a late dinner at 9, pre-game and then go to the discotheque. We booked reservations at the cheapest restaurant on board, the 7 Seas Restaurant which was a buffet. It was pretty good (thought pricey for a buffet: $45 USD) with a variety of food: fish (crawfish, shrimp), pasta, roasted veggies, salad bar, swedish meatballs, breads, cheeses, fruit, and dessert of course (reallly good cookies)! It was pretty yummy!

The discotheque Sat night was much better than the night before, I think because we were more comfortable, and slightly more intoxicated... we also requested some American music to lighten up all the damn techno, so it was a lot more fun. It made me excited to go out more in Copenhagen.

After a much better second night, we went back to our cabins, went to sleep, and woke up in Copenhagen Sunday morning!! Overall the trip was an amazing success!!!

I will try and upload pictures soon. I still haven't figured our a fast and efficient way to post lots of pictures at once.