Skagen, the Town at the Tip of Denmark

 On Thursday, July 17, we spent the day in the town of Skagen. The Danes, like the Dutch, have their own way of pronouncing the letter 'g'. Where the Dutch make a very gutteral sound, in Danish the 'g' sounds more like an 'aay', so Skagen is actually Skaayen.

Our excursion took us to the very, very, very tip of the Jutland Peninsula, where the Skagerrak (Skaayerak), the North Sea, meets the Kattegat, the Baltic Sea, which is called Grenen. The area from just outside of the town to this tip is entirely sand so there are lots of dunes, and our guide was telling us about the way one long 40 metre high dune called the Råbjerg Mile moves across the peninsula at about 15 metres per year due to the constant winds. Eventually it will cover the main road between Skagen and the rest of Denmark, but will move off about 40 years later. I think the Danish government is already planning how they will deal with this when it happens.

The beach at the end of the dunes

People walking their dogs near the last dunes
before the sand spit

When we arrived at the visitor centre, we boarded a Sandworm, which is a large carriage towed by a tractor to get people out to the end of the peninsula.

It was only a 10-minute ride to where the Sandworm let us off to enjoy the scenery and walk all the way to where the waves from each sea flow into each other. 

The Skagerrak side has more wave action than the Kattegat

You can see the difference between the 
two seas here, only about 30 metres from the tip

The sun was too bright for us to see the difference
in the water colour between Skagerrak and Kattegat

Larry standing almost at the tip of Denmark

Looking back from the tip you can already see
the difference in the seas

It was an interesting experience to be on such a flat 'beach' where two seas meet up. No crashing waves; they just lapped against each other. Of course we would have had to wait a while to get our own photos at the tip; someone was always trying to do some interesting pose for their camera. The other issue was that we were there when the sun was almost straight ahead of us, so the people were pretty much silhouetted, but it was easier to see the direction of the water.

After our time at Grenen, we were taken into the centre of town for a visit to the Art Gallery. In the late 1800s a group of Danish painters established an artists' colony here, where their subjects were the fishermen and residents of Skagen and life there in general. Painters in the colony were women as well as men, and they all contributed to depicting daily life in the area.

The gallery was fascinating, and I couldn't resist taking photos of some of the paintings. They are all quite beautiful.

Outside the Gallery, a sculpture of two
of the founding members of the Skagen Painters

This building, now a hotel, was the original
meeting place for the Skagen Painters.

Some of the paintings of the fishermen and sailors
are so realistic you would swear they were photos

Our final stop on the tour was at the Sand-Covered Church. This was a rather large church built in the 14th century a short way outside of the town. In the 18th century the moving sand dunes started to encroach on the church and they had to constantly dig it out. Eventually this became impossible to continue and the church elders decided to abandon the building. They emptied out and auctioned off everything they could, but it is said that the altar was left, probably due to superstition, and the church was left for nature to take her course. Now all that is left above ground is the church tower.

From a short distance away it looks like a house,
but it is the original church tower

The interior of the tower. There is a staircase
to walk up higher, but it is very narrow. Our
tour guide did her best to discourage anyone
from climbing it.

After this visit, we went back to the ship. We weren't leaving until 6:00 but I had an appointment at the spa for a manicure and pedicure and we had a dinner booked in the evening.

Skagen was certainly a different and somewhat unexpected port stop that we enjoyed very much.

Surprise Unplanned Crystal 35th Anniversary Cruise for Larry's Birthday

 We surprised ourselves by booking a cruise only 7 weeks before sailing. This one was our present for Larry's 70th birthday. Crystal Cruises turns 35 years old this year and there are planned celebration sailings on both Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony with dignitaries such as former captains and cruise directors as well as senior corporate management and other special guests. We had known about this sailing for a while but didn't think about booking until Larry's birthday weekend when we took another look and decided to go ahead. Not least of the reasons for booking was that Chef Nobu Matsuhisa was going to be on board and offering a couple of special dinners. Nobu is the chef behind Umi Uma and the Sushi Bar, the Asian restaurant on Crystal ships, a favourite of ours since they were established.

Not only was the short booking time new for us, but the cruise, roundtrip Copenhagen, was only 1 week long! We figure that our last 7 day cruise with no time added on as a pre- or post-cruise package was our very first river cruise in 2009 in France. Because the cruise was short and jam-packed, I'm now writing the blog after our return home. There was literally no other time to do it!

We flew to Copenhagen one day early, arriving on Monday July 14, so we would be ready for the week once we boarded. Our hotel was across the street from Tivoli Garden, but we decided not to go as we had been there on our previous visit to the city. Instead, I, accompanied by Larry, made a knitter's pilgrimage to the globally famous yarn shop Knitting for Olive to buy some yarn and a pattern. Yes, it was a 40 minute walk each way, but we needed the exercise after being on the overnight flight to Munich and morning flight on to Copenhagen. I already knew what pattern and yarn I was looking for, so Larry didn't have to sit among the ladies in the shop for too long!

And in the evening we had dinner at a local restaurant, Axelborg Bodega. It was more a pub really, and had excellent local Danish cuisine. There were lots of locals there as well, proving that it was a good choice.

The entrance to the restaurant

I had a plate of Plaice cooked two ways and Shrimp

Larry had a delicious pork stew that included pork
loin, cocktail sausages, bacon and mushrooms

The interior. Most of the people here were locals.

Dessert - called an apple 'cake' it was more
like an apple parfait with berries and
whipped cream....we shared it.

We took a taxi to the ship late Tuesday morning. Fortunately Serenity was docked at Langelinie, the facility within walking distance of the old city. It didn't take long to be checked through to board...and of course, the first person we ran into was Marco, formerly the chief Concierge and now the Front Office Manager. As soon as we stepped on board we came across Andrew Triplow, one of the Crystal Society Host/Future Cruise Consultants. We've known him since our first cruises on Harmony.

First lunch on board included one of
my favourites - the Chinois
Chicken Salad. They moved it to the Trident

Grill when Tastes became Beefbar.

In the evening, there was a 35th Anniversary Welcome Party hosted by cruise director Russ Grieve. Russ has been a cruise director on Crystal Symphony for a number of years, but we had never met him. He just moved to Serenity to take over after one of our favourite cruise directors, Rick Spath, retired. Here he is, starting the show with a rendition of the Crystal theme song, Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World.

Another welcome from Captain Birger Vorland, and introduction of the ship's officers and special guests on the cruise. The biggest applause actually came for Chef Nobu.

We went up to Palm Court after our first dinner at the new Beefbar (more on that in the Food post) and watched this lovely 10:30 p.m. sunset.

On Wednedsay we had a full day in Copenhagen again, so we took the opportunity to check out a couple of areas we hadn't seen before. We took the shuttle bus in to the old town and walked back to the ship. The weather was supposed to include potential rain showers, so we wore our rain jackets, but it turned out that we only needed them as windbreakers.

Our first stop was at Nyhavn, the 'new' port which dates back to the 17th Century. The 350 year old buildings are painted in all colours and the whole area was buzzing with people. Many of the buildings house restaurants and bars, with a couple of hotels thrown in. Every place had an umbrella-covered patio and some of the menu signs looked very tempting!

After that we made our way to the King's Garden where Rosenborg Castle is located. It is a huge public park that was also filled with people as they day was getting nicer by the minute. Copenhagen doesn't always have sunny and warm weather, so this was an apparently unexpected bonus.

Unfortunately the window cleaners, with the yellow
bucket hoist, started working just as we got there

From King's Garden we passed through the Kastellet, or the Citadel which dates back to 1626. Another public park area in the city, it is also still used as a military barracks.

This church is just outside the citadel walls

One of the buildings and entrance gates

Once through Kastellet, we were almost back at the waterfront so we followed the signs for 'den lille Havfrue' and found the Little Mermaid sculpture - along with a crowd of people. For such a small sculpture - and she is quite small - she's very popular. I did eventually get a couple of nice photos, and we set off back to the ship.

We left Copenhagen at 7 p.m., heading toward the tip of the Jutland Peninsula at Skagen.

Sketches from the January trip

 It has taken quite some time, and a new laptop, to finally get these sketches uploaded. They cover all of our train and port stops throughout Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia. Some may look familiar as they are all based on photos I took during our tours and walks. Hope you find them interesting!