Skagen to Trondheim

 We left Copenhagen for Skagen, Denmark and headed for Voergaard Castle. No photos allowed inside, but it's a pretty neat place:

From there, we drove to nearby Saeby, home of our tour guide, whose husband fed her lunch of pickled fish and cheese on toast. Denmark. What a cute town!

This is the oldest house in town, built sometime in the 1600's:

The little church in town is famous for its frescoes.

On the way back to the ship, we stopped briefly to see the Buried Church. It seems that a church was built there back when, but the area is famous for shifting sands. The sands began to take over the church. At first, the intrepid worshipers dug it out every Sunday just to see the sand try to reclaim it again during the week. They finally gave up. Most of the church is literally buried. All that's left on the surface is the tower:

Apparently there is a sand dune moving across the area even today, slowly but surely. They're keeping an eye on it lest it eat up any more buildings.  Our next stop was Stavanger, Norway. This is a really nice town where the ships dock right smack in the middle of downtown. It doesn't get any better than that. We took a walk. Next stop, Olden, Norway. We made it a "sea day" and stayed aboard.

Kristiansund, Norway gave us the opportunity to do a repeat drive on the Atlantic Ocean Road. It's about eight kilometers of impossible engineering with beautiful views.

Onward to Trondheim, Norway. We visited the Ringve Museum, which is a private collection of musical instruments, many of them very antique:

Our guide, a very talented young lady, was actually allowed to touch the instruments:

Okay, I tried to get a better photo. But, hey, never mind the old lady with the fancy camera! Just stick your cell phone in front of her!

Next, we went to the Nidaros Cathedral. We'd had an outside visit to the building last time we were there, but this time we went inside. Some said that it's just another cathedral, but to us, it had "wow" factors everywhere. We have more photos, let us know if you want to see them.

Stockholm to Copenhagen

Stockholm!! We visited the Royal Palace:

and the Gamla Stan (old town):

We did visit Kotka, Finland, but took no tour, because we had two tours and a mission in Helsinki. First, a walking tour, the same one we had taken four years ago. This one featured really good coffee and cinnamon rolls as a break. Detail from the Rock Church, which was dynamited into existence over about four months in the late 60's:

The Senate Square:

And we took an out-of town tour to see Hvittrask, home of Eero Saarinen, the famous architect.

On the way, we passed through a town called Espoo (pronounced Espo, like expo). So what's so famous about that? Why, their favorite son, that's what. Ask any rabid Formula 1 fan. They'll tell you who was born there. We're betting that very few of us have ever been there, though.

Our mission was to find Scarpa shoes. Pati searched out a place that might have had them and figured out how to get there. She hit pay dirt at the CAMU store in Helsinki and got them on sale. Shoes safely aboard, we set off for Tallinn, Estonia, where we'd been before and had visited the old town. This time we went to Kadriorg Palace, one of the homes of Peter the Great and Catherine, his second wife, when Russia ran the show. Those old Russians knew how to dress up a place both indoors and out. By the way, in Estonia, they still call them "busses".

Last stop on this leg of the journey was Copenhagen, where the  search for shoes continued. Pati tracked down another outdoors store, plotted it on the map, and this time Gordon got exactly the shoes he was looking for. Bingo!! Done!!