Well, I tried an experiment at our first dinner on board last night. Bronx style veal chop with pepperjack cheese grits and Southern-style braised collards (no, I had them hold the collards). You've gotta wonder where the chef thinks the Bronx really is located! But evidently my brain didn't absorb the word "pepperjack" in that description. Big mistake. Waaay too much emphasis on the pepper syllable. If the chef had used garlic and some other cheese, it would have been totally fantastic ... but he didn't. So I made up for it with a chocolate thing that was definitely fabulous and which is on the "any day" dessert menu. Now I will have to wait until the last night out to have that one again!!
Today we are sailing in the North Sea. Since there are very few sea days in the first 2 weeks, they have to cram all the normal sea day activities into each one. Meanwhile, the weather is clear and chilly outside. There is a definite swell and a lot of wind, but not many white caps except in the pool up on Lido deck. I don't quite have my sea legs yet, but that's not much of a problem as there isn't anything going on that I have to go do.
Ahhh. This afternoon the temperature rose and the wind dropped, so we spent some quality time on our balcony soaking up the sun and watching the ocean. For me that is a favorite part of being on a ship.
Dinner tonight was herb-crusted venison loin...delicious. I skipped a repeat of last night's dessert, but here is the actual description of it. "Chocolate Brownie Stack - Decadent brownie layered with creamy chocolate pudding piled with chocolate cake chunks and drenched with milk chocolate ganache." I feel over-stuffed again just typing that!
Aalborg, Denmark
We had a great tour of this lovely town with an excellent guide and driver. Our first stop was at a private garden that was spectacular. On these tours you hardly ever get to see anything of how the locals live. These gracious people had our group into their garden where we were offered beer (Carlsberg), and although they did not speak English, our guide interpreted any questions we had. In fact, everywhere we went there were loads of flowers, bushes and trees in full bloom. This must be the best time to do this cruise as everything is in bloom now.
We then toured around the city with a stop in the old part with interesting and highly decorated buildings. We were there at just the right time to hear the carillon in this church called Budolfi Domkirke chime the hour then play a tune. I have always liked bells (my mother collected them), and I once learned to play the carillon myself, so that was very nice.
We then crossed the Limfjord and went to the Viking graveyard at Linholm Hoje. The graves (pointed like a ship for men and oval for women) date between the 5th and 11th centuries. The area was covered by about 5 feet of sand a thousand years ago and was only rediscovered in the 1950s. There are about 700 graves on the hillside and a very nice museum
Aalborg is an extremely clean and attractive city of about 125,000 people with about that many again in the wider metropolitan area. It is the third largest city in Denmark. I can understand why my friend Judy enjoyed living here for a year (yes, I did say "hello" for her). We were most fortunate with the weather. Our tour took place in bright sun between bouts of cloudiness and the temperature was just "coolish".
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