Summer Houses

City apartment dwellers in Denmark often have summer houses out in the country.  These are small homes with yards and often by water. Tonight we were invited with the Browns, Christensens and Mette and Ole Køster to Hans and Lis Andersenn's summer home out by Roskilde.  It was a beautiful 45 minute drive through the last of the yellow rape fields.

 You can walk to the Roskilde fjord from their little summer cottage subdivision.  A beautiful sunset as we left to come home.

Can you find the canoe?

Farewell Parties

Two of our great temple missionary couples: Edith and Ross Brown and Connie and Vance Chritensen are going home the 10th of June.  They are being invited out to dinner at every free break. People have been kind enough to include us in some of them.  Here was their last meal at  the Knudsens.  The Knudsens have invited missionaries for dinner every month since they got married and her mother did it before her.

For dessert we had the traditional rød grød with fløde på.  Red fruit porridge with cream.  Delicious!  They were showing me what I need to buy for thickening...a lot like the Danish Dessert at home.

Back to Reality

There are definitely more beautiful pictures of the cruise I could share, and I may as I finish cataloging them.  However, for now, back to real life in Copenhagen.
   Maureen and Walt Hales stayed a couple extra days and we took them to Tivoli Gardens.

 The flowers were beautiful and the duck was making a grand stand for attention.  Speaking of birds, I biked by the swan's nest today and she is still there..waiting

Bergen, The Last Port

Bergen, Norway is the second largest city in Norway.  They say it rains 365 days a year and that babies are born with umbrellas. We, however, were blessed with the loveliest day of the trip, sun and  warmer temperatures.
    We docked close to"Byggen" with all the old merchant buildings which they are preserving.  Note how crooked some of the buildings are.

The chief draw was a funicular railroad that took you up to the top of this hill and gave you a fabulous view of Bergen.
 

The modern part of Bergen was also beautiful with flowers, lake and fountains.  The heart of their shopping section of town is all pedestrian and really lovely.

There was a big fish market right by the boat.  We passed it up, especially  the fish head.

Back in Copenhagen today was National Prayer Day and all the stores were closed, except for the bakeries and flower shops.  The joke is that the Danes only pray one day a year...Whatever, the streets were certainly empty.

Olden, Norway

Olden, Norway is at the end of another fjord and besides being post-card amazing from every view, it is a base to visit glaciers.  We took pictures from afar and enjoyed walking through the beautiful little town and country side.

How do you feel about mowing your roof?

To prove we were there.....

Alesund

Alesund was destroyed by a catastrophic fire in 1904.  It left 10,000 people and the whole center of the city  was rebuilt in Art Nouveau - plenty of color and decorative details.  It was a charming city and fun to walk around.  This was the only day we had a little rain, otherwise we were blessed with great weather for this time of year.  It wasn't particularly warm, but very manageable.

I climbed the 418 stairs to the top of this hill and this is one of  the views I had...

Greater Alesund is built on a bunch of islands connected by bridges and underwater tunnels.

I loved this statue of the woman sorting  fish to sell.

Stop Two

Our second port was up Geiranger Fjord , the deepest and the most beautiful.  We anchored at the little town of Geiranger which was the center for a lot of outdoor activities, not just cruises.

Here we just walked around and these are some of the sites. Note the zigzag road behid the boat.

Trolls are Norway's special " inhabitants."  You can buy the everywhere.

 In all the other ports we could dock along the pier, here they brought the pier to us.  It just unfolded, very interesting.
     Back in the real world, we worked putting everything back in order at the temple.  We had a special session tonight and we are good to go tomorrow with another special session for missionaries who have been out a year and are being primed to become the leaders.