Another month, another cruise....
July 16 2009 and we are off again on another P&O Cruise to entertain the passengers on “Artemis” as it sails around The Baltic ocean.
As we have crew status the company requires us to “sign on” before 12.00 so this entails setting off a day earlier and stopping off in a hotel on the way down. We discover one in the attractive town of Brackley, well it looked pretty when we drove in after dark but less so in the colder light of day at 8.30 next morning.
At Southampton port we saw our ship, smaller than the other P&O ones we have been on, and this one is child free so no small passengers to trip over underfoot. We were pleased to find the Cruise Director was Nigel Travers who we had worked with on Oriana. Less pleased though to find ourselves allocated a rather scruffy inside cabin with no kettle and no safe. Sue used all her persuasive powers to have us a passenger cabin and thankfully we were soon settled in a more comfortable room on the fifth floor. As a matter of principle we believe that there is no reason why a guest lecturer should have to live in conditions worse than he/she normally has at home, other cruise lines don’t try to allocate inferior cabins so why do P&O?
Once all the passengers we on board we sailed at 1700, and after a day at sea when I did the lecture on the BBC in World War 2 to an audience of around 400 we arrived at our first stop, Kristiansand in Norway.
Summer was no better here than in the UK which is having one of the wettest July’s for years. Sue and I had offered to act as escorts on some of the shore excursions and I was to take a party on a coach and steam train into the surrounding hills. I’m sure it is very pretty and would have looked beautiful if we could have seen it but with so much rain on the outside of the train windows we could only glimpse mist, rivers and a few pine trees. Then, when I was counting my passengers back onto the bus, after the train journey had finished I discovered two were missing. I searched everywhere and eventually located the two elderly Jamaican ladies seated back in the train which was going nowhere! Eventually we all returned to Artemis where I found an even wetter Sue who had trudged round an open air museum of old Norwegian houses in the rain. We were glad to get back on board and sail for Copenhagen.
Here we it was also raining. I had arranged to meet an old friend Knud Orsted and his wife Birgitte and they live near Elsinor, Hamlet’s castle. We took the train and explored that, had coffee at their charming house then Knud, who worked for Danish Radio all his life, took us on an extended tour of the new Danish TV & Radio HQ which has just been finished, miles from anywhere, on a green field site.
If you imagine something like a B&O piece of equipment then you’ll get an idea of what it was like, It's on a tube line but has no facilities for staff, car parks, shops etc and the news room for TV and radio is in a huge glass box, roasting in summer and freezing in winter according to the news editor who was not impressed with it. What’s more they've had to sack 410 members of staff to pay for the overspend on it. You can get an idea from the pictures, Sue discovered the smallest fire engine in the world and I had to try out the studio, of course!
Anyway by the time we left the sun came out and we went to Tivoli Gardens for a typical Danish lunch of herring and smoked eel, it was delicious and very pleasant to feel some sun on our backs at last as we strolled around.
As we have crew status the company requires us to “sign on” before 12.00 so this entails setting off a day earlier and stopping off in a hotel on the way down. We discover one in the attractive town of Brackley, well it looked pretty when we drove in after dark but less so in the colder light of day at 8.30 next morning.
At Southampton port we saw our ship, smaller than the other P&O ones we have been on, and this one is child free so no small passengers to trip over underfoot. We were pleased to find the Cruise Director was Nigel Travers who we had worked with on Oriana. Less pleased though to find ourselves allocated a rather scruffy inside cabin with no kettle and no safe. Sue used all her persuasive powers to have us a passenger cabin and thankfully we were soon settled in a more comfortable room on the fifth floor. As a matter of principle we believe that there is no reason why a guest lecturer should have to live in conditions worse than he/she normally has at home, other cruise lines don’t try to allocate inferior cabins so why do P&O?
Once all the passengers we on board we sailed at 1700, and after a day at sea when I did the lecture on the BBC in World War 2 to an audience of around 400 we arrived at our first stop, Kristiansand in Norway.
Summer was no better here than in the UK which is having one of the wettest July’s for years. Sue and I had offered to act as escorts on some of the shore excursions and I was to take a party on a coach and steam train into the surrounding hills. I’m sure it is very pretty and would have looked beautiful if we could have seen it but with so much rain on the outside of the train windows we could only glimpse mist, rivers and a few pine trees. Then, when I was counting my passengers back onto the bus, after the train journey had finished I discovered two were missing. I searched everywhere and eventually located the two elderly Jamaican ladies seated back in the train which was going nowhere! Eventually we all returned to Artemis where I found an even wetter Sue who had trudged round an open air museum of old Norwegian houses in the rain. We were glad to get back on board and sail for Copenhagen.
Here we it was also raining. I had arranged to meet an old friend Knud Orsted and his wife Birgitte and they live near Elsinor, Hamlet’s castle. We took the train and explored that, had coffee at their charming house then Knud, who worked for Danish Radio all his life, took us on an extended tour of the new Danish TV & Radio HQ which has just been finished, miles from anywhere, on a green field site.
If you imagine something like a B&O piece of equipment then you’ll get an idea of what it was like, It's on a tube line but has no facilities for staff, car parks, shops etc and the news room for TV and radio is in a huge glass box, roasting in summer and freezing in winter according to the news editor who was not impressed with it. What’s more they've had to sack 410 members of staff to pay for the overspend on it. You can get an idea from the pictures, Sue discovered the smallest fire engine in the world and I had to try out the studio, of course!
Anyway by the time we left the sun came out and we went to Tivoli Gardens for a typical Danish lunch of herring and smoked eel, it was delicious and very pleasant to feel some sun on our backs at last as we strolled around.
posted by Johnny & Sue World Travellers at
17:28
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