🙂 The discreet abbreviation in the heading is for travel journal. But since these days I seem to be vacationing a lot, I find it a little embarrassing to write “travel journal” yet again, so instead I just write UTB.
Today (Sunday, June, 28th, 2009) Barbara and yours truly are on our way from Denmark to Norway on “MeinSchiff”. That is really how the ship is called. It first went out of the wharf in 1996 and early this summer, TUI sent it to general inspection and servicing, before commissioning it for their new business line TUI Cruises.
Yesterday evening, we started on time in Kiel at 7 p.m. Today, we are at sea all day long, and by tomorrow, 10 a.m., we are supposed to be docking in Flam.
The ship is really quite nice. It is a very huge ship, 264 metres long and more than 32 metres broad, with 13 decks. It lies 8.3 metres under water and can do 21.5 knots under her 31,500 kW of motor power. Currently, we are doing a leisurely 10 knots along the Norwegian coastline.
Our beautiful cabin on deck 8 – called the mussel deck – is number 8161 and has a balcony facing west (on the way out). We already look forward to the beautiful sunset. When leaving Kiel on Saturday, however, there was no beautiful sunset, because of clouds to the west.
On “MeinSchiff”, you can live the life quite well, thank you very much. There are around 900 cabins, but it seems not all of them are occupied.
People do not step on each other’s toes on this huge ship. You can eat in 4 restaurants and 6 bistros, and flirt in 10 bars. The 11,991 square metres of sun deck, too, seem to be absolutely appropriate. So far, I have noticed no fights for the sun loungers. The typically German mania about deck chairs, too, is luckily under control.
Today was a day at sea – a lazy day. Tomorrow, we go up by train and down 8 kilometres on foot. And we already booked two mountain bike tours next week. One of them should take us up to 1,500 metres, the other to a glacier (which, incidentally, is not quite at such a high altitude).
Now I wonder what the Fjords will be like. We will be sailing land inwards on them for quite a few kilometres. But first and foremost, I am now going to listen to the lector’s presentation.
RMD
June, 28th, 2009, between 5 and 6 p.m.
Around 11 p.m., we saw it, the beautiful sunset (see picture)! And the second picture shows the ship going through its first Fjord in Flåm!
(translated by EG)
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