The weekend of October 10, 2008, we took a mini cruise across the North Sea to Esbjerg, Denmark. The cruise was only 2 nights, but was supposed to be a wildlife watching cruise. Let me tell you how sorry we felt for the girl running the wildlife portion. We barely even saw birds, which normally you see thousands over the North Sea. The day we left it was so warm and calm, there wasn't even breeze on the Sea that no birds came out to see us. On Saturday, she had said there is a sand bar coming into port where the seals always hang out. Well, low and behold, for the first time, the sand bar was under water, so no seals. We did see about 2 or 3 wading birds. On Sunday, our return to London, we happened to see a couple of birds, but due to the heavy fog, you could barely see your hand in front of your face. Oh well, we still had a good time.
This was pretty much all the wildlife we saw:
On Friday, we met up with Dan and Rebecca and took the train to Harwich, to catch our boat. Once on the boat we got settled in and then immediately met back up in their room for some dinner and drinks. We hung out, listened to music, and had a few bottles of wine, and just relaxed. It was so nice not having to actually go anywhere. It was also Dan's birthday weekend so we bought a cake and celebrated. Greg and I headed back to our room around 11 and went to bed, we were quite tired for no reason at all.
The sunset when we were leaving Harwich (outside of London):
On deck, leaving Harwich:
Dan and his birthday cake:
We woke up the next morning and met up for the breakfast buffet before going on land. We also took some time to go hang out on the deck and watch a balloon animal show. I had a pink bunny made for me. The guy who does most of the entertainment on the ship is very interesting, and very friendly with Dan. He does magic, balloon animals, and impersonations. His main impersonation is Manuel from Fawlty Towers (which we have never seen and have no idea either).
All four of us in the captains area:
The impersonator, making my pink bunny:
We ported around 1 pm to have 5 hours in Esbjerg, which we were excited about. When we were leaving the ship and heading to passport control Dan and Rebecca realized that they had left theirs on the ship. They went back and met up with us, at that time Rebecca realized that she forgot her ship key so we had to talk to the people of the cruise line, since that was your ticket back onto the ship. Finally, we were off to see Denmark.
Well, that was the most excitement I think we had. We found the main shopping area and set off. We were starting to get hungry so we couldn't decide what we wanted to do. We found out that all of the shops close at 2 pm (SERIOUSLY, On a Saturday...are you kidding me???) so we thought we should shop for the 30 minutes or so that we had left to shop. Dan had done some research and found a good Italian restaurant, so made sure to duck into a shop before it closed to get directions. So, the town closes, and I mean it closes. I felt like I was in a ghost town, and we kept cracking jokes about waiting for the tumbleweeds to roll by. We barely saw anyone around at that time. We found the Italian restaurant, and it was closed, until 5 pm. Our boat leaves at 6 pm, so had to come up with something else to do.
Greg killing time in Esbjerg, since there is nothing else to do:
McDonald's was open, but we were not up for that. We did finally find a decent looking restaurant in the main square. We stopped in there to grab a bite and ended up staying for 2 hours. It was one of the most amazing meals we have had on a trip thus far. Greg had a wonderful steak (the first since leaving home) that came with a peppercorn sauce. He also had mushroom soup, that I even thought was good. I wasn't wanting something as big as a steak so I got a club sandwich with chicken that was even better than most. Afterwards we decided to stop into the grocery store to grab food to take back onto the ship for dinner, since the food is so pricey. We killed about 30 minutes at least grabbing groceries and then decided to go see the Four White Men Sitting......
About the only attraction in Esbjerg is a very large modern art scultpure just outside of port, you can actually see it when you are coming in on the ship. As the name suggests, it is 4 very large men, who are completely white, sitting. It had started to rain so we actually called a taxi to take us out there (as it is about a 45 minute walk) and then she took us to port. We spent about 10 minutes taking pictures at the statues before going to wait to get back onto the ship.
The Four White Men Sitting statue:
Me and Greg in front of 2 of the 4 white men:
The rest of the evening was pretty much the same, we hung out and ate and drank in Dan and Rebecca's room before heading to our own for bed. Sunday we got up, had breakfast, got to Harwich, traveled back to London, and ordered take out food for dinner, that was our day.
Me & Greg on board the Serena, on our return to London (notice how foggy it is):
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