A Mini Cruise to Oslo
During our summer holiday this year, my hubby and I went to Denmark. Unlike other normal holidays, this time we arranged smaller trips together with his children. Since they could not match up their schedule, we planned two trips: a mini cruise to Oslo with his daughter (plus husband and son) and a road trip in Denmark with his son (plus girlfriend). This arrangement suited me just fine, since it also meant we get to go to many more places 
The journey to Oslo was more nostalgic, since my hubby and his family used to live there when he was working in Norway. The cruise itself is something special, so it was not only about the destination but also about the journey itself. The ship was magnificent with so many facilities. Although it is no Costa Serena, the cruise chip featured in the Cruise Ship Diaries mini series, the DFDS Seaways ship sailing from Copenhagen to Oslo and vice versa is pretty sufficient for me. 
It has a wide range of restaurants, bars, cafés, various conference facilities, a cinema and plenty of activities for children. The ship we boarded, Crown of Scandinavia, has room for 1,940 passengers and 450 cars.
In Oslo, we stayed at the Holmenkollen Park Rica Hotel, which is close to the Holmenkollen ski jump. It goes without saying that we went up to the ski jump, which is actually a newly constructed one since they tore down the previous one in 2008 (just after I visited it for the first time!) to prepare for the 2011 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. We had a quick tour in the museum as well. The museum is quite interesting, if you decide to come, you should definitely check it out. It presents the history of skiing over the past 4000 years, starting with rock carvings from the stone age showing skiers and skis from the Viking age. It also shows the Polar expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen and some historic glimpses from the Winter Olympics at Lillehammer in 1994 and in Oslo in 1952.
We also went down to the city and walked around Akker Brygge where we had some small sandwich lunch and had Mövenpick ice cream; driven up the spiral tunnel to the top of a mountain in Drammen where we hiked down to a small lake; and visited some ship museum. The pictures below show my hubby in front of the hotel, the new ski jump, the beautiful night view from the hotel into the city, the small lake down at Drammen and my hubby in front of the museum. We were lucky in terms of the weather too, although it was May, summer (or even spring) hasn’t arrived back then. The day we arrived it was a bit gloomy but on the day we went up to the mountain in Drammen, the weather warmed up. And just when we were about to sail back to Copenhagen, it started to rain again. It was as if the weather cleared up just for us, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.
Tags: DFDS Seaways, Drammen, Holmenkollen, mini cruise, Oslo
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