Travels WithJohn and Janice

Travel blog

Every trip we've shared since 2011—filter by where we went, when we traveled, or what we explored.

Showing 3 of 236 posts

The Nyhavn canal lined with restaurants in CopenhagenDenmark
6 min read2016

Dateline May 17, 2016, The Baltic Capitals

With St. Petersburg given its own post, this is the rest of the Baltic cruise. Copenhagen was our hub, a city we came to love over three partial days, with its Nyhavn canal, the surprisingly small Little Mermaid, and a memorable dinner of smorrebrod and snaps. From there the Norwegian Star carried us to Warnemunde and the old town of Rostock, the medieval streets of Tallinn, and the rock-hewn church of Helsinki, before bad weather cost us Stockholm and we said our goodbyes to the ship and turned to the trains.

#Copenhagen#Nyhavn#Little Mermaid
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Entering Geirangerfjord at dawnNorway
5 min read2016

Dateline May 8, 2016, The Norwegian Fjords

From Copenhagen the Norwegian Star carried us north along the west coast of Norway through four ports in a row. We toured art nouveau Aalesund, rebuilt after a 1904 fire with materials sent by Kaiser Wilhelm II; rose at four in the morning to watch the cliffs of the Geirangerfjord slide past; rode the Flam Railway, the steepest in the world, up through tunnels cut by hand; and climbed Mount Floyen above old Bergen. A jammed camera, a fisherman playing chicken with our ship, and new friends from Germany rounded out the week.

#Norwegian Star#Norwegian fjords#Aalesund
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The twin crater lakes of Sete Cidades in the AzoresPortugal
6 min read2016

Dateline May 1, 2016, Crossing the Atlantic, Tampa to Copenhagen

The first leg of our ten week European adventure was the crossing itself, thirteen days on the Norwegian Star from Tampa to Copenhagen. Between long stretches at sea we paused in Bermuda and spent a glorious day touring Sao Miguel in the Azores with our guide Josef, from the twin crater lakes of Sete Cidades to a mountain lake the wind unveiled just for us. We rode out a storm with waves as high as forty-five feet, sailed up the English Channel past the White Cliffs of Dover, and made friends with three couples we hope to see for years. Crossing the Atlantic, as we found out, is not for sissies.

#Norwegian Star#transatlantic crossing#Azores
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