Tag Archives: Silversea

1 August 2019:
Ísafjörður, Iceland:
The Ring Road by Sea

August 1, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Sailing out of the capital city of Reykjavik, we’re off on a partial circumnavigation of Iceland and from there to the islands of Faroe, Shetland, Orkney, and the United Kingdom.

Ísafjörður, the Ice Fjord, is the furthest north port we will visit on this cruise, at 66 degrees 4 minutes North, 23 degrees 7 minutes West. That is just 55 kilometers or 34 miles below the Arctic Circle.

It’s a pretty small town—most places in Iceland are—with a population of about 2,559 close friends and sisters, cousins, and aunts.

We arrived this morning to a glorious day under blue skies and a warm sun. Here is some of Ísafjörður without the ice:

**All photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved 2019.**

Vigur Island and The Birds

I went with a group of guests on a boat trip deeper into the fjord to visit Vigur Island, a privately owned speck of land that is home to three families…and tens of thousands of birds.

We saw puffins and guillemots and eider ducks, who were quite well behaved. And then there were the terns, who don’t much like people or other birds; they are very protective of their nests. It was straight out of a scene from The Birds.

Alfred Hitchcock (and British author Daphne du Maurier, who wrote the novelette on which that great movie was based) would have been delighted, or terrified, or both.

**A well-behaved puffin, posing for us**

**And a pair of zealously protective terns coming in for a strafing run**

We will cross the Arctic Circle—while at sea—on Thursday night after we depart Ísafjörður, and then drop below it to Akureyri. After we leave Akureyri we will go back into the Arctic for a few hours as we round the northeast corner of Iceland early Saturday morning.

A month from now, our plan calls for us to cross back over from London to the east side of Iceland and then to Reykjavik. In doing so, we will have accomplished an aqueous circle of Iceland.

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Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Here’s where to order an electronic copy for immediate delivery:

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31 July 2019:
Reykjavik, Iceland:
Back on the Island

July 31, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Welcome aboard.

We are back on Silversea Silver Wind for a series of loops that will begin in Iceland, which is an anglicized version of the Icelandic name, Island.

There is ice in Iceland, up in the glaciers and snowfields year-round and most everywhere in winter. But in summer, it is a very green, very large island, the second largest island of Europe after Great Britain.

It is also a hot place, in places. At the place called Geysir–the source of the word geyser–people come from around the world to wait for eruption of a plume of water. Elsewhere on the island of Iceland, people wait for or watch for or hope to avoid the fairly regular eruptions of the many significant volcanoes.

A bit less dramatic, but an easy close-up thrill, is a visit to Geysir to see the geysers. They burst forth every few minutes, starting with a little burp and then rising to a hot fountain. Each time is slightly different from the one before, and so we all stand there for a few dozen episodes.

We leave the capital city of Reykjavik tonight and make three stops along the coast of Iceland before heading east on our tour of islands to visit Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, then Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, and then to the United Kingdom to visit Edinburgh, Scotland.

The last scheduled port of call on this cruise is London, and we are due to arrive late at night at the capital city and sail through the Tower Bridge.

I hope you’ll join me here. Here’s our plan:

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6 July 2019:
Copenhagen, Denmark:
The Third Loop Completed

July 6, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We’ve completed our third loop of the summer: London to London by way of Norway; London to London by way of France, through the Kiel Canal to Scandinavia, and this cruise from London to the top of Norway and then down and around to Copenhagen, Denmark.

It’s time to head home for a change of socks. We’re due back on Silver Wind in a few weeks for explorations of Iceland, the United Kingdom, and then a transatlantic crossing to Canada and the American Northeast Coast.

Safe travels to all. See you again here soon.

Copenhagen

The Little Mermaid is smaller than most people imagine, and she receives almost no privacy at all.

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4 July 2019:
Bergen, Norway:
The Hut of the Hall of the Mountain King

July 4, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Bergen, the second city of Norway, is a gem that has managed to hold on to much of its character even as it becomes more and more popular with cruise ships and overland visitors.

It is one of our favorite places to walk: from the cruise terminal to town, from town up one of the seven hills, into the university district, and into corners and neighborhoods off the tourist track.

Grieg’s Troldhaugen

On this trip, I went with guests to Troldhaugen, the former home of the great composer Edvard Grieg, best known for “The Hall of the Mountain King”, “Peer Gynt”, and other masterworks.

It was a beautiful day, a beautiful trip, a beautiful conclusion to this cruise. In addition to touring his home, we also enjoyed a concert of works by Grieg, performed by a young Japanese pianist who won Bergen’s Grieg competition in 2018.

Here is some of what we saw today at Troldhaugen:

**Grieg’s composing hut, down by the water. The diminutive Grieg would often sit on a thick volume of music by Brahms to reach the piano he had here.**

The Beauty of Bergen

We’ve been in Bergen winter, spring, summer, and fall. Here are some of the city sights:

**The Bryggen district, former home of the Hansa merchants in Bergen.**

**Winter in Bergen, on a previous trip**

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3 July 2019:
Olden and Loen, Norway:
The Sky Above, The Fjord Below

July 3, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Norway is a relatively small place, but Olden…well, it’s a tiny place in a grand setting.

Think of the Halls of the Mountain King and glaciers and trolls.

Olden is a village in the municipality of Stryn at the mouth of the Oldeelva river on the southern shore of the Nordfjorden, the North Fjord.

On this visit we anchored offshore of a nearby tiny village called Loen, which two years ago came onto the world stage with one of the most spectacular mountain gondolas in the world.

The Loen Skylift rises 1,100 meters or 3,317 feet from sea level at the fjord to a wonder world up above. Opened just two years ago, it is one of the three steepest gondolas in the world, with the last stretch nearly vertical.

Each of the two cabins can accommodate 35 people, and the trip takes about five minutes in each direction. The cable car also serves hiking trails and winter ski trails.

We began on a light drizzle at our ship and ended up in a snow storm. I’d like to show you some beautiful views of the fjord and the glacier, but you’ll have to settle for a whiter shade of pale. On July 3…

Nordfjorden is one of the longest fjords in Norway, with its main arm extending eastward from the sea about 106 kilometers or 66 miles. The fjord starts as runoff from the Jostedalsbreen, Europe’s largest mainland glacier, in the east and it flows west.

That said, the glaciers of Norway are mere shadows of their former grandeur. The Briksdalsbreen glacier, a popular hiking destination, is located about 25 kilometers or 16 miles south of Olden; just a decade ago it was a broad blue belt of ice. Today it is more like a dirty string tie.

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1 July 2019:
Hammerfest, Norway:
Everything Old is New Again

July 1, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Hammerfest is very Norwegian, with the same sort of end-of-the-world feeling as most of the other places we visit in northern Norway, inside the Arctic Circle.

And yet it also feels different.

500 kilometers or 312 miles inside the Arctic Circle, this is a place of very severe weather.

Hammerfest is an old settlement with evidence of inhabitation going back 10,000 years, the ancestral home of the Nordic Sea Sami people, and beginning in the early 19^th century a settlement of European and then North American traders attracted to the ice-free harbor that is tempered by a finger of the Gulf Stream.

This is not a town of old clapboard houses and time-worn storefronts. You’ll find contemporary office and apartment building, state-of-the-art oil and gas terminals, and a church on Kirkegata shaped like a space rocket.

All right, not really a rocket ship: it is supposed to pay homage to the traditional triangular drying racks for stockfish or bacalao.

It is also home to the famed Struve Geodetic Arc Monument, a point of measurement along a meridian line from the 19th century, one of the first scientific efforts to determine the size and shape of the globe.

But why is Hammerfest so relatively modern?

The first reason is that old Hammerfest has had a very hard time over the years. The town has been knocked down, burned down, and bombed and rebuilt many times.

The second is that it is the recent beneficiary of massive investment by oil and gas producers working even farther north, in the Arctic.

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30 June 2019:
Honningsvåg and Nordkapp, Norway:
The Far North

June 30, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We’ve reached the top of Norway.

Honningsvåg is the northernmost city on the mainland of Norway.

There are a few gotchas in that description. Mainland, not on an island. City, not a town or village or settlement.

Honningsvåg has only about 2,484 inhabitants, which is below the Norwegian definition of a city as a place with at least 5,000 residents. But its status as a city was grandfathered in place.

Searching for a northeast passage to India in 1553, British navigator Richard Chancellor—among the early explorers of the far north—came upon a jut of rock 307 meters or 1,007 feet above the Barents Sea.

Chancellor named the dramatic landscape North Cape.

A small fishing village near the cape was totally destroyed by the Germans in 1944 and never rebuilt.

What today is called Nordkapp, North Cape, arose in 1950 as the northernmost municipality on the mainland of Europe.

The steep cliff of North Cape at 71 degrees 10 minutes North Latitude is about 2,102 kilometers or 1,306 miles from the geographic North Pole. But it is not the northernmost piece of land in Europe to purists like me.

The tourist attraction at Nordkapp includes a metallic sculpture of planet earth a display of art and artifacts, plus a gift shop.

Nordkapp is just across the bay from the actual northernmost piece of land in Europe.

So why is the gift shop there?

Because Nordkapp has a road, a parking lot for buses, and plumbing and electricity.

Neighboring Knivskjellodden Point, just to the west, extends about a mile further north. But that place is a rather difficult hike and has no parking lot or plumbing.

But actually, since both of these points are situated on an island, some purists will maintain that neither is on the mainland of Europe.

And so, they point to Cape Nordkinn (Kinnarodden) about 70 kilometers or 43 miles to the east. It’s not quite as far north, but it is on the mainland of Europe.

*Silver Wind at the pier in* *Honningsvåg, the big fish in a sea of fishing boats.*

*Repurposing some of the tools of winter with hopes of summer.*

*Nordkapp, which is near the northernmost piece of mainland Europe. The actual northernmost finger of land is almost inaccessible and doesn’t have space for tour buses to visit.*

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29 June 2019:
Tromsø, Norway:
Churchill’s Northern Obsession

June 29, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Tromsø is the largest city in Northern Norway, 350 kilometers or 217 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

It is the second largest city within the Arctic Circle, behind only Murmansk, Russia. (Some of you may be preparing to look up the population of Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. Let me save you the trouble: Reykjavik is a sizeable city about twice the size of Tromsø, but only a small slice at the northern end of the entire island nation of Iceland is within the Arctic Circle.)

Back to Tromsø. Please don’t expect Paris.

Even though at one time this city of 50,000 or so did claim the nickname “The Paris of the North.” It earned that title because successful merchants in the late 19th and early 20th century developed a relatively significant trade with France and brought back a few of the niceties of Paris.

Today I went with guests to see the striking Arctic Cathedral and then to ascend the cable car to the mountain above for a view of the island city. Finally, we visited the Polar Museum, filled with artifacts, photos, and charts of the early explorers and hunters of the far north.

Just as I had promised the guests, we had all four seasons in the course of one day. Starting with rain, moving to a brief glimpse of sun, then snow squall, and back to gray skies.

It is still a very remote place, quite cold and dark in the winter and chilly and not dark at all in the Midnight Sun of summer. Summer solstice came a week ago, on June 21 so locals and visitors will not see the sun fully drop below the horizon for another month.

By the end of the 19th century, Tromsø was a major base for Arctic expeditions. Explorers like Roald Amundsen, Umberto Nobile and Fridtjof Nansen picked up supplies and often recruited their crew in the city.

As the Germans advanced northward in 1940 early in World War II, Tromsø briefly served as the seat of Norwegian government. Tromsø escaped the war without major damage, although this part of Northern Norway was one of the most closely watched places in the world.

It was just outside of Tromsø the great German battleship Tirpitz was finally bottled up and destroyed by the Allies after serving as the northern obsession of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill because of the threat it posed to Allied convoys and military vessels in the area.

*Tromsø in winter, on a previous visit.*

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28 June 2019:
Leknes, Norway:
Pastoral Times

June 28, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Leknes, a bit more than two square kilometers or just under one square mile, is home to about 3,200 people. Plus the occasional hundreds who descend from cruise ships who come to this beautiful part of Norway.

It is hard to think of a part of Norway that is not beautiful. Leknes has a leg up because of its location in the geographical middle of the Lofoten archipelago on Vestvågøy island.

I went with guests to visit the Lofotr Viking Museum in Borg, near Leknes. Europe’s largest Viking longhouse, a chieftain’s farmstead, it was discovered by a farmer in his field.

We saw re-enactors practicing old Viking trades and enjoyed a version of a 1,600-year-old recipe for lamb soup.

Out in the country you’ll see some old cabins, called rorbuer.

Along the water in the islands there still stand more than a few old rorbu, a traditional type of seasonal house used by fishermen. One end of the structure is on land, the other end stands on poles in the water allowing easy access to vessels.

They’re not much used for their original purpose anymore; instead they are used as vacation homes to fish money out of tourist’s pockets.

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27 June 2019:
Brønnøysund, Norway:
The One with the Hole in the Mountain

June 27, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

The small town of Brønnøysund, population about 5,000, sits just below the Arctic Circle.

It has managed to hold on to an economy based around fishing in the open sea and in many fish farms, agriculture, the largest limestone mine in northern Europe, and our guests and most of the readers of this blog: tourists.

It also is home to the Fort Knox or the Tower of London of Norwegian government documents, the Registry. Marriage licenses, birth certificates, divorce decrees, tax filings: the essential detritis of society.

Bronnoysund is about 75 miles below the Arctic Circle, which means there is a short period of twilight between about 1 and 4 in the morning on the day of our visit. But not to worry: they have lights inside the Registry.

About 9 miles of 14 kilometers south of town, on the island of Torget, is Torghatten Mountain—Square Hat Mountain. That name for the place that rises like a colossal castle of sheer granite is apt. But the fact is that most people will remember Torghatten as the “one with the hole in it.”

The hole is a tunnel about 160 meters or 520 feet long and 20 meters or 66 feet wide. There are trails that lead to it, but most visitors see Torghatten from ships approaching or departing town.

According to legend, the hole was made by the troll Hestmannen while he was chasing the beautiful girl Lekamøya. When the troll realized he would not get the girl, he released an arrow to kill her, which is certainly not appropriate.

In any case, the story says the troll-king of Sømna threw his hat into the path of the arrow path to save her. The hat turned into the mountain with a hole in the middle.

If you don’t buy the story about the troll and the girl and the arrow, scientists say the hole was formed during the Scandinavian ice age, about 11,000 B.C.E. Ice and water eroded looser rocks, while the harder ones in the mountain top resisted erosion.

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26 June 2019:
Ålesund, Norway:
In a Reflective Mood

June 26, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

In Ålesund, it’s nearly impossible to avoid slipping into a reflective mood.

This handsome city includes an interior harbor for small vessels, surrounded by a handsome collection of Jugendstil buildings, the Germanic version of Art Nouveau style.

Like many built-up cities of its time, Ålesund suffered from a great fire; the one here came in 1904 and reconstruction was partly funded by and absolutely influenced by German kaiser Wilhelm II.

We have been to Ålesund many times and it is always a place that gratifies me as a photographer. The trick, for me, is to find a new way to reflect on its appeal.

You can see more photos from our visit of two weeks ago in the blog entry for June 4.

Bales of hay in the countryside; some local wags call them Troll Eggs.

Today I went with a group of guests on a day-long trip inland to lunch at a spectacular restaurant atop Mount Stranda, a substantial ski resort about 3,400 feet above the fjords.

We traveled by coach, ferry, and ski gondola in each direction. Here is some of what we saw:

**All photos by Corey Sandler, 2019. All rights reserved.**

For most of our time we were above the clouds, but there were brief intervals of clearing and reflections of yet another wondrous part of Norway.

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25 June 2019:
Flåm and Gudvangen, Norway:
Up and Over and Around

June 25, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We arrived early this morning in Flåm, one of the busiest tiny places in Norway. There is not much here except for the base station for the extraordinary train that climbs up the mountain range…and a rather good craft beer brewery that for some reason set up shop here.

We were last here on June 5, and you can read more details about the train and the town in the blog entry for that day.

After about two hours at anchor, Silver Wind went around the corner to Gudvangen through one of the most handsome fjords in Norway…which is about as high praise as I can offer.

I went with a group of guests on an all-day excursion that began with a tender into Flåm to meet up with the morning sailing of the Future of Fjords catamaran to Gudvangen. The name of the vessel reflects the vision of its owners: it is an all-electric boat, made of lightweight carbon fiber and powered by battries that deliver 450 kWhr of power to each of the two propellers. It glided at 16 knots through the fjord, leaving no smoke and only wake in its path.

Aboard the futuristic *Future of Fjords* boat.

*Silver Wind* at anchor, reflected in the glass of the *Future of Fjords.*

From Gudvangen we went by coach up into the mountains and then onto the mainline of the Norwegian railroad that connects Oslo to Bergen. We rode across from Voss to Myrdal, and there transferred to the famed Flåmsbana railroad that descends down to the sea.

At Kjossfossen (the Kiss Waterfall) a hyuldra lures.

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21-23 June 2019:
London, United Kingdom:
Through the Tower Bridge to the Top of Norway and Around the Corner to Copenhagen

June 21, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We’ve come to our third loop of northern Europe this season on Silver Wind.

We entered the Thames Estuary about noontime and made our way up the river, passing through the London Tower Bridge in early evening to our dock alongside HMS Belfast across from the Tower of London.

In doing so we completed our round-trip from the U.K. to France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway without once having to enter an airport. That is among the many charms of sea travel.

Safe travels to guests leaving us here in London.

***An homage to Hitchcock’s* Rear Window *near Millennium Pier***

Early on Sunday morning we–with the assistance of tugs–backed away from the dock and went through the bridge in reverse, turning around to face down the river near Greenwich.

We’re off on a cruise that will enter into the North Sea and up the west coast of Norway to its top at Nordkapp. Then we’ll turn back to the bottom of Norway and around the corner to Copenhagen, Denmark.

Here’s our plan:

I hope you’ll join me here in these pages.

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19 June 2019:
Oslo, Norway:
The Monumental City

June 19, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We have reached the apogee (and final port of call) of this cruise. Late this afternoon we will exit Oslofjord and head for the North Sea, and from there back to London. It has been a lovely excursion from the United Kingdom to five countries: France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

Oslo is the capital and largest city of Norway, a mid-sized country, a bit smaller than Germany or Finland, a bit larger than Poland or Italy. It is Europe’s fastest-growing capital and the third-largest city of Scandinavia.

*Silver Wind* at the dock below Akershus Castle today.

It includes a green space with a sprawling sculpture installation that is a wondrous, strange, uplifting, and disturbing theme park of humanity: Vigelund Park.

A set of intriguing museums, including one that houses a nearly-intact Viking ship.

Another holds Fram, one of the pioneering Arctic exploration ships of Fridtjof Nansen.

And a third memorializes the unusual vessel Kon-Tiki, a balsa wood raft that was at the heart of a theory by Norwegian adventurer
Thor Heyerdahl. He theorized that the islands of the South Pacific were populated by explorers from South America. Interesting theory, though more modern analyses point elsewhere.

**Reflections of a monumental city. All photos copyright 2019 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.**

And there is a monument to global peace, funded by Alfred Nobel, one of the developers of dynamite and other explosives that greatly increased the death rate of modern warfare.

Modern Oslo is the hub of government for Norway as well as much of the country’s trade, banking, industry, and shipping. It is also considered one of the most expensive places to live, somewhere in the company of Singapore, Paris, Melbourne, and Tokyo. In return, residents receive one of the world’s best packages of social services.

**The amazing Vigelund Park in Oslo, a theme park of humanity**

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18 June 2019:
Gothenburg, Sweden:
Sweden’s Second City

June 18, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Gothenburg is the second city of Sweden, behind only Stockholm.

We came to the tie up at a new, very old dock: the America Cruise Terminal in the inner harbor. Its name hints of its history.

It was from here, more than 100 years ago, that the first liners departed for North America, continuing until 1975. America Cruise Terminal, Amerikaskjulet, is on the same side of the river as the city center, within walking distance of downtown.

At one time, Gothenburg was the largest trading port in the Nordic countries, and when Swedish emigration to the United States increased, Gothenburg became Sweden’s main point of departure.

The city’s early design was heavily influenced by the Dutch, Germans, and Scots, and Dutch planners and engineers. As a result, it has many features in common with other Dutch cities such as Amsterdam, Batavia (Jakarta), and New Amsterdam—today’s Manhattan in New York.

Here are some photos from today:

**Handsome warehouses and merchant’s homes along the canals.**

**The Fiskekorka, a fish market styled after a stave church.**

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17 June 2019:
Aalborg, Denmark:
Up Over Down Under

June 17, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Aalborg is in North Jyllland at the narrowest point of the Limfjord, a shallow sound that separates North Jutlandic Island from the rest of the Jutland Peninsula and connects Aalborg to the Kattegat about 35 kilometers or 22 miles to the east.

The earliest settlements date from about the year 700. Lindholm Høje is the largest Iron Age and Viking Age burial place in Scandinavia. More than 700 graves have been found.

The lower part of the burial site has been dated to the Viking Age of about 1000 to 1050. The upper section is centuries older, from the 5^th century, the Iron Age.

Most of the graves are marked with rocks either in a triangle or as the traditional Viking stone ship.

The settlement was obviously a significant trading center, with glassware, gems, and Arab coins found at the site.

The settlement was abandoned about the year 1200, probably because of sand drifting from the western coast, a consequence of extensive deforestation.

Aalborg’s position at the narrowest point on the Limfjord made it an important harbor during the Middle Ages. Evidence of its importance can be seen in half-timbered mansions built for prosperous merchants.

Here are some photos from today:

By the middle of the 20th century, Aalborg had become known as the “city of smoking chimneys”, highly industrialized and with a population approaching 100,000. Many of the factories have now closed, replaced by knowledge and communication enterprises, and production of rotors for wind turbines.

In 2008, the Utzon Center was opened on the central harbor of Aalborg. Its design and art are credited to the noted architect Jørn Utzon, winner of the Pritzker Prize, born in Copenhagen but raised in Aalborg.

You’ll find within designs and boats and usually a few examples of another Danish invention from nearby: Legos, from Billund in South Jutland.

Appropriately, Billund is a little place, population of about 6,300. But its factory is responsible for the majority of worldwide LEGO production.

Lego is derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means “play well”.

Lego produces something like 36 billion bricks per year, and if you will allow for a bit of poetic license, it is the world’s largest tiremaker.

Little tires.

But back to Utzon in Aalborg. He was a reasonably successful architect in Scandinavia, and he built a well-regarded home of his own north of Helsingor, near Kronborg Castle, as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

But he came to the world’s notice in 1957 when he won an international competition to design the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the unmistakable stack of shells along that harbor.

He said he went to Kronberg Castle often as he designed the building to be installed on Sydney’s Bennelong Point, realizing the Sydney Opera House would be like Kronborg, viewed from all sides.

His design was lauded, but there were problems in construction and cost overruns. Sounds pretty ordinary for advanced architecture.

He was effectively banished from Sydney in 1966 following a dispute with local government in New South Wales. Utzon was not invited to the opening ceremonies when the opera house was inaugurated in 1973, and his name was not mentioned during any of the speeches.

Things did change, though.

Utzon came back to Sydney in the late 1990s and was engaged in update projects at the opera house. And in 2003, Utzon was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize for his work.

In 2007, the opera house was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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16 June 2019:
Copenhagen, Denmark:
Mermaids, Princesses, and Kings

June 16, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark and its most populous city, with a bit more than 2 million in its metropolitan area.

It is, today, a very modern city with advanced infrastructure, extraordinary culture, and an exuberant lifestyle—in a quirky Scandinavian sort of way.

Copenhagen is situated on the eastern coast of Zealand, islands stitched together by bridges, tunnels, and promenades.

Aside from Hamlet, not all that much is melancholy in Denmark.

It’s a place where almost anything goes, from the classic century-old amusement park of Tivoli Gardens in city center to Hans Christian Andersen and the Little Mermaid—whose statue is within walking distance from our usual docking space.

To a septugenarian queen who once consorted—in a proper princessly way—with Elvis, Dean Martin, and Shirley Maclaine.

Today was bright and sharp, much like the residents of Copenhagen:

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15 June 2019:
Travemünde, Germany:
On the Borderline

June 15, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Travemünde is a borough of Lübeck, Germany, at the mouth of the river Trave, with a population of about 13,500 residents and many thousands more summer tourists.

The settlement began as a fortress built in the 12^th century by Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, to guard the mouth of the Trave, which leads inland to the city of Lubeck.

The Danes subsequently strengthened it. Those fortifications were taken down in 1807 as Travemunde became a popular seaside resort.

And so today, what had been a fishing port and then a Hansa trading port is mostly luring tourists.

**A panoramic view of today’s waterfront taken from aboard ship.**

Excluding the interruptions of the two world wars, that role continued even during the years of a divided Germany. It is not quite at the mega-yacht level of Saint-Tropez, and that is a good thing because the city has retained or restored its old-world appearance.

At the end of World War II, Germany was split into two quasi nations, the Federal Republic of Germany—known to the outside world as West Germany, and the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, a puppet state of the Soviet Union.

And Travemunde ended up right on the line.

Until 1989 the border between East and West German was behind the Priwall, the spit of beach across from the town. Most of Priwall was a military area and off-limits to the public.

Most of the world’s attention was focused on the concrete and barbed wire wall erected between the Russian and the other sectors of Berlin, the capital city that sat like an island inside of East Germany.

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961.

Here at Travemunde, the border fencing and walls were erected much earlier, beginning in 1952. It was referred to as the Inner German Border, no less real than the Berlin Wall but not much noticed outside the region.

Nearly 50,000 East German guards were charged with watching – day and night – what East Berlin termed the “anti-fascist protection wall” (although all fortifications were directed against the east).

On the other side, another 20,000 West German border police and customs officials monitored the “zone border”, a name reflecting Bonn’s official position of refusing to recognize the division or the other German state to the east.

Before you could reach the metal fence that was the official line there were a number of other barriers.

Towns and roads from one to five kilometers away from the border, half a mile to three miles away, were considered restricted zones and free travel was difficult. People considered “politically unreliable” or likely to flee, were removed from the restricted zone in two waves of forcible resettlement, in 1952 and 1961.

Then came a control strip, a signal or trip wire fence, and then a 500-meter or 1,800-foot-wide protective strip monitored by armed guards in watchtowers equipped with high-intensity floodlights.

By one estimate, nearly a thousand people were killed trying to escape from East Germany across the inner border.

A LÜBECK ALBUM

Up the river Trave, about 15 miles away, is Lübeck in the Schleswig-Holstein region. It was the leading city of the Hanseatic League, and became a very wealthy place through trade.

Mostly rebuilt after the war, it includes a large collection of Brick Gothic structures, and the entire city—population about 219,000—is on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.

I went today with guests for a revisit, and after enduring a rain storm of biblical proportions, we enjoyed a stroll through the wet streets and coffee and marzipan at the famed Niederegger cafe.

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14 June 2019:
The Kiel Canal, Germany:
The Inland Passage from the North Sea to the Baltic

June 14, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

The Kiel Canal is, in terms of number of ships, the busiest artificial seaway in the world. About 35,000 commercial vessels make the transit per year, an average of about 100 per day.

That is about double the number going through the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. The Kiel Canal is not the most interesting canal in the world.

We do not rise up 85 feet from the Atlantic and sail across a once-deadly isthmus and then go down 80 feet to exit in the Pacific Ocean, as you would do in the Panama Canal.

And we do not cruise through the desert sands as you would do in the Suez Canal.

But the Kiel is a relaxing and pretty crossing of the north German countryside.

The canal connects the North Sea (via the Elbe River) to the Baltic.

Before the Kiel Canal–and for ships too wide or too long or too tall–the alternative is the much longer and more exposed trip around the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, passing through the Øresund Strait in front of Copenhagen.

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11-12 June 2019:
Honfleur, France:
Impressions of Normandy and a Tapestry in Bayeux

June 11, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Honfleur is a medieval gem, hidden in plain sight, between the major French port of Le Havre across the Seine to the east and the D-Day beaches of Normandy to the west.

The town sits on the southern bank of the estuary of the River Seine, which winds its way inland past Rouen to Paris.

To the east is Normandy, the site of the D-day landings of June 6, 1944. We just missed the international commemoration of the 75th anniversary. Speaking for myself, I felt better about my visit–perhaps my tenth– without the distraction of bloviating politicians.

Here are some scenes from 11 June at Omaha Beach, the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, and at Arromanches.

THE D-DAY BEACHES AT NORMANDY

**The American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.** **Photo by Corey Sandler**

**Remains of the Mulberry landing docks at Arromanches. Photo by Corey Sandler**

BAYEUX

Also along the Normandy coast is the handsome city of Bayeux, home to one of the cultural treasures of humankind: The Bayeux Tapestry. It depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England culminating in the Battle of hastings in 1066, from the point of view of the Normans.

**Notre-dame-de-Bayeux.** **Photo by Corey Sandler**

HONFLEUR

Honfleur was the birthplace of the artist Eugène Boudin and the composer and artist Erik Satie. And it was a favored place to visit for French painters Claude Monet and Gustave Courbet, English landscape artist William Turner, and writer and critic Charles Baudelaire.

While much of Le Havre on the other side of the river, and Normandy were pounded by the Allies in the lead-up to the D-Day landing or by the Germans in defending it, Honfleur survived the war relatively untouched.

During German occupation, authorities in Honfleur allowed the River Seine to silt up the harbor, making it of little military value. After the war, the harbor was dredged and was once again useful.

As a result, Honfleur is among the best preserved towns in Europe.

Honfleur dates back at least to the 11^th century. From the start it was an important port for the transit of goods from Rouen to England. With the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War, though, the tide ran the other way: Honfleur was occupied by the English in 1357 and again from 1419 to 1450.

Back under French control, it was used as the staging area for attacks on the English coast: Sandwich was assaulted and severely damaged in 1450s.

After the end of the Hundred Years War, the port was used for both trade and as the embarkation point for exploration: Local shipowner Binot Paulmier de Gonneville departed Honfleur in 1503 looking for a trade route to India. His ship “L’Espoir” (Hope) made it all the way to Brazil, the first French ship to touch its shores.

Three years later, native son Jean Denis went to Newfoundland island and the mouth of the Saint Lawrence in what is now Canada. That’s the course we’ll be following two months from now, when Silver Wind crosses over from London to Iceland and to the New World.

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Around the World with Corey Sandler

Tag Archives: Silversea

1 August 2019:
Ísafjörður, Iceland:
The Ring Road by Sea

Vigur Island and The Birds

31 July 2019:
Reykjavik, Iceland:
Back on the Island

6 July 2019:
Copenhagen, Denmark:
The Third Loop Completed

Copenhagen

4 July 2019:
Bergen, Norway:
The Hut of the Hall of the Mountain King

Grieg’s Troldhaugen

The Beauty of Bergen

3 July 2019:
Olden and Loen, Norway:
The Sky Above, The Fjord Below

1 July 2019:
Hammerfest, Norway:
Everything Old is New Again

30 June 2019:
Honningsvåg and Nordkapp, Norway:
The Far North

29 June 2019:
Tromsø, Norway:
Churchill’s Northern Obsession

28 June 2019:
Leknes, Norway:
Pastoral Times

27 June 2019:
Brønnøysund, Norway:
The One with the Hole in the Mountain

26 June 2019:
Ålesund, Norway:
In a Reflective Mood

25 June 2019:
Flåm and Gudvangen, Norway:
Up and Over and Around

21-23 June 2019:
London, United Kingdom:
Through the Tower Bridge to the Top of Norway and Around the Corner to Copenhagen

19 June 2019:
Oslo, Norway:
The Monumental City

18 June 2019:
Gothenburg, Sweden:
Sweden’s Second City

17 June 2019:
Aalborg, Denmark:
Up Over Down Under

16 June 2019:
Copenhagen, Denmark:
Mermaids, Princesses, and Kings

15 June 2019:
Travemünde, Germany:
On the Borderline

14 June 2019:
The Kiel Canal, Germany:
The Inland Passage from the North Sea to the Baltic

11-12 June 2019:
Honfleur, France:
Impressions of Normandy and a Tapestry in Bayeux

THE D-DAY BEACHES AT NORMANDY

BAYEUX

Cruise Photos and Stories by Corey Sandler