SUMMARY We have a leisurely breakfast and much-needed gym time in the morning. We take the tender boat over to the small town of Rosendal where we have a very good lunch at a local restaurant and visit the “supermarket” to check out the goods. Lots of beautiful roses around town, who would have thought! A short hike uphill takes us to the Baroniet, the town’s main tourist attraction. It’s a “Renaissance-style manor house” which we do not tour. It also has lovely and extensive gardens which we do tour. Drinks at the peaceful Atlas Bar, dinner at the Mexican buffet and the “Piano Man” show in the Cabaret round out the day. - Karen
DETAIL Today we’re in Rosendal. We were supposed to be in Haugesund but for some reason that didn’t happen and we’re in Rosendal instead. Karen’s hopeful about the word Rose in the name. I look at a list of the cities in Norway by population. It lists the top 100 and Rosendal isn’t on the list. Oslo is about 1.1 million. Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim are next ranging from 270K down to a bit under 200K. Rosendal? A tad over 800 people. Yeah. Not on the top 100.
As such, we’re anchored, not docked. We’ll be ‘tendering’ into town, not walking down a gangplank. We have breakfast since we don’t have any excursion planned. The views are nice, but if you don’t like the view, since we’re anchored, just wait a few minutes and the boat will be pointing in a different direction and thus your view will have changed. It’s cool outside and everyone has on layers.
Today’s high is supposed to get all the way up to 60 degrees, after an overnight low of 54. As Texans we worry that we’re getting too used to these lovely temps. We were wishing for blue sky and bright sunshine, but we’re guessing that there must have been more people pulling for grey skies and low clouds. Those turkeys certainly got their wish, at least so far.
We ponder that many cruise companies (and ships) do the same cruise, over and over. Not Azamara. The boats (for the most part) just keep on going forward. As such, the destinations are new for the passengers and also for the crew. We’re out on the back deck enjoying our breakfast and the view, and we see the waiters taking their own pictures of the gorgeous verdant scenery.
After we’ve had as much relaxing as we can take (and probably some serious working out by Miss Karen) we clamber aboard a tender to motor ashore. We’re impressed that this vessel has a female driver, until we realize she’s a pilot-in-training. There’s a man, of course, looking over her shoulder, telling her what she’s doing wrong, er, giving her words of encouragement as she trains to become a certified tender pilot. You go girl!
Ashore we size up the place and realize it’s not that big. We hike to the best rated place for lunch (about 30 yards away). Lunch is delicious as is the accompanying beverage. We marvel at how green everything is. We guess that it’s in part due to how much rain they get, and that the sun is out for twenty some hours a day during this time of year. And then the stench of fresh manure hits us. Yes, we think, there’s a third ingredient we hadn’t considered. It’s refreshing to experience the reality of rural life.
After lunch we enjoy the roses they do have in town. There are a ton of different colored roses in bloom, which dazzles us, but not nearly as much as realizing there are five times as many buds ready to pop. That manure really does amazing things.
We walk into a small ‘shopping mall’ and within that, into a grocery store. We evaluate all of the fresh fruit and vegetables. They actually look extremely fresh and appetizing. We look at everything else they have available and agree it’s as good an assortment of stuff as one could want. There are many products and brands we don’t recognize, but that makes sense.
Back on the street we head down to the pier, 10 yards away, and check out a refurbished old schooner they have there. The boat is amazing, but the clarity of the water is crazy. We can see so deep! SCUBA divers would love this place (other than having to wear a dry suit). We see a huge dry dock enclosure with water entry and huge doors. We can imagine them opening the doors, letting a boat coast on in, lifting it out of the water for work, and then closing the doors behind to (help) keep out the winter cold.
Around us there are people coming and going, and all from the same place: The Baroniet. It’s manor with a big fancy house and grounds and garden. Like everyone else, we hike up the beautiful tree lined street to the estate, pay our required Kroner, and we’re in. There’s an outbuilding near by with an amazing sod roof. Further along are trees and British style rose gardens with bushes laid out just so. There are what appear to be summer interns trimming the grass, and plucking dead blooms off the roses. They look as bored out of their gourds as they possibly could. We don't care to go into the house itself, and so we don’t.
Back onboard the ship we hop into one of the two hot tubs, enjoying sun and blue sky that’s decided to grace our ship. We wanted to be on the pool deck around 4 p.m. when there is to be a big ‘sail away' party, complete with food and beverages and the captain (to make it official). All of that happened (including hot chocolate with rum) other than the ‘sailing away’ part. Apparently the anchor got tangled with some old cable and it wouldn’t come up. An hour later we're finally underway and the captain is nowhere to be seen.
In our room we watch as the ship heads back out to open water. Not far from our balcony is the side of the fjord. You can actually see the horizontal stripes where the glacier carved out this fjord over so many (millions of?) years. There is no sign of humans here, other than us. It is going to be dark soon, we're just sure of it. Will we be still awake? Not bloody likely.
Photos
We're anchored so as we sit and have a late breakfast on the back desk, the shifting of the ship ensures we have an everchanging view of the verdant hills/mountains around us.
The view from our cabin is spectacular. It almost makes one want to go ashore.
Once ashore we marvel at how thick the slate roofs are. Can you get this stuff at Home Depot??
It's Rosendal so we're expecting roses, and we're not disappointed. There's many blooms and whoa, so many buds still waiting to pop.
They have some impressively redone frigate or schooner or whatever.
Looking at the rudder/propeller we realize how clear the water is here.
Nearby is a facility for refurbishing boats, indoors. That makes sense given how the winters can be here. (HEY, OLAF, Close those damn doors!!)
Up at the Baroniet this is the first building we see. We love the roof (probably so do the local goats).
The English rose garden was in good shape.
There is a statue of a famous local horse all agreed as the most Norwegian horse possible. A true architype. It's mom was hit by lightning and this horse had to be bottle fed, but still, it's the best, all agree. (Apparently it also had one heck of a hair stylist)
Between the classicly colored houses we could see our ship, still in port waiting for us.
So back to the ship we head. (Tender is the word we use to describe (the craft we travel in to get to the ship).
On board we get serious about relaxing. It's hard work but someone has to do it.
As we "sail" off into the sunset the all natural sights off the side of our ship are gorgeous and seemingly nonstop.
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