Northern Europe Disney Cruise 2022: Three Countries In Three Days

This is going to be a bit of a longer post but I want to finish documenting our travels sooner rather than later so hopefully you're okay with some longer posts :) Today I'm taking you to three different countries!

I've mentioned before that the ship was pretty empty. Therefore, when we discovered on the fourth night of our cruise that our original room was above the movie theatre, and that movies played loudly until 1am every night, we were able to switch rooms. We weren't expecting to end up with a bigger room and a porthole but we loved it. I told Dave we'll never be able to cruise without a porthole again!

This was the day we ported in Oslo and because we had to switch rooms, and move all our stuff, I was fairly exhausted by the time we got off the ship. So Dave and I decided to jump on the convenient "Hop On, Hop Off" buses waiting as we disembarked and we got a tour of Oslo.

 

I was so looking forward to our day in Oslo, as I had great memories of visiting the Vigeland Sculpture Park back when I lived in Europe in 1995. However, this was the day that I discovered that preteens are embarrassed by nudity! I mean, how could I have forgotten that?!?!?!? Sigh.

 

 

Instead of enjoying the various stages of life as portrayed by Vigeland's incredible sculptures, I was annoyed with Rachel's constant covering of her eyes and exclaiming, "I can see his privates and his privates and her privates! Why can't any of these sculptures be wearing clothes?!?!?! Sam was off doing his own thing and avoiding looking at the sculptures as much as humanly possible. Next time, I'll just leave them on the ship!

After we left the park, we got a further tour of Oslo and learned some interesting facts. I was also excited that we got to see a teeny bit of the Norwegian countryside.

We got off the bus in the centre of town and grabbed lunch at a cafe. Then we walked up to the palace and enjoyed the sights. I loved seeing the planters of flowers all over Oslo.

That night, as we left Oslo to sail to our next destination, the views were incredible!!! I kept taking pictures and exclaiming to Dave, "I can't believe we get to do this!!!" I felt so incredibly fortunate to be in that spot at that time and I don't want to take it for granted.

 

Previous Disney cruises we have been on have had a Pirate Night but this cruise had a Frozen night. There was a Norwegian inspired menu and then a fun deck party with Anna, Elsa, Olaf, and Christof in the evening. It was fun to have a deck party in the daylight as the sunset didn't happen until 9:30 (or later) most nights.

Elsa even provided some "snow" for us. I think it was soap suds but it looked pretty magical despite not being real snow.

Sunset off Deck 4

Our port the next day was in Skagen, Denmark. Skagen (pronounced "Skane") is a really pretty town. Above is the old church which has been slowly buried by sand. We did a bike tour this day and our guide told us that for a bit, the congregation would shovel out the church building every week but eventually it became too much. We would have loved to climb to the top of the church but we didn't have time. You can read more about the church here.

Sadly, this port adventure did not go very well. Either through miscommunication, or other circumstances, there were no kid bikes provided. While Rachel eventually did fairly well with an adult sized bike, there was a kid on our tour who really struggled. He and his dad fell so far behind they got lost and we had to wait on the side of a highway, in the rain, while our tour guide went and looked for them. It was fairly frustrating and we got very cold and wet.

After this stop on the North Sea, and some more waiting around, our group decided to skip the rest of the adventure. I understood the decision but was sad that we didn't really get our full experience.

After lunch, and warming up, on the ship, I decided to walk into Skagen on my own for a few hours in the afternoon. The weather was gorgeous and I enjoyed walking around, taking in the sites. The yellow houses and the white latticework on the roofs are very unique to Skagen.

For the smaller ports, we could tell that having a Disney ship dock there was quite exciting. A band came to play for us as we sailed away and quite a few townspeople came to see us off too. This was just a small portion of our well wishers.

Rachel wasn't too excited about posing with characters but she did enjoy copying Pluto's ear positions :) Sam, meanwhile, practised his "smoulder" a la Flynn Ryder in Tangled! Sam made me laugh every single time he did this!!!

The following day we ported in Warnemunde, Germany. Many people on the cruise took this day to go into Berlin, which was about a three hour train ride away but we had decided ahead of time to not to that as it would have made it a very full day. We took our time getting off the ship and Rachel and I enjoyed a huge Ferris Wheel.

 

As we were wandering around, we ran into the family we had met in Bruges, and we explored Warnemunde together. At one point it started pouring down rain, and since we were getting quite wet, we stopped for lunch. We splurged on an over the top dessert!!! And I was very pleased that my German held up to everyone ordering and getting the bill split into two, as well as the other negotiations in a restaurant with nine people! 

After lunch, as it had stopped raining, we walked down to the beach and enjoyed playing in the North Sea for a bit. We had not brought our swimsuits as it wasn't particularly warm so we just got wet to our knees. We enjoyed some time at the beach with the other family and it was a lot of fun!

After we left the beach, we decided to climb the lighthouse and take in the views from the top. I just love lighthouses, and climbing high for good views, so this combined two things I really enjoy!

That's the beach where we had been earlier.

 

 

You can see the Ferris Wheel Rachel and I rode, and our ship in the middle right of the picture.

 

When we got back to the ship, our stateroom host had posed Rachel's stuffed animals looking out the porthole so they could check out Germany. It made Dave and I laugh a lot when we saw this!

 

Sadly, later that night we realized we had left Rachel's Kobo (e-reader) in the tourist information centre in Warnemunde. We've been in touch with them about getting it back but supposedly you can't ship things internationally with batteries in them and we don't know how to remove the battery from it. I share stories like this not to take away from how great our trip was, but as a reminder that even on vacation, things go wrong, people get sick, the kids complain, the adults lose their tempers, and items get left in other countries.

 

It was a whirlwind three days in three countries, but we really enjoyed all the stops despite some hiccups and there was still more excitement to come!!!

Day 13 was another "at sea day" which I didn't blog about. To read about Day 14, go here.