The Palmer's Adventure: Bring on the Baltics..Part One

By the time June was coming to a close, Travis had finished up his Junior year at Ramstein American High School and had a summer job of scoring softball softball games. He really liked it and learned a lot, too!

With all of our stuff pretty well on it's way to Idaho, we didn't have much to pack and get ready for our much anticipated cruise with many, many, many friends to the Baltics! This cruise became so popular with our friends that we ended up as a group of 90 all traveling and having fun together!

We caravan-ed up to Kiel, Germany with Shumates to board the ship, leaving very early in the morning and thinking it would be about a 7 hour trip.

We stopped along the way for gas and yes..that house IS upside down and yes...that is Spiderman crawling up.. or is it down the side??

We arrived in Kiel, found our way to the long term car park and then took the shuttle over to the ship. We got right on and found our way to our obstructed view ( a lovely view of the lifeboat..but, hey- at least we had daylight!) and then went to the always fun and exciting Muster Drill...

It was quite breezy and a little chilly out on deck but we had to explore the MSC Poesia. It is a beautiful ship!

Our first port was Copenhagen, Denmark. To get to the city, we had to first take a port shuttle from the ship to the edge of the port, then we had about a fifteen minute walk from there to the train station.

Headed for the shuttle

Trying to figure out which train to take!

Finally on the train...

Derek and Travis at the Main Train Station in Copenhagen

We stepped out of the train station and were met with rain and wind. So windy it was hard to use an umbrella. We never let a little rain deter us...so off we went!

The main train station

We decided to take the hop on hop off bus in order to see as much of the city as possible. One thing about cruising is that you often don't have as much time in port as you'd like, so you feel rushed to see everything you can.

We had a great time seeing the city in the comfort of a dry bus with some of our friends.

We stopped for lunch at the Copenhagen Hard Rock so we could add to Travis' shirt collection. Then we walked to the Church of Our Lady to see Bertel Thorvaldsen's Christus statue that was sculpted in 1839. Our church has a copy of it in the Visitor's Center in Salt Lake City.

When we got to the church, they gave us a free guided tour through an upstairs museum which told all about how Thorvaldsen created the Christus and the statues of the Twelve Apostles. Then they took us down into the basement to see the original foundations of the church. Finally we came to the chapel and this amazing sight! I felt the need to be very respectful and reverent, so I only took a few photos. I can't believe I didn't get any of the Twelve. They were so beautiful and I had no idea he had sculpted them also.