However, unlike many of the other cruise travelogues on this site – and there are many; if you’ve landed here from searching online and managing to wade through all the useless paid-for listings and optimised crap laden with keywords just so you can add to someone’s advertising income then, truly, congratulations are in order, and please feel free to hit the site’s menu for more travel write-ups than you can shake a stick at – this one is mostly going to skip over the cruise ship itself. The reasons for this number two.

The first of those reasons is that we are and always have been cruisers and travellers who consider the destination, the ports, and the experiences within, the primary goal. True, sometimes we just want to get away and we’re a little less bothered about where we go, but then it’s mostly a matter of time and economics. What I mean by all this is that the ship itself isn’t very important. Yes, the line can be, because there are some things we want (good service) and some things we don’t (kids), but the ship: nah, not so much.

The second of those reasons is more important. This cruise on Sky Princess took place about half a year after our first cruise on Sky Princess. You can read about that cruise here – Sky Princess cruise around the UK – and, indeed, if you want more of a look at the venues aboard Sky Princess, the room, the pros and cons compared to other ships, then that’s the place to start. In addition, a month after this cruise we boarded Sky Princess again and that will be the next cruise travelogue series to begin on this site. Basically, I’m not going to waste time covering the same bits of the ship over and over again when we’ll have been on her three times in under a year. Any changes? They’ll be mentioned. But this and the next series will be more diary-like covers of where we went and what we did there with far less about the vessel.

Right then (phrase used under licence, copyright Paul and Carole), let’s start with the first couple of days aboard, and another quick warning: we did mostly nothing of interest on these two days. The first day was boarding; the second day was relaxing at sea. From the next post onwards there will be trips to cover – and we had some good ones – but for this post it’s going to be pictures of Southampton, some food, and some drinks. It’s how cruises start from the UK for us, and for many people I imagine.

Pictures of the cruise port area of Southampton from our room kick this off. The Upside-Down Silver Pudding Bowl is a fond and familiar sight. Its purpose? Nobody knows. Nobody even questions. It just is. There are rumours, sure, but I won’t spread any of them here. Aliens.

But another very popular sight for us when we visit Southampton is the Great Big Pile Of Crap. Sometimes when you’re cruising out of Southampton you’ll leave from a dock too far away to experience one of Southampton’s best tourist attractions, but sometimes you’ll get lucky. Marvel at the undulations, almost mountain-like and natural, yet formed from rusting garbage. Is it a metaphor for the wastefulness of life and a message to cruisers to make the most of your time at sea? Is it a criticism of the ruination of the planet by corporate and political short-sightedness? Is it a sleeping giant under a blanket of metal? That’s for you to decide. It’s art. Glory in its artistic beauty.

I’ve skipped over the muster drill bits and the departure bits – again, you can read them in the other travelogue series; they weren’t any different – but will pause briefly to mention our room. We always book a certain type of room in a certain type of location, and the important thing for us is a big balcony. Well, we were out of luck because the room we had booked with the big balcony was taken away from us (we think to allocate those rooms for Covid passengers if any magically appeared) and replaced with another room a deck up. As you can see from the photo below, that’s a standard balcony on Sky Princess and, well, it’s frankly not good enough. That said, it also wasn’t terrible for a week’s cruise. What we did get as part of our unwanted move was an upgrade to a mini-suite. In terms of what that means on a Princess ship then it meant a second TV, a sofa, and a bath. We wouldn’t normally pay extra for those things because they aren’t that important to us, but the sofa and the bath instead of the small shower space are actually good things to have and we ended up missing them on the cruise after this.

Obviously, first thing to do when you get aboard a cruise ship is get some alcohol inside you, and we did.

Ahead of the sail away from Southampton we decided to hang around by the adults pool. It provided shelter from any wind, formed a nice sun trap, and had its own bar.

We had known, prior to boarding, that some other cruise blogging people would be aboard. One, we’d never met before, and amazingly managed to not spot her at all for the entire week nor find a way to get in touch thanks to the ship’s abysmal internet coverage. The other couple we had met before, we’d been out drinking with before, and we’d subsequently been assigned to a pile to be ignored for reasons unknown. Did we do something wrong? I don’t think so. Did we say something wrong? Well, we can be honest when people don’t want it. Are we the sort of people that some people just don’t like? Almost certainly. But I suspect it wasn’t any of that. Is it more likely that the two people realised we wouldn’t help them out with ostracising other people in the cruising community they didn’t like and/or furthering their goals to get recognition and freebies from cruise companies? Well, I couldn’t possibly comment. But I could wink and make a gun sign with a hand aimed at you and click the thumb down as if it’s just fired. Anyway, all that is to say that any thought that maybe we’d bump into them and ask them if we’d done something to offend their precious sensibilities got thrown overboard while still in port as they turned up at the pool, sat in front of us, absolutely saw us, and blanked us. One of them would go out of his way to look away as we walked down a corridor past them on another day on the cruise too. To say we were amused that so-called adults behaved this way would be a gross understatement. On the plus side, it had did confirm a feeling we’d had that forasmuch as we’d got on okay with them before this trip there had been that certain something murmuring at the back of the subconscious, muttering things like “I don’t completely trust these two.” Oh, perhaps they heard it!

One thing we did do for this first night on Sky Princess was book ourselves into Sabatini’s for Italian speciality dining. This is our kind of food, and it didn’t disappoint. If you’d like to read about more of our experiences of Sabatini’s on Princess Cruises ships (including how it’s changed over the years and how it compares with other lines) then the search system on this site is absolutely just about adequate for that purpose. Here: I’ll provide a link for you as I’m in a good mood right now: Sabatini’s.

Day two on Sky Princess was spent at sea and, yeah, not a lot to report here. Below you’ll see the programme for the day and a photo from the trivia we attended. Popular, as you can tell.

Sea days are the most likely candidates for formal nights on Princess ships and that was the case here. We don’t mind them, but we don’t really enjoy them that much either. A lot of effort to get dressed in uncomfortable clothing for little reward. We went super-casual instead, filling up at Alfredo’s for a late lunch then hitting the buffet and spending the evening in our room watching movies from our mini-suite’s sofa.

So, I wasn’t lying when I said we did very little on Sky Princess to start with. Honest Mark; that’s what they call me. In the next post in this travelogue series, though, we’ll be stopping in at Kristiansand, Norway, and there may be things of actual interest to an interested traveller like yourself. It would be a first time in Kristiansand for us, and a short excursion followed by time to explore the city on foot afterwards would be the order of the day. We’ll be starting with a quick look at the fishing village of Høllen.

There is not a lot about Høllen online. In fact, I fully expect that in a world where websites that tell you things about places get rewarded by search engines instead of relegated behind promoted rubbish only tangentially connected to the subject you’re interested in, this post would soon become the top-rated match for anyone looking for Høllen information simply based on it containing more than a dozen words on the topic. Sadly, we don’t live in that world. Even sadder, we live in a world where nobody will ever want to look up what sorts of things there are to see and do in Høllen. Had you heard of the place? No, us neither. But that’s part of the reason why we wanted to see it.

Okay, then. Høllen is less than ten kilometres south west of Kristiansand, so it didn’t take us long to reach there. The title of this post and your elite comprehension skills tells you it’s a fishing village, and that is true, but it’s possibly less village-like than maybe you’d be expecting if you’d booked the same cruise excursion as us. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t small and filled with traditional wooden houses and generally pretty; it was simply closer to what we’d call a town than a village, without really being sure we could define what differentiated the two. You just know, you know?

Høllen probably has three things going for it if you’re looking at it through the eyes of a tourist.

Firstly, there’s a marina, and that’s clearly related to the status of the location as a fishing village. If a bit of fishing off the coast of Norway is your bag, then here’s somewhere that might be worth a look at.

Secondly, there’s a sandy beach. I don’t know about you, but when I think of Norway I don’t picture sandy beaches, so this is quite an unusual attraction. According to our tour guide, it was for this reason that Høllen is very popular during the warm summer months and weekends when hardy Norwegian types are forced against their will to take some time off with the family and enjoy themselves.

Thirdly, Høllen is actually pretty picturesque even under the clouds. There are some places that look great in the sunshine but grim as all hell when it’s overcast, but the combination of white timber buildings, boats, rocky outcrops, sandy beaches, and plenty of grass and trees means that for photographers you’re not going to be disappointed with the views whatever the weather.

Please remember to return the tourist’s eyes after use.

We didn’t have very much time to explore; this was one of those “drive to the place, mention that the locals like to hit the water when it’s warm, tell people they’ve got twenty minutes to nose around on their own” sort of stops on a short tour of the area. That was just about enough time to see just about enough of Høllen to think yeah, it’s an okay place. So let’s take a look at some photos, starting around the marina and those moody clouds.

Sculptures of heads! Who doesn’t like sculptures of heads? These are the Høllen Heads, one from Larvikit stone and one from Fauske marble, sculpted by Dutch artist Michael Rieu. As fans of abstract art we liked these a lot. Knowing Scandinavian folk as well as we do, we assumed that these were warnings to the giant underwater stone people that decapitation would be their welcome should they venture ashore.

Carrying on from the marina and past the heads brought us to the beach. I’ve seen bigger ones, but there was sand and grass and some benches, and I could certainly imagine it would be a very pleasant place to come for some sunshine and a swim.

It’s not just stone sculptures that Høllen has out on display to distract you from the pleasing scenery. Fans of rusted bits of metal with plaques on them won’t be disappointed with the sand bucket or the limestone slab wreckage. Sadly, my Norwegian doesn’t extend far enough to know the complete significance of these artifacts but they certainly imply that there’s at least a small amount of history attached to the fishing village beyond the fact that it hosted a Thing in the sixteenth century.

And that concludes a little look at Høllen near Kristiansand. Not a massive amount to see or do, but pleasant enough in its own way, and nice to see something that isn’t just fjords or mountains or lakes if you’re visiting Norway.

In the next post in this series we’ll visit an open air museum, and that will be followed by a walk around Kristiansand itself.

You don’t have to take an organised tour here, but as part of our cruise excursion we got a short one anyway. Hopping off the bus, we met our guide and followed her past some buildings we’d get a chance to see on our own later.

The area of Kristiansand Museum we were taken to was called Setesdaltunet. Indisputably, the prettiest part of the grounds, some of the buildings here dated back to the 1600s. Traditional wooden buildings with grass roofs was the order of the day. The functions of the buildings varied, but the raised floors indicated that storage of grains was an important consideration. In addition to barns and granaries, some of the buildings were accommodation for the wealthier people of the villages from which the building came.

A couple of the buildings were opened up so we could crowd around inside and get a feel for what it must have been like to live in a place like this. One of the interesting facts to come out from this visit was about the sleeping arrangements. In the photo below there are two beds tucked away at the back just about visible behind the people standing in the corners of the room. Someone in our group remarked – rightly – that the beds were ridiculously short. We learned that the Norwegians used to sleep in a seated position with knees drawn up, possibly because there was a superstition about dying while laying down, but possibly because Norwegians have just always been weird. Who knows for sure? I mean, yes, I’ve fallen asleep while sitting, but I’d rather risk death than do it every night.

We were taken around a second home from a relatively more modern era and there are a few interesting things to note in the photos below. Some time was given over to the process of men and women courting by our guide. You can see immediately below a photo of some of the traditional folk dresses that women wore, and there was a definite sense that some were made not just for a special occasion, but also to attract the eyes of men.

The last two photos from this house show a couple of other courting facts. In the first picture you can see a traditional mangle board, a precursor to the iron. The rolling pin was wrapped in damp cloth while the mangle board was held and rolled over the top to remove creases from laundry. Originally simply functional, from the 1600s onwards these started to become decidedly more ornate and the consensus opinion is that they had become a form of wedding present from the man to woman. Here, enjoy this piece of artistry I have made with my own two hands while you press my clothing, woman. So chivalrous. Hanging up in the second photo you can see socks and we were told that these often had padded calves in them in order to accentuate the curviness of a woman’s legs and imply she had strength to do chores. Men do like a nice curve, it’s true.

That concluded our guided portion of our visit to Kristiansand Museum, leaving us free time to explore the other areas. Before I hit those photos, though, a quick shout out to our guide whose name I didn’t catch, but who was fabulous. Funny, informative, great communicator.

Bygaden is the name of the area arranged like a street in an old Norwegian town. We had enough time to wander its length, popping inside those buildings that were open. There were stores, workshops, and houses, more-or-less from the nineteenth century.

As we headed back towards the entrance with our free time at Kristiansand Museum coming to a close we had a quick walk around a barn-like structure hosting a miniature version of Kvadraturen, the centre of Kristiansand, as it would have appeared in the late nineteenth century. I personally think it could have benefitted from more signs of life, coming across as a little deserted as it was, but it was still lovely to see and showcased some excellent craftsmanship.

If you’re a fan of this sort of open air museum then Kristiansand will be right up your street. We enjoyed the visit here a lot, even if, like most cruise excursions, we could have done with a little more time.

That brought our short excursion in Kristiansand to an end but we still had several hours in port before Sky Princess would leave so in the next post in this travelogue series we’ll go for a walk around the city and see some of the sights.

Hopping off the bus right by the cruise ship, we immediately headed away from it. The cruise port area wasn’t particularly well-protected from casual visitors. We’ve been to ports that needed buses from the ship just to get outside the industrialised area, and to ports where IDs were checked thoroughly before being let through gates, but this was far more casual, likely relying on little layers of security to keep everyone safe rather than one big, obvious thing that could be circumvented. Passing through a makeshift gap in some decorated cargo containers effectively took us from the port to the city.

If you cruise to Norway and you’re walking around the cruise port at Kristiansand then you’ll be taking your phone out of your pocket or the camera out of its bag and photographing the Kilden Performing Arts Centre as you leave or arrive. You won’t be able to help yourself The reflection of your ship in the building will compel you to think “Yes, this will be an interesting shot” just like it has for countless other tourists here. Just like it was for me.

Close to the port was Fiskebrygga, the fish market. The colourful wooden fronts to buildings housing restaurants and wholesalers of local fish looked fabulous in the sunshine but we weren’t hungry and we didn’t think we’d be able to keep any fish in a decent condition on the ship given the lack of personal freezer space and somewhat lacklustre performance from the cabin’s refrigerator. It was a pretty popular spot, though, and a good mix of visitors from the ship and local Norwegians too.

The next point of interest on our short walk around Kristiansand brought us to Kristiansand Beach. Well, we’ve seen bigger beaches, it would be fair to say. What it did have going for it, though, was golden sand, and a swan. The former is always nice to have on a beach, and the latter was a pleasant surprise. Kristiansand does have a larger (but not much larger) sandy beach a little further along the shoreline had we walked that far so if the swan’s an issue for you then you have an alternative option.

Otterdalsparken was the name of the place we’d identified on a map as being somewhere we wanted to reach. Also known as Nupenparken, this small area called to us because of its water features. If you know anything about us at all, or if you are capable of supposition from the supporting evidence of this website, then you’ll understand that we like water. We like being on it. We like using it to travel to places around the globe. And we like water features. They look good, they sound good, they make us feel good.

Our walk along the water’s edge in Kristiansand took us as far as Christiansholm Fortress, but we didn’t look around it. Our time was limited and we weren’t sure if there was much to see there as it was small. One thing we did see on the approach to this landmark was a statue to Kristiansand-born Camilla Collett, a nineteenth century writer and widely regarded as the first Norwegian feminist.

We made our way up to the main square of the city, passing a few sculptures and statues as we did so. One of these was of King Haakon VII, king from 1905 until his death in 1957, and the first king of an independent Norway since the fourteenth century following the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden. He’s notable for his role in World War II where he opposed the German invasion and first stalled, then refused to appoint Quisling, who was a Nazi sympathiser, as prime minister. He spent the war in exile in Britain, recording speeches that were broadcast to the resistance movement back home.

The late nineteenth century, neo-Gothic cathedral – one of the largest in Norway – looked lovely in the sunshine but it wasn’t clearly open so we didn’t attempt to see if we could look inside. Besides, we had more important matters to attend to: the lure of beer was calling us. We are fond of having a drink, something locally-made, or nationally-made, and preferably craft over mass-produced if possible, but we’re ultimately not massively fussed with what we can get.

That concluded our short time in Kristiansand, so all that remained was to continue on the roughly circular route we’d chosen back to the ship. This took us past some street art of questionable quality, then through the fish market once more, and finally the entrance in the shipping containers that marked the entrance to the cruise ship port.

With a bit more time there would have been a few other things we might have wanted to visit in Kristiansand, but probably not a whole lot more. The weather in the afternoon helped present the city in a good light even if I’m not sure there’s enough there to spend long in it, but for a day – and certainly when combined with the things we saw nearby during the excursion in the morning – it was very pleasant indeed, and a nice port to stop in if you’re on a cruise that hits this part of Norway.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the time aboard the ship in the evening and the sail out after this visit to Kristiansand.

Our balcony was on the starboard side of the ship and was facing seaward so our view wasn’t of Kristiansand itself, but rather the channel that would head out to open water and to the island of Odderøya that lies just to the city’s south.

We spent a little time enjoying the relative peace and quiet out on our balcony, reading, and watching the ferries coming and going that run regularly between Norway and Denmark. We would be doing the same thing when Sky Princess left the port.

The rugged landscapes of the Scandinavian countries’ coasts have a fabulous beauty and a similarity that almost tells you where in the world you are even if you didn’t know for sure. We were reminded a little of the Stockholm Archipelago as we finally cruised away from Norway this evening.

We had plans for the evening that included a late dinner so we decided to take advantage of our Elite level loyalty and hit the lounge set aside early evening for nibbles and quiet drinks away from those who hadn’t yet reached Platinum or Elite levels themselves. To be fair, this is something that is less of a perk than it used to be. Back before the excellent drinks packages that Princess Cruises brought in, this did at least give you the ability to get a few exclusive drinks at reduced price. I suppose it still does for the small number of (weird) people who don’t pick a drinks package, but I suspect that really is a small number indeed as they never seem to have the exclusive drinks menu out by default now and you have to ask for it. Not only that, but we’ve seen the drinks available in other bars now too, so yeah. The nibbles as well are a nice idea in theory, and we do see people take advantage of them, particularly on formal nights, but we’ve never felt the need to eat just before we eat. Still, it can be nice to get away from the crowd aboard after a day ashore, and there’s usually some pleasant live music accompaniment.

We followed up our Elite lounge time with some in Take Five. As it was still early there was only recorded music playing quietly and we had the space mostly to ourselves. A few pre-dinner cocktails almost had to be ordered, and the cocktails in Take Five are absolutely fabulous!

Finishing off the evening nicely was speciality dining in Crown Grill. No surprises here with us ordering mostly what we always order and enjoying every last bite. It was good to see that they had the very excellent Belle Glos Pinot Noir that we’ve discovered over the space of a few years is our preferred bottle of wine on a Princess ship.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be visiting Copenhagen, Denmark for our second time, and for the first of two occasions on cruises in 2022.

A difference from the previous visit to Copenhagen in 2017 was that we were docked considerably further away from the city than before. This too will factor into the third part of this tour. Fortunately, though, we’d be using a bus to get to the start of the walking tour and, as it happened, this would provide some useful guidance for the route back to the ship later in the day. That you can read about in the final part. I am really bigging up the final part. It’ll be the bit where we got pissed off at Princess Cruises. But I’ve said too much already!

So, let’s get on with the organised walking tour of Copenhagen.

We’ll start with the view from our balcony on Sky Princess. It was a grey day in Copenhagen with the weather forecast for some light rain at some point.

After a drive from the cruise port we were debarked from the bus near The Little Mermaid; one of many groups and individuals arriving to view one of Denmark’s most-visited attractions. Yes, we’d seen it before, but it was nice to see it again, given its iconic status.

There are some people who will tell you that The Little Mermaid is disappointing in real life and that it is smaller than you might think. And to those people I would simply point out that the clue is in the name. It would be like getting disappointed with the pensive pose of Rodin’s The Thinker. And you never hear people mutter “Well, I thought The Little Mermaid was generally okay, and I didn’t have any issue with it being little, but that fish tail thing. What’s with that?” Anyway, the sculptor was Edvard Eriksen and it was first unveiled to the Danish public and the world at large in 1913.

Our walk next took us to Kastellet, meaning Citadel. Kastellet is a fortress, originally built in the seventeenth century but with a number of extensions and modifications since that time. Its form is that of a pentagon with bastions, in a similar design to many others around Europe at the time. Indeed, we have similar, partial fortifications in this same shape in our home city of Portsmouth (see: Old Portsmouth Shoreline Walk), although Copenhagen’s are far better preserved.

The moat around the fortifications was particularly photogenic, helped by that light grey cloud that added some nice, polarised reflections.

Kastellet is used as military barracks but during its opening hours it’s free for anyone to wander through the streets that make up the interior of the structure. As we reached the opposite side of the city’s fortress to that we’d entered we got a good view of some of the active military presence still there.

By now we were on the southern side of Kastellet and on our way to the next dedicated photo stop for this Copenhagen walking excursion. Our route there took us past more of the moats that protect the citadel and afforded us some nice views of St Alban’s Church. You might be thinking “Weird. Sounds a bit English.” If so then you get a gold star and a VIP pass to Anglican Heaven because, yes, St Alban’s is Denmark’s only Anglican church and is known to the locals as “the English church” too. The church dates from the late nineteenth century, built as part of the growing connection between the UK and Denmark through royal marriage, but services had been given in English for well over a hundred years prior to that due to increasing European trade and the number of English-speakers in Denmark in general.

As befits a military establishment, there were a couple of military statues that we passed as we continued our walk. The first of those was Our Fallen, a statue commemorating the dead of World War II, designed by Svend Lindhart and erected in 1957. The second was a bust of Winston Churchill, sculpted by Oscar Nemon in 1955. In fact, this parkland area just beside Kastellet is named Churchillparken as thanks for British assistance in liberating Denmark from the Germans.

A very short walk from there brought us to the next point of interest on this Copenhagen walking tour: Gefion Fountain. The name comes from the Norse goddess, Gefjon, generally associated with ploughing, hence the presence of oxen in the sculptures. The fountain was designed by Anders Bundgaard who sculpted the figures in the very final years of the nineteenth century with the main basin of the fountain being finished off in the first years of the twentieth century ahead of its first switching-on in 1908. The commission of the fountain in 1897 tied in with the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Carlsberg Foundation who donated the fountain to the city.

The Gefion Fountain depicts the legend of the forming of the island of Zealand on which Copenhagen is located. The goddess was promised however much land she could plough in one night by the Swedish king who had not reckoned on her turning her four sons into oxen in which to help out. The land was then scooped up and thrown into the sea where it now stands.

This area of Copenhagen that we were now in is called Nordre Toldbod, the former site of the customs house that collected taxes from merchants. These days it’s more a basic waterfront area but with a few notable sights and ghosts of its former status. A statue of Mercury atop one of the gates to the former port area is by the nineteenth century sculptor Carl Christian Peters; a statue of Neptune sits opposite. The dragon street lights were particularly nice. Installed in 1892 they were designed by Vilhem Dahlerup.

Nordre Toldblod is also one of the best spots in Copenhagen to see Her Danish Majesty’s Yacht Dannebrog. This early 1930s yacht serves as the official Danish Royal Family’s residence for their summer cruises and state visits overseas. Royal quarters aboard are all aft of the funnel.

I have a fondness for sculptures and statues (but I keep it quiet and you wouldn’t know if I didn’t take every chance to mention the sculptors and dates and names of everything I see like you actually cared about them at all) so a few more here along the waterfront to mention. The bronze replica of Michaelangelo’s David is part of the Royal Cast Collection which are mainly housed in the building beyond it. This collection was founded by Carlsberg once again, who had a keen interest in art. More interesting to me, but I suspect not of interest to anyone in our walking tour group who all wandered past it without a second glance or any offered information from our guide, was the post-war abstract form in concrete called Toldboden by sculptor Søren Georg Jensen. Initially working with naturalistic forms (and he also created a replica of David) his work became more influenced by modernist and functionalist designs.

The last tourist spot in Copenhagen that I’ll cover in this first part of our walking tour of the city is Amalienborg. This large, open, octagonal space is surrounded by palaces for the Royal Family. The lack of flags flying when we visited suggests that it wasn’t occupied by any of them at the time. In the centre of the eight-sided square is a statue of King Frederik V mounted on a horse; sculpted by Jacques-Francois-Joseph Saly, this was erected in 1771. Should you arrive at Amalienborg around midday then you might just see the changing of the guards taking place. We passed some by as we headed rather quickly through because, as you might be able to tell from the photos, that forecast for light rain at some point I mentioned earlier magically transformed itself into a surprisingly determined downpour just at that moment.

We were a little soggy as we headed off for the remainder of our walking tour, passing briefly on the way out of the Amalienborg area by the bust of Roosevelt, unveiled in 1953 and sculpted by Jo Davidson. If you were looking for military connections and statuary on a web post about walking around Copenhagen then you’ve certainly come to the right place.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series I’ll conclude the organised walking tour of Copenhagen that we undertook. However, you already know that there are three parts to this walking tour write-up so that suggests that there’s something a little unorganised to follow on from that. But what is it? You’ll just have to wait to find out.

Copenhagen is awash with some great examples of architecture, and Danmarks Nationalbank designed by Arne Jacobsen was one such piece that caught my eye more than the rest of our tour group or guide who were all far more interested in the statue beside which we next gathered. If you do a search for Arne Jacobsen chairs using your preferred search system of choice then you’ll realise that you’ll have seen his modernist designs already, I’m sure.

But back to that statue, now. Niels Juel was a Danish admiral and something of a naval hero to the Danes following successful defences of Copenhagen and attacks on Sweden. He was responsible for advances in the reputation of the Danish Navy, and died at the age of 68 as chief of the admiralty. He and his wife were buried in the church below the photos of his statue here, but we headed swiftly past that to the next site of interest.

Just up the road was the seat of the Danish Parliament and home to its Supreme Court, Christiansborg Palace. A palace or castle has stood in this position in Copenhagen since the twelfth century with the first being attributed to Bishop Absalon in 1167. From 1417 ownership of whichever building was on this site transferred – not willingly, mind – from the church to the royal family. The 1730s saw the construction of the first Christiansborg Palace. But there was a fire near the end of the century. The second Christiansborg Palace was built and completed in the early 1800s. But there was another fire near the end of the century. Sticking two fingers up to fate, a third Christiansborg Palace was constructed, and that’s the majority of what still stands today. Unless there’s been a fire since I wrote this.

King Frederik VII was the only king to live in the second Christiansborg Palace and it’s his statue that stands out in front of the present-day building.

Moving on from the palace, we headed in the direction of The King’s New Square, on the way passing by a statue of another former resident of the Christiansborg Palace spot, the first to live there, Bishop Absalon, who managed to have his fingers in all the pies of the church, politics, and the military.

The King’s New Square, or Kongens Nytov, is the largest public square in Copenhagen, and dates from 1670 in the reign of Christian V, of whom there is a statue in the centre. The Danes do like a statue of a person on a horse. A number of important buildings face onto the square, but easily the most attractive and impressive architecturally was the Royal Danish Theatre, constructed in 1874.

Odd Fellows Mansion was the next destination on this walking tour of Copenhagen, but not just to stand outside and admire the mid-eighteenth century Rococo design. A bonus of our walking tour was actually getting to eat a Danish pastry in Denmark, and with this being a tour organised for people on a cruise ship it also provided a good spot to use the toilets. A nice enough building inside, but nothing spectacular if I’m being honest, and I’m always being honest.

We would have just one more sight to see in Copenhagen on this organised walk and that would be on the way back to meet the bus that would (or could) take us back to the ship. We headed through the lovely green space of the oldest park in the city, the King’s Garden. It’s alternatively known as the Rosenborg Castle Gardens and the reason for that will become clear, but first a revisit to the Danish fixation with statues and that promised mention of Hans Christian Andersen once more. The bronze work of art dates from 1880.

Another statue that caught our eye was that of Little Gunver by the nineteenth century sculptor Theobald Stein. Little Gunver relates to a song about a young girl drawn to the bottom of the sea by a deceitful merman. How lovely.

Rosenborg Castle was the impossible-to-miss landmark that sat at the far end of the gardens on our way through the parkland, and is an early seventeenth century Dutch Renaissance style building commissioned by Christian IV, one of many of his architectural projects in and around Copenhagen. It’s easy to see how similar it is to Frederiksborg Castle that we’d visited on our previous cruise to Denmark back in 2017.

And with that our walking tour of Copenhagen came to an end. Sort of. Well, not quite. We could have got on the bus that was waiting to take our tour group back to Sky Princess but our guide mentioned to us that a paid-for shuttle bus service was running between the ship and the city and gave us directions from where to pick it up. We’d known about this bus as it had been mentioned on the ship – “There will be a paid shuttle service and you can buy tickets on board” it had said in the daily programme of events – and we knew that we had several hours before the ship would leave. We realised that we’d have the chance to drop into a bar and grab some local beers before heading back. What could be nicer? What could possibly go wrong?

You’ll have to read the rather unplanned part three of the Copenhagen walking tour to find out.

Excellent, we thought, and I’ll explain why.

• Denmark has some decent craft ale places.
• We like craft ale.
• On the ship they’d mentioned that there was a shuttle bus service in operation running between the cruise terminal and a road very close to where a particular craft ale bar was located.
• On the ship they’d mentioned that you could pay (or flash your medallion, or whatever) when boarding the bus; no need to book.
• On our tour our guide told us “Anyone who doesn’t want to take the excursion bus back, I can show you where the shuttle bus is.”

We had a plan! With our walking excursion done we’d treat ourselves to a few beers and take the shuttle bus back to the ship. Sounds simple. Couldn’t be simpler. Nothing could possibly go wrong unless the ship and our guide had given us duff information, but what are the odds of that happening?

So, very quickly we found ourselves in Skaal and not so quickly after that – because the choice on offer was, well, see for yourself – we found ourselves enjoying some lovely craft beer. Nice, clean venue; wide range of styles of beer. You couldn’t ask for a better place to recuperate a little after all that walking on the tour earlier in the day.

We stayed for more than one because the first drinks were nice enough to encourage that sort of behaviour in us, but then we contemplated whether to look for somewhere else or make an earlier-than-necessary return to the ship. We opted to head back as we’d done a lot of walking and our hoodies were still a little damp from the torrential rain that had caught us in the morning.

And here’s where things took a turn for the very annoying.

At the shuttle bus stop there was a shuttle bus sitting there. It looked like one for Princess but we weren’t sure, and at the time we arrived there was nobody up front so we could have got on and chanced it, but we’re honest and cautious people and knew that we needed to pay as per the ship’s instructions. A man appeared after a few minutes and asked for our ticket.

“We don’t have one. We were on a tour that’s dropped us off in the city and they said we could pay for a ticket on board to get back.”

“Oh no. You can only buy tickets for the bus at the cruise port. I’m not allowed to let anyone without them on.”

Yeah, to say we were angry with the information that had been provided by Princess Cruises to us both on the ship and on the tour was an understatement. The man there was apologetic but his hands were tied. He gave us options and some finger-pointing in the rough direction we’d need: train or taxi, because buses didn’t go where we had to go, apparently. The train would have only got us so far, and he didn’t know the number of any taxi firms. Uber proved to be a non-starter, but we had enough time and enough mild fury to power our legs to start walking back anyway. There was not much in the way of sightseeing on this unexpected walk of some of Copenhagen’s streets and the only conversation was around how pissed off we were with Princess.

Let’s try to bring out some positive aspects of this unplanned, unwanted, and infuriating walk back to the cruise terminal. Never let it be said: “Yeah, that Mark only knows how to rant.”

We like modern art and street art, and on the bus from the ship in the morning we’d passed a set of sculptures by the roadside that our guide had mentioned briefly in passing. These were the Toddlers on the Road of Life by Bjørn Nørgaard. The four sculptures represent a child, an adolescent, an adult, and a pensioner, with the materials and decorations reflecting those ages and the brightness of the sculptures and the slowly darkening gold showing life’s effects on aspirations and experiences. We loved them, and if we hadn’t had to walk then we wouldn’t have seen them up close, so a small yay for unexpected discoveries.

There was also some more conventional street art on walls as we got closer to the port and some artistic flair to the otherwise seemingly-abandoned miniature golf course we passed by.

Now, that walk back to Sky Princess at the cruise terminal took us two hours, but before you raise a hand to your forehead and collapse in a faint worthy of the best period dramas let me point out that we did find another small place that was open on the route to have a drink in and that accounted for a decent chunk of minutes in that duration. To be fair, it hadn’t been our intention to have a drink – our priority was finding a toilet because of the drinks we’d already had in Skaal making their way through our bodies – but it served to break up the walk and dilute the strong emotions towards our cruise line, and we had plenty of time to play with. That place, incidentally, was Tio Mario’s, and we extend our thanks to them for being there just when we needed them.

Back on board Sky Princess, then, and after a long day exploring Copenhagen on foot, both planned and unplanned, dinner and cocktails felt oh so good, so here, enjoy this feast of photos of both of them.

Sky Princess had a late departure from Copenhagen but there was still some lovely light on the horizon when we did so. They’re the sorts of views to almost make you forgive a cruise company for giving you a minor panic attack in a foreign country. Almost.

Okay. So, not the best ending to a day in Copenhagen with Princess Cruises, but overall we enjoyed it and had some interesting experiences, and isn’t that what life and travelling is all about?

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be making a stop at Denmark’s northernmost town, Skagen, and it’s an absolute gem of a place that we’ll explore a little (and drink in a little) after a war-related tour that starts at the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo.