Featured writer: The Big Adventure 

Only my husband could figure out how to fit a bucket-list cruise-ship journey in as a needed ferry transit in the middle of November to Norway.

Excited to board the ferry!

Let me back up. We are on a four month adventure bumming around Europe with our backpacks. In addition to hitting some of the iconic locales we also wanted to give back to a community, so to speak. Through “World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms” we found a farm to volunteer at for about four weeks and we needed to figure out how to get there.

The Color Line is a ferry-line between Oslo, Norway and Kiel, Germany. It is also a cruise-ship with all those amenities and extras people read about and wish for. For someone who has never been on a cruise ship but has been on ‘regular’ ferries it felt like a bucket-list cruise ship experience with the added bonus that we legitamately needed it to get from point A to point B.

What did we do once we got on board and were ready to begin our 22 hour overnight journey?

We enjoyed looking out the BIG ROUND WINDOW in our

Seriously, this window is the whole wall.

room. We walked around and explored and tried to figure out the layout of the decks and the elevators, which was a little tricky at first for this novice. It seemed that on one side you could access up to floor 13, but if you went to the other side it would go up to floor 15, the observation lounge in the most front part of the ship accessible to guests. Who knew?

Just in case. Is this supposed to make me feel better?

We looked at the shops, walked out on the “sun” deck [not so much sun on a wintery day in November], checked out the helicopter pad, found the water area [read: JACUZZI!! water slide! Water-river-thingie!] … Then we enjoyed two drinks in the 15^th floor observation bar: very cool.

At dusk I went to the back dining area of the ship to check it out and the lighting was really interesting. It was the same bright outside and inside creating this surreal looking view/image in front of me. The dining room looked very fancy and done up with accents of a red flower on each white clothed table, and the dark grey blue of the sea behind it through the very tall glass windows… I hate to say it but I could imagine the titanic and the way it might have looked from a fancy elegant evening dinner and then all of a sudden that was all over. It was weird.

Later we enjoyed an amazing buffet dinner -”typical Norweigan holiday fair”… it was all inclusive, fancy, and definitely rich… every type of seafood: shrimp, crab, salmon four different ways, scampi, prawns, lyefish, more salmon, then a bunch of meats: pig meat prepared five different ways, two types of cabbage, mashed rutabaga! [yum!]… cranberry jelly [not sauce, too sweet!]… many cheeses and cold cuts and delicious beefy soup. Then there were about a dozen different bread choices, more cold cuts, salad stuff, everything. The dessert area too was quite comprehensive. The ‘sour-cream porridge’ served with sugar and cinnamon was not high on the tasty “would-eat-it-again” list, but it was interesting, and new to me. The gelato was really very good, especially with a little of each of the different sauces and a lovely little norway-cookie cone.

After dinner we went to Aqualand where the water-river and jaccuzi were. We felt compelled to try everything that was available on the ship since we really only had an overnight on the ferry, er, cruise-ship. Therefore we checked out the different musical options: everything from jazz, to 50’s style, to techno dance music [too bad it was such a smoky room! The only room in the ship where smoking was allowed]… and there was a casino… and, there was also a bar in the main promenade.There was an awesome sultry singer named Jane at the Donkey bar [not a cigar, a carrot in his mouth!]… and she was playing covers of Nirvana and other cool rock tunes, after which she closed with Pink Floyd. It was fun, I really liked her sound. And her strong looking shoulders. She was very very muscular. Holy crap: mostly I found myself wondering how on earth does a woman stay in shape on a ship! Seriously.  

And the views! Of course the views towards shore were amazing. Had the weather not been so chilling I suspect many more of the guests would have been on deck to enjoy it.  Since we were there in early winter there was much less daylight during our travels: I could imagine that in the summer months this voyage could really boast some lovely scenery!

Leaving Kiel, Germany on a crisp, breezy November day.

The following morning we arrived in Oslo at 10 am. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed to have to leave the ferry so soon. Why couldn’t check out be at noon? But in all actuality the whole thing was a great experience. If ever someone was interested in travelling to Norway via ship, I would highly recommend the Color Line. I look forward to someday doing it again!