KICKING BACK IN KIEL

Wednesday found us in the seaport of Kiel, Germany. Our choices were to take a train into Hamburg and see the city or to remain in Kiel and hunt for an Internet café where we could read all the latest Michael Jackson news. We opted for the café and ended up having a lovely, relaxing day.
We both slipped our laptops into our bags and disembarked the ship. Kiel was more than eighty percent destroyed during WWII. It was a major shipbuilding center and serviced submarines. These shipyards have been rebuilt and business appears to be thriving. One can see freighters being built, battle ships being serviced and submarines hanging in dry-dock. The center of the city is mostly without old buildings and most of today’s buildings date from the fifties. But, this is not without a charm of it’s own. We found a lovely pedestrian area with lots of small shops and many café’s. Many of the bars and outdoor areas have little hooded chaises chairs just right for two people to sit in privately. I had Linda take my picture while I sat in one.

Our first stop was at a sidewalk coffee shop with fabulous pastries. I got a coffee, Linda a coke and we split a huge strawberry Danish. We took our tray outside to a sidewalk table and proceeded to access the Internet and each type away happily for an hour or so. I got all my photos uploaded that had been sitting in my camera and sorted through my spam and checked to see if anyone was reading my Facebook postings. As noon approached, church bells rang out hundreds of times giving us a concert lasting several minutes. When we were both satisfied that we had gotten our Emails caught up and read every bit of info on Michael Jackson’s dermatologist, we packed up and went on a nice walkabout. I continued to look for the item I have decided to bring back for Amy, but had no luck. We ended our visit to Kiel with a class of wine in another sidewalk café.

We headed back to the ship in mid afternoon and spent the remainder of the afternoon watching old movies and relaxing. I did a load of unmentionables in the bathtub and strung them out on the backs of our veranda chairs. By 4:30 we set sail for Copenhagen. This was an interesting route because we actually backtracked our route out of Copenhagen at the start of our cruise. I recognized a huge suspension bridge that we had sailed under in the middle of the night of our first night.

We ended the evening with dinner in the Tamarind, a lovely Asian restaurant that sits on one of the uppermost decks. I had been dying for good sushi. In all fairness, I must say that it wasn’t as good as the sushi in Toronto. But, my Flirtini was fabulous. So was my second one.