Norwegian Dreams

By Bill Georato

Set onboard the Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas and ports in Norway and Denmark, this true story of a cruise of a lifetime takes readers through the fjords of Norway, across the Arctic Circle, and to the extreme north of Europe. Along the way, meet the people and see the sites of Norway and Denmark, and participate in the Blue Nose Ceremony. Onboard, tour the ship and meet the captain and crew. And eat ice cream 40,000 feet over Iceland.

For readers who have never cruised

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640964136

Book preview

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Norwegian Dreams

Bill Georato

Copyright © 2018 Bill Georato

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2018

ISBN 978-1-64096-412-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64096-413-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

This book is dedicated to the people of Norway and Denmark. You have a beautiful country. Thank you for letting us visit and enjoy it for a little while.

This is also dedicated to the crew of the Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas and to all your brothers and sisters travelling the high seas.

Acknowledgments

To all my friends and family, live long and stay awesome!

To Jennifer Della Penna, travel agent extraordinaire of the Salem, NH AAA office. Thank you for helping plan the trip and keeping things organized.

To author/forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs. Very little of my reading is fiction, but your books are a majority. Your writing style is a great influence on this book. Thank you.

Legal Stuff and Photo Credits

All omissions, mistakes in fact, or other errors are purely my own. To protect the innocent, only first names are used. All trademarks, logos, et cetera are owned by their respective companies and organizations. Please seek written permission to copy any part of this work, except for brief excerpts for review purposes.

All photos were taken by the author, except for the following:

Photos of the author: Taken by Frank and Ellena Georato

Ship’s interior and overhead shots of ship: Taken by Royal Caribbean International

Author’s Note

This book is the true story of my cruise vacation with my parents to Denmark and Norway during the summer of 2016. All people, places, and events are true, and most dialogs are also real, but where it has been created, it maintains the essence of what was said.

I hope you enjoy this book, and I thank you for your time.

Copenhagen or Bust

June 3, 2016

Planning started over a year ago, and today is the first day of the plan being put into action.

I could never really explain why, but I have always wanted to visit Scandinavia. It never mattered which country, as long as I got there.

Two weeks from now, the question would be answered.

In the meantime, after all the planning, making phone calls and reservations, and exchanging of money—by which I mean both paying bills and trading US dollars for Danish and Norwegian krone—we are on the way.

It is Friday, June 3, 2016. I took the day off from work, although I technically could have worked from home. Last night, when I got home from work, I proudly exclaimed I’m on vacation!

The weather has been nice all day, sunny and warm. Pretty typical weather for this time of year.

Flightline, the local airport transport service, has come to pick us up in Salem, NH, to take us to Boston’s Logan Airport.

I have one other pick-up, and then we can hit the road, the driver says.

Fifteen minutes later, we are on Route 93 South headed to Boston. It’s about 4:30 p.m., and while the northbound traffic is heavy with people trying to get home from work to start their weekend, it’s pretty smooth sailing on our side. That is to say, it was smooth until we got to the Fellsway.

When I drive to Logan, I take the highway to Exit 24B toward the airport on Route 1A.

This, however, was not what our driver did. By the time we got to Fellsway, southbound traffic was almost as bad as the northbound, so he got off and took the back roads.

Having no idea where we were, I watched neighborhoods go by which I had never seen before. We also hit just about every red light possible. It was getting later, and although we weren’t boarding our flight until around 8:00 p.m., I was getting very concerned with the time. This was not my first international flight, but it was my first flight to Europe, and I wanted to make sure there’s time to get through security. When you add in my near-phobic hatred of being late, well, it was not good. Finally, over an hour after leaving the house, we pass under the Tobin Bridge; a few minutes later, we were there.

Logan Airport, originally opened as Boston Airport on September 8, 1923, was rededicated on June 12, 1943, as General Edward Lawrence Logan Airport. Logan was a lawyer, judge, military officer, and politician from Boston.

The airport is located on one thousand and seven hundred acres of land in the East Boston neighborhood and has four terminals: A, B, C, and E.

All international flights from and to Boston come through Terminal E. This is where we are now.

By the way, if you want to fly in or out of Boston, this is the airport you want. Do not get this confused with Boston–Manchester Airport, which is located in Manchester, NH.

Due to modern security procedures, we cannot drop our bags off at the curb; instead, we have to bring them into the terminal and up to the counter.

All our flights for this trip are on Iceland Air. We find the appropriate counter and check in. We are told we will be leaving out of Gate E2A. It is a little after 6:00 p.m. My worries of being late, as usual, are unfounded.

We get through security with almost no incident—operative word being almost. As I walk through the scanner, it goes off.

Do you have anything in your pockets? the TSA agent asks.

No.

I’m going to have to pat you down.

Uh, okay.

TSA begins the pat down. Upon reaching my left pocket, he notices something. No, not that. He asks me to reach into my pocket, and I discover that one lone penny had wedged itself into the corner, and that had set off the machine.

Stupid penny.

Having passed security, we make our way down to the gates, stopping for something to eat along the way. Mom and Dad got sandwiches, and I got my favorite airport pizza: two slices of cheese and a medium soda from Sparro’s.

As we ate, we talked about the trip. This trip was going to have a lot of firsts for me—first overnight flight, first trip to Europe, first time using Iceland Air (on all our flights), first cruise on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. It is all very exciting.

After dinner, we headed back to the gate. Dad took out his Find-A-Word puzzle book, Mom her magazine, and I started making the first notes in my travel journal that I got for Christmas. That journal would eventually become this book.

Soon, we heard the words I’ve been waiting for announced over the intercom: We will now begin preboarding for Flight 632 to Reykjavik.

Now, I’m going to put aside my feelings on the phrase preboarding; after all, that is what we were already doing. What’s really happening is boarding. In any case, we all line up and wait for our turn.

I’m in seat 11D, and the boarding is about half complete when it’s my turn. Mom and Dad went with me, and we take our seats. I like having the window seat and love flying. Looking out the window down at the world gives me great pleasure. Soon, we would be over the open North Atlantic Ocean, leaving behind not just my country, but my continent—land I would not see again for two weeks.

We have a roughly five-hour flight to Reykjavik, but there’s plenty to do on our Boeing 757. In addition to