Aarhus. Denmark is our port stop for today. The weather was mostly cloudy when we woke up at 6:30 AM. We slept in a little bit, we did not have much of a plan for Aarhus other than to try to go to Mass at 10:00 AM since it is Sunday. We had looked online for Catholic Churches in Aarhus, but for some reason, I had selected the main Cathedral here, which, like most churches in this region, is Evangelical Lutheran. One reason we selected it was that the Cathedral was supposed to be closed on Sundays, other than for services, and this was an opportunity to both see the inside of the church, and go to Mass. Only problem was that it is not a Catholic Church. We sort of figured this out last night, mainly because all of the large churches in this region are not Catholic, making us rethink our original plan, and confirm via the internet that we needed to modify the church we were heading to for Mass this morning.
After we ate our usual breakfast in the room, we gathered up our gear, making sure we had our umbrellas for the forecasted rain. We tried to use the internet to better plan out our walking route, but we were not sure where we would actually start from. There was a free, mandatory shuttle to take us from the ship into town. No one was allowed to walk through the port, and we did not know where the drop off point was for the shuttle in order to use the Google directions ahead of time to route us to the Catholic Church.
Catholic Church of Our Lady
We were actually running a little late, trying to make the Mass at 10:00 AM, but now not knowing how long it would take before the shuttle left the pier outside by the ship. We were lucky, the shuttle we got on left within a few minutes of our boarding, they were not waiting until they were full, which helped us get into town faster.
We picked up a map of Aarhus at the drop off point, and asked the young man greeting the buses with the maps if he could direct us to the Catholic Church. He indicated it was straight into town, but we think he thought we were asking about the Cathedral, which was a straight walk from here, we could see it. We knew we needed to go more south of the main Cathedral for the Catholic Church, so we started our walk, stopping once to try and get our bearings using the map after we found some street names. Of course, it was raining by now, and paper maps do not fare well in the rain.
Inside The Catholic Church
We found our current location on the map, and it really helped us to figure out the direction we needed to go. We could see a steeple in the general direction we were heading, and we correctly assumed it was the Catholic Church of Our Lady. It only took us about 10 minutes more of walking, and we arrived about 9:30 AM, plenty of time to spare before Mass started at 10:00 AM.
The church was set up differently inside, obviously the original pews had been removed, and there were wooden chairs, interlocked together with some bolts. Everything was set sideways to the length of the church, sort of in the shape of an oval.
There were two different families sitting in reserved seating near the altar, and we figured out they were there for a baptism, one child in each family. One little boy was about five or six and the other child was an infant.
Of course, everything was in Danish, and we could not understand anything that was said specific to the baptisms, or the Mass. The baptisms were done in the middle of the Mass, so everyone there were “participants”, and any families with small children were also invited to the front altar during the actual baptisms.
Having the Baptisms in the middle of the Mass extended the whole Mass duration, as well as the fact that every hymn sung during Mass was sung through every verse. It was interesting, but hard to follow in another language. All in all, the Mass lasted about 90 minutes.
View From The Roof of Salling
Luckily, there was a restroom in the church, so we were able to use that before we left and headed out to see the town of Aarhus. There were a lot of people on the street, some were from the cruise, some were from the town, and a lot of men were dressed in Red shirts, which we found out were in support of the Welsh soccer team that was playing here later this evening. They were everywhere, and of course, drinking a lot of beer at the outdoor restaurants and bars.
The main shopping area was nice, but a lot of the stores were closed since it was Sunday. There was one large department store called Salling (yes, not SAILING), and there was a glass floored walkway about six floors up on the roof, literally overlooking the street. We took escalators up to the top floor and then walked up some stairs the rest of the way to the rooftop. It was a nice area to get a view of the overall city.
The Aarhus Cathedral
We did walk over to the Cathedral for some outside photos and found out that it was open for visitor today, opposite of the information we had gotten online. We went inside to look around, and like most of the churches in this area, it was Lutheran, and pretty plain inside.
We walked around the pedestrian only shopping area and then decided to head back to the ship to work on the blog. The sunshine was coming and going, but the weather had improved some from the earlier rain. I worked on the blog in the room, and Stephanie took a short nap. We are almost caught up with the postings, but would like to add more photos into the posts and into the albums.
Later on, we went out to Outrigger Bar and for some refreshments and the sail away. While the ship was heading out to sea, about an hour after we sailed, we went by a point of land that the Captain had informed us about when we had set sail.
Sailing Past The Lighthouse on the Point
There are always people there on the point that wave to the ships as they go by, and of course, the Captain had to blow the ships horn, which is the beginning of the Love Boat melody. It was interesting because we were quite close to land, but not at the usually really slow speed like when we are heading into a port, we were making over 19 knots to get to the next destination tomorrow, so the ship was really going quite fast as we passed by. And, as the Captain had indicated, there were quite a lot of people out there to wave to us as we sailed by.
We headed down to Vines for some wine and Tapas, and met a nice couple there, Bill and Terry, that had just gotten on in Copenhagen. They had gone to a local festival in Aarhus that we did not even know was taking place, but sounded like a lot of fun.
We then went to dinner in Alfredo’s. We both had pasta entrees, and a great seat at the window as the sun was going down, too cloudy for a sunset, but still nice. After dinner, we headed up to the Mermaid Bar next the pool, and visited with Nemo until it got too cool outside, and he went on break.
We headed back down to Crooner’s for a night cap or two. On the way, we passed by the ship’s store, and just happened to find a really nice reversible jacket that was on a super clearance. They only had XL and XXL, too large for Stephanie to get one, but I got an XL, grand total, $16.00,
At Crooners, we happened to meet up again with Bill and Terry, and had a nice conversation about cruising, and premium cruise lines, which they did more often than Princess cruises. They also told us about using Google Maps offline, which I was unaware of. It would really have helped us out on a couple of stops earlier in the cruise, and also for today to help direct us to the Catholic Church. We will definitely be downloading offline maps through the ship’s Wi-Fi for our next ports of call.
It was getting late, so we headed to the room around 10:30 PM.