The ship was docking in Kiel when we woke up a bit before seven. We had a nice view to the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft ship-building area.
We got drinks and some pastries from the Dutch Cafe again for breakfast, then showered and headed into Kiel looking for chocolate, pinda sauce, and pretzels. Once we passed the strip joints and hourly hotels we found that, unfortunately, stores in this area do not open before nine. We even saw a Starbucks that was still closed at eight-thirty. We found a small grocery store and had success on the chocolate front. After that we found a Günther’s Bakery Cafe that had opened. They did not have pretzels but we had a few pastries, the “Napoleon” with marzipan filling being the best.
We took a different route back to the ship. We wanted to see if Oscar had been able to get a COVID test that might clear him, and we also wanted to find a walking route that did not pass the “red light district”. We found a nice route that passes a lake and goes through a nice street of shops.
Unfortunately the COVID policy required Oscar to wait until the next morning for his test. I wanted a cup of tea, and the crew was doing a lifeboat drill, so we got to watch them launch all the lifeboats on one side of the ship. Unlucky boat 13 seemed to be having some trouble, and one of the larger boats that serves as both a lifeboat and a tender had a minor collision with it, so apparently it is good that they were taking the chance to practice driving around before an actual emergency!
Joann wanted to see a bit of the area so we took her in to town through the more scenic route. We passed another Günther’s Bakery so we picked up a couple more of those delicious Napoleons. We sat on a bench overlooking one of the lakes and split one of them, saving the other for Oscar.
We returned to the ship and then did a bit of research and found a pretzel bakery that was about two kilometers away. With only a bit over two hours before the ship was scheduled to depart, we had to walk quickly to get there. We had a bit of trouble locating the bakery because it was inside an indoor mall that was fairly subtle on the outside (at least the side of the building we were on), but we eventually figured it out. We bought a couple oven-fresh regular pretzels and a couple other ones with raclette cheese coating. As we were finding a more direct route out of the indoor mall we passed another bakery that also had some pretzels, so we had to buy one of those as well. On our walk home we tried a bit of each and it turned out we liked the second bakery’s pretzel a bit better, although the ones from the first were still warm which gave them an advantage. We made it back to the ship with plenty of time to spare. We enjoyed the rest of the pretzels after delivering one to Joann and arranging delivery of another plus the Napoleon to Oscar. We also took COVID tests with Joann as this was four days after our last known exposure. Luckily all our test results were still negative.
We sat on our deck for a while watching as the ship departed. The Kiel bay is large and there is a lot of industrial and recreational stuff along the waterfront to watch. Once we reached open water we started watching the new Murder on the Orient Express movie, but did not get too far before it was time for dinner.
After dinner we walked around deck three a bit, but we’d already walked quite a bit around Kiel. We got to watch as we went under the Øresund Bridge. This bridge is an important link across the strait between Denmark and Sweden.
The January 6th Committee was on live so we watched as the committee dramatically built up their case for issuing a subpoena for Trump to testify.