May 27 - Bergen, well sort of

We’re docked in Bergen where we’ve been next to a couple of different ferries and nearby is a cruise ship named MS Artania.  I’d never heard of that one and when I googled I discovered she was launched originally as the Royal Princess in 1984 and christened by Princess Diana.  It made me a little sad to see her now.  She was the first cruise ship to have no inside cabins and most of the ones she had were veranda cabins.  She was also the ship that Al and I took around Cape Horn from Santiago, Chile to Buenos Aires.  On that cruise Princess offered for the first time ever a shore excursion in which we flew on a 38-seat prop plane and landed at a Chilean AFB in Antarctica and spent the day visiting a nearby penguin colony and visiting several  science stations there.  The people planning the excursion had badly misjudged the time it would take.  As a result we arrived back more than four hours late.  Rumors were flying around the ship that our plane had gone down in the Drake Passage and all lives were lost.  We had a marvelous time and saw penguins up close and personal for the first time. I remember on our return flight we were served a gourmet lunch of bologna sandwiches, a bag of chips and some champagne to wash it down. Those were the days!

The Royal Princess as she looked on her maiden voyage

Perhaps you’ve surmised that I didn’t get off the ship today.  I woke up after 10:30 AM and looked out and it was rainy and cold.  I made the executive decision to declare a sea day, especially since I’d been here a couple of times already.  On previous visits I’d seen the sights, ridden the Fløiban funicular to the top of Mount Fløyen, and even gone shopping with the chef on one visit.  I determined that in the rain my view from the top would be kind of like the views yesterday. Instead I’ve been here talking to friends, catching up on what’s happening in the world and loafing around.  It has cleared off this afternoon, but it’s too late to do much now so here I am catching up on writing.

We have a real sea day tomorrow so I won’t have to make up excuses for lounging around. On Saturday we’ll end another segment of my cruise and almost all the people on now will be leaving including my friend from the UK. I think I mentioned that she’s had a problem with the care of her 98-year-old mother. She’s finally gotten that sorted out so she hasn’t had to leave early.  A few other friends are getting off in Amsterdam, a day early, because they have friends or family there.

Okay, I’ve blathered on enough for today.  I’m going to include a couple of photos from past visits here just so there’s something to look at besides my ramblings.  Ha det bra (I’ll let you figure out what that means)!

The waterfront in old downtown Bergen

The view on a clear day from Mount Fløyen

May 26 - A rainy day in the fjords

Today we anchored off the little village of Loen, a tiny place at the easternmost end of Nordfjorden.  It wasn’t a very promising looking day.  It was cloudy and spitting rain.  I’ve been here twice before and the last time Seabourn offered many more tours and Al and I took a great one that brought us very high up in the mountains and then down to Geiranger Fjord, which I think is probably the one most often seen in travel magazines and cruise brochures about Norway.  This time around they only offered one that didn’t involve hiking, a three-hour driving tour around the fjord and to a nearby lake, so that was what I booked. 

I'll confess up front that I'm going to include some photos from the last times I was here because I want to remember how very pretty it can be when it's not a rainy day.

As I tendered ashore and walked to the bus it was cold and raining, not an auspicious start at all. We took off with our Italian guide whose name I never caught because I couldn’t hear him over the PA system on the bus. As we drove along the fjord’s shoreline off in the rainy mist I could see two more ships, both much larger than ours.  It turned out one was a German ship from the Aida company and the other a British P&O, both carrying somewhere around 4000 passengers so perhaps that’s why we had such limited tours offered.  All the tour operators may have been otherwise occupied.

Pretty gloomy, wouldn't you agree?

By contrast, this is how it looked last time.

The scenery is pretty even in the rain.  There are waterfalls cascading down the very green steep slopes of the surrounding mountains.  There was still a little snow at the peaks. We went through several tunnels (Norway has many including the world’s longest car tunnel at more then 15 miles long). When we came out we began driving around the shoreline of Lake Hornindalsvanet, Europe’s deepest lake with a depth of 514 meters.  We stopped at an overlook where we could take some photos in the drizzle.  Our ride took us through a couple more tunnels and we came to the town of Nordfjordeid where we stopped at a hotel for a bathroom break and a cup of coffee and some very delicious cake.  On the way back to Loen we stopped once more at what was supposed to be the highlight, a scenic overlook atop a cliff with a 1600 foot drop down to the fjord.  Unfortunately when we got there we were engulfed in mist and clouds and there wasn’t much to see except for ghostly shapes in the distance.  

I took this from the bus when for a brief moment it looked like it might clear off.

But at the first scenic overlook it was misty again

The church in the town where we had coffee and cake

A waterfall up close and personal

Nordfjord

This is another cheat photo. This is one Katie took when were were here nearly 18 years ago.  I didn't see any rainbows today.

We got back to the tender dock and it was raining a little more seriously than before.  I was glad that I had a rain jacket with me to provide some protection.  Ours was the last tender and after the boats were secure we sailed away through the fjords.  There was supposed to be a sailaway party on deck, but of course that didn’t happen.  It had to be moved into the Grand Salon. 

I had arranged for a German dinner for four of us in the restaurant so after predinner cocktails we went down and had a delicious meal of wiener schnitzel, red cabbage and warm German potato salad.  That’s one of many things I like about Seabourn – with 24 hours notice you can request a special meal.  After my friends and I went to a dance party in the Club and didn’t leave until nearly 12:30.  Despite the weather it was another lovely day here on the Ovation.

May 25 - Two lazy sea days

 I’m not joking when I say that they are lazy sea days.  If it were not for Trivia at 11:15 I might have actually stayed in bed half the day.  It felt so good with both sets of drapes closed tightly so none of that midnight sun could creep in to disturb me. But, I got up and played (we didn’t win – I guess all the smart folks got off last time we were in Dover).

This leg of the cruise has been somewhat stressful I must confess. My dear English friend is going through a crisis for the care of her 98-year-old mother who lives with her.  She had arrangements made for someone very competent to look after her while she was away. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.  There’s been a glitch and so she spends her days making phone calls and texts to make sure her “mum” is being cared for.  I empathize with her, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do.  In fact while we were at sea there’s nothing she can do either.  Oh, getting old is a trial!

We’ve had some pretty good entertainment on this leg of the cruise.  There was a British comedian the other night that I thought was quite funny.  Humor doesn’t always translate well between countries even when they speak the same language, but this guy was good.  I’m still enjoying listening to the band and occasionally dancing despite the fact that my hip is giving me some trouble.  If the ship is moving around at all, you can kind of get on the dance floor and move your feet just a little and between the ship’s movement and that you can look like a great dancer.

Two nights ago the Seabourn Club party for returning passengers was held.  Much to my surprise I’m the most traveled passenger on this cruise.  When they informed me I was, you could have knocked me over with a feather.  I’ve seen many of the passengers on here on previous cruises so I thought for sure one of them would be.  Anyway, I got a huge and beautiful bouquet of flowers and a nice bottle of champagne.  I’ll save that for a girls’ luncheon that I’ll try to arrange for one of our upcoming sea days.

A friend took this and sent it to me.

Well, I’ve rambled on about pretty much nothing for today, so I’ll close.  In Olden tomorrow I’m going to take an easy driving tour to see the scenery.  It’s supposed to rain so I don’t know how good that will be, but I really should get off the ship for a while.  Ciao for now.

May 23 - 71°10’21” N, 25°47’04” E or as close as I’ll ever get to the North Pole

We docked today in Honnigsvåg on the island of Magerøya, Norway. This place is part of Finnmark, one of Norway’s counties, and the island is connected to the mainland by a subsea tunnel that is about 4 ¼ miles long and reaches a depth of nearly 700 feet below sea level.  Honnigsvåg is the principal town with a population of about 2250. (The population of the whole island is only about 3000.)  The principal industries are fishing (what else!) and a port for transshipment of liquified natural gas.  In the summer there is also significant tourism here.

This is downtown Honnigsvåg

I took a tour to Nordkapp, the most northern place on the European continent that can be reached by road.  The actual furthest north spot is about one mile away at a place called Knivskjelloden (how’s that for a name?), but it can only be accessed by hiking.  I’ll write more about NordKapp below but first I want to write so I’ll remember  some things  I learned about this place and its people.  

The island is a bleak and barren place with the terrain being basically tundra covered with lichens and mosses.  There is little flat land; instead there are rolling mountains with the highest only 1370 feet and at the northern edge of the island steep cliffs that drop down to the Barents Sea.  During the Ice Age the place was covered with glaciers and as they receded the mountains which are volcanic became rounded with sometimes sharp ravines through which streams flow down into little lakes and fjords.  It’s beautiful in a way, but I wouldn’t want to live here.  In the summer there is never darkness, with 20 hours of sunlight and perhaps 4 hours of twilight. In the winter the opposite is true with 20 hours of darkness and four of twilight.

Little houses outside the town. I can't imagine being there in winter.

This last photo with what looks like a horn sticking out of the cliff is the actual North Cape

This part of Norway along with portions of northern Sweden and Finland, along with a very small area of Russia, is the traditional home of the Sámi people.  They are an indigenous people who inhabit a region known as Sámpi.  We English speakers have known them as Lapps or Lapplanders but the Sámi consider that name to be offensive.  The Sámi have been fishermen, fur trappers, and sheep herders but they are best known for being reindeer herders.  In April the Sámi in this part of the world bring their reindeer herd to this island because reindeer evidently like to feed on lichens and moss.  The Sámi bring them from the mainland primarily by boat and allow the animals to roam freely on the island until late September when they round them up and take them back to the mainland.  The animals can’t stay here over the winter because the snow and ice are too thick and hard for the deer to break through to feed.  I found it interesting that when the reindeer are brought over in the spring they have their winter coat on which is white or off-white, not brown.  The males have antlers in the summer but lose them in the winter.  Instead it’s the females who have antlers in the winter.  I guess that means that all of Santa’s reindeer must have been females.  Go girls!!  That’s probably more than I need to know about reindeer, but I thought it was interesting.

During WW II all of Norway was occupied by the Germans and this place was no exception.  In fact, it was considered very strategic because it was  close to the route that Allied ships took to bring supplies to the USSR which was our ally at the time.  When the Germans eventually had to withdraw they burned every building on the island except for the little church.  Many of the residents were evacuated to the mainland and those that stayed had to take refuge in traditional Sámi houses made of sod and thatch until the 1950s when reconstruction was well underway.  Today there is still a NATO outpost on the island because it still occupies a strategic place, maybe even more so now that there is more focus on the Arctic and the resources there.

A traditional Sámi house of sod and thatch

So, I took a ride to Nordkapp which I’ve already said is as far north as you can drive.  Along the way we passed some reindeer grazing and I tried to get photos, but they aren’t great.  We saw a few isolated houses along the way which I assume belong to fishermen.  In the winter the road can be closed for long periods because the snow and ice can reach 15 or 20 feet.  I don’t know what people living outside of Honnigsvåg do then.  I’m guessing that if they can afford it they go to the south of Spain for a few weeks.  We passed a few fish racks for cod to dry out, but they didn’t look very full here either.

These are reindeer but they don't look like Santa's

Not many cod heads drying on tese racks

At NordKapp (the North Cape) there is a large visitor center.  Out at the very point  above the cliff there’s a steel globe sculpture marking the northernmost point of mainland Europe. As I looked in both directions the island ended in sheer cliffs with the very cold sea below crashing into rocks at the cliff bases. It's a very dramatic coastline. We were fortunate with our visit because when we first arrived there were broken clouds with little wind.  Apparently it can be quite windy there.  I don’t like photos with me in them, so I took one of the globe alone.  In the visitor center there is a theater which shows a short film about the birds in the area and shows scenes of the four seasons there.  There are also a chapel and the northernmost post office.  There was also a nice café and, of course, a gift shop.  After I’d seen the sights and bought a few touristy things I went into the café and got myself a Norwegian version of a stroopwafel.  As usual I didn’t get up in time for breakfast and I missed lunch because of when I had to meet for my tour, so I was hungry.  I slathered it with homemade strawberry jam and it was wonderful! Our timing for the visit was perfect because by the time we had to board the bus to go back to the ship, the sky had become quite angry looking and the wind had picked up.

These are pictures of the land at the NordKapp Visitor Center

Look at these rock cliffs and crevasses

A pair of friendly trolls in the visitor center

Back on board I had a lovely evening dining with my friend Hilary and John Baron who was a cruise director on several of my cruises and who now has some corporate position with Seabourn.  He is lot of fun to be with so we laughed a lot as we ate.  And of course I ended my day by going to the show performed by a very entertaining British comedian and dancing a few dances in the Club afterwards.  It was a lovely day and now I have two sea days to look forward to.  They are my favorites!

The day before we got to Honnigsvåg we spent in Tromsø.  I'd been there before but here are a couple of photos I took from the ship while docked and of the fjord as we sailed away.  It's a pretty place.

May 21 - Svolvær and Henningsvær, Lofoten Islands

We crossed  the Arctic Circle sometime last night after spending a day in Brønnøysund, Norway, a small fishing village.  I didn’t get off the ship because it didn’t appear there was much of anything there. This morning we arrived at Svolvær in Lofoten, Norway. We’re currently anchored there and I’ll go ashore early this afternoon for a tour. Lofoten is an archipelago off the Norwegian coast and Svolvær is one of the largest towns with a population of about 5000. The total population for the whole archipelago is about 25,000. The islands lie between 68° and 69° N. Despite the latitude, Lofoten has temperatures in the winter which are not as cold as one would expect.   This is because of the influence of the Gulf Stream and its extensions, the North Atlantic Current and the Norwegian Current.

The scenery around the ship is pretty spectacular. The islands are a series of  irregular peaks that are best described as looking snaggle-toothed.  Many are sheer rock; others have significant vegetation and appear quite lush.  I guess it’s dependent on which way they face and how much sun they get.  There was quite a bit of snow on some of the peaks.

This bronze statue entitled The Fisherman's Wife stands at the entrance to the small harbor. She's either welcoming you home or bidding you goodbye.

The principal industries in these islands are fishing and tourism.   My tour guide today was Paolo (from Modena, Italy of all places).  Paolo  told us that in the past Lofoten was the center of the cod industry.  Evidently the waters here once had perfect conditions for cod to spawn. Thus in the winter months the waters were teeming with cod and in years gone by there would be thousands of boats fishing for them. However Paolo said this past year was very bad for the cod fisherman. Apparently the fish are not coming as far south as they had been.  When I was here last time the wooden racks for drying fish were loaded with cod.  This year most were pretty empty. Nonetheless I should describe the process used for the ones I saw because I think it’s interesting.  After the fish are caught they are gutted and the heads are removed from the bodies.  The heads are placed on racks to air dry and freeze (this is all taking place in the dead of winter.)  The bodies are placed on separate racks for the same process.  As our guide explained it, this method has been used for hundreds of years and essentially flash freezes the fish.  Once it has been frozen it’s allowed to dry out on the racks and it becomes very hard and can be kept for up to 10 years.  Vikings probably carried this dried fish with them and it allowed them to make their long voyages.  The fish can be rehydrated by soaking it for a week and changing the water often.  The heads are removed and treated separately because they are sent off to Africa and some are used to make a soup of some kind, while others are used to make fertilizer.

Empty fish racks which were full last time I was here

My tour took me from Svolvaer to Henningsvær, a small former fishing village.  It was virtually abandoned until a few years ago but has now seen a revival as a tourist destination and artist colony. There are several galleries there and a couple of hotels which appeared to be doing a brisk business.  In fact as we were getting out of our bus there was a tourist bus loading up a group of Swedish travelers with their suitcases so they had obviously been staying for a while. 

Anyway, to get to Henningsvær we passed some inlets and bays which evidently have quite a tidal change, as much as 5 meters.  We went through a tunnel in a mountain that Paolo told us is the most expensive one ever built in Norway.  Apparently the tunnel was initially blown out of the rock but not properly reinforced.  Five days before it was slated to be opened there was a significant rockslide and the tunnel collapsed.  It took another five years and lots of Krone to dig it out and reinforce it with concrete before it finally opened for good. In addition to passing through the tunnel we also had to cross two one lane bridges.  The only traffic lights on the islands are found on bridges like these. 

The village is picturesque with a small harbor and quaint wooden buildings around it.  We went into the Galleri Lofoten displaying works of famous artists from the region.  Before going into the gallery rooms we saw a video with stunning photographs of life on the islands.  The pictures of the boats in angry seas and the people who fish and clean the catch were so interesting. Looking at the people one could imagine how hard a life it is.  The gnarled hands and wind burned faces were like those of working watermen everywhere, even on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.  The paintings we saw after the film showcased the intensity of life on these little islands.  I thought some of them were truly beautiful.  I went briefly into one other gallery, the Kaviar Factory (as the name says the building once was a caviar factory).  It had a lot of modern works which frankly I didn’t like at all.  I went out and walked a little through the village and then sat outside the first gallery and enjoyed the lovely weather.

This huge urn was made by the Queen  of Norway who is a ceramicist!

Then it was time for the ride back to Svolvær and the tender ride back to the ship.  Since we’re inside the Arctic Circle now we are having incredibly long days.  The sun went down close to midnight and it’s rising before 3 AM and it doesn’t get really dark at all.  We’re still nearly a month away from the summer solstice so I’ve been kind of amazed at the amount of daylight.  Tomorrow we’re in Tromsø and I’ve been there so I’m not sure I’ll do anything at all.  It depends on how energetic I feel.  I’m finding it very easy to be lazy and just enjoy being on the ship.

This is the Lofoten Cathedral we passed on our way back.  It's made of wood and can seat 2000 people!