First off as I begin the 556th post on this blog, thank you all for reading and viewing everything we post. And thank you all for the comments. We read every one, but we don’t respond unless there is a question to be answered or something to be corrected. There have been 1,789 comments in all. Those numbers do not include posts and comments from our old travel blog which was discontinued in 2013 (but which remains on-line for posterity here).

We arrived in Honningsvåg at around 8:00 am this morning under partly cloudy skies and very cool temperatures. The highs for the day ended up being in the mid-30’s. After our usual nice breakfast in the World Cafe, we headed out into the cold for our bus trip from Honningsvåg to the Nordkapp (the North Cape). It was about a 45-minute ride. It was difficult to take pictures from the bus window because a) it was cramped quarters and b) the reflections from the windows. I managed one. we saw lots of reindeers grazing in the cold. The reindeer are owned by local Sámi farmers.

71º 10′ 21″

Then we arrived at Nordkapp. Now taking pictures was hard because it was freezing outside. But we persevered. Fantastic views. Latitude 71º 10′ 21″ – billed as the northernmost point in all of Europe. Actually it isn’t, because a small sliver of a peninsula that you can see from Nordkapp is actually slightly further north, but it can only be reached by a nine-hour hike. So 71º 10′ 21″ is the northernmost point in Europe that you can drive to and you can actually see the actual northernmost point. For two months a year the sun never sets here (including tonight). For two months a year the sun never rises. I suspect there are less tourists here then. The views from the cliffs are stunning.

In 1943, the Battle of the North Cape was fought in the Arctic Ocean off this cape, where the German battleship Scharnhorst was eventually sunk by gunfire from the British battleship HMS Duke of York and torpedoes from the Norwegian destroyer HNoMS Stord, and other ships of the British Navy.

The steep mountain cliff rises 307 meters above the Arctic Ocean, and marks the end point of the European continent. Nordkapphallen, the visitor center, has a rich variety of sights including a panoramic film that takes you on a journey through four seasons in a landscape full of contrasts, light and breathtaking scenery. There are dioramas of local birds that look pretty real. At the top level of the building center you will find a restaurant with stunning views of mountain plateau and endless ocean, a coffee shop and a bar. There is a chapel, a cave of lights (that wasn’t working properly), and a small Thai museum. (Weird?) And of course there is the obligatory (huge) gift shop. It’s quite a mélange.

The Globe Monument stands almost at the edge of the clifftop, this iconic sculpture has become a symbol of the North Cape and is one of the most photographed spots in Norway. See cold Elaine?

Then there is the Children of the World Monument. The sculpture features seven bronze discs based on clay reliefs made by seven children from different countries, symbolizing friendship, hope, joy, and working together. See me in the pictures – twice actually, one not very obvious?

Then it was back to the ship to warm up, rest up, drink up, and eat up. Tomorrow we leave Norway and will spend the next two days traversing the Barents Sea as we head to the Shetland Islands. So far the ocean has been like a lake. You’d hardly know you were sailing. We’ll see if that continues. Here are some pictures taken back at the dock. As we ate lunch the huge MSC Preziosa (3,500 passengers) docked next to us. Glad they all weren’t converging at the North Cape site when we were there. (See the avalanche/rockslide fences on the hillside?)

While shoving of at 6:00 pm to head to our next port, we met Jim and Theresa (from North Carolina) for drinks and then dinner and then after dinner drinks. As we dined, we passed by the North Cape (with the globe) that we had visited earlier in the day. It’s way up there on that cliff!

The Midnight Sun

This cruise is titled “Into the Midnight Sun”. So last night we stayed awake until midnight. Here is the picture from our room at the stroke of midnight. That’s the low point of the sun for the day and it will start rising again as we go to sleep. I’m not sure if that’s a ship way out there in the distance or an oil rig.

Be back tomorrow for the first of two consecutive sea days.

Wild weather day in Tromsø. Snowing briskly one minute. Sun shining the next. And repeat regularly. And it is cold. The high for the day was about 38º F. Today, by the way, is Whit Monday (Pentecost Monday), and it is a national holiday in Norway. Most everything except tourist oriented gift shops and restaurants were closed. Tromsø is a fairly large city, one of the largest above the Arctic Circle – population about 74,000. It is actually located on a small island connected by bridges on all sides.

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After a nice breakfast, we headed out on our 2½ hour “Panoramic Tromsø” bus tour. The first stop was at the Northern Lights Planetarium where we watched a show about the northern lights. It’s really rather amazing that they were seen in AZ just after we left for Norway. Now we are here and cannot see them because it’s the wrong time of year. Anyway, the planetarium was a fun experience. Photographs were not allowed in the planetarium. I considered cheating, but I didn’t. The view of the mountains outside was dramatic, and there is a ski jump nearby. The last picture is the planetarium building.

Next stop was at the Arctic Cathedral. Well, it’s called that but it is officially just an interdenominational church (Tromsdalen Church). But it is quite striking. We heard an organ recital while we were there. Note the dramatic bridge that we crossed to get there. And you could see our ship docked across the water on the island of Tromsø.

Then we drove around some more before returning to the ship which is docked right in the center of downtown Tromsø. Larger ships have to dock further out as they cannot fit under the bridge you see pictured near the cathedral. We had a walk about downtown, visiting a gift shop for a few trinkets. We took photographs of the area including a statue of Roald Amundsen (Tromsø was his home town) and the Cathedral of Our Lady (Church of Norway or Catholic? – different sites say different things). Did you know Amundsen was the first person to reach both the north and south poles? I think that’s right. See the flowers in the snow? See Elaine’s just purchased snow hat? See the snow outside the gift shop window? Oh, and the troll! Trolls are big in Norway. The last picture is the town’s modern new library.

Back on the ship for a late lunch, the snow really started to come down. And ten minutes later the skies were blue once again. Then it was quiet time for us until cocktail hour at 5:00 PM.

At 6:00 PM we set sail for our last port in Norway. After a nice dinner in The Restaurant, we went to the Explorer Lounge, the ship’s largest bar located at the bow over two decks. (The bartenders all know us by name – surprised?) After dinner drinks were accompanied by magnificent scenery on the sail out after we passed under the Tromsø Bridge.

Later!

So the stretch of fantastic weather came to thundering close today. The pictures won’t be very good. It was heavily overcast for most of the day although there were briefs views of the sun. And it rained in spurts. Temperatures in the 40’s. And the forecast for tomorrow is for SNOW. Yikes.

Alas, most of the spurts of rain came at stops on the Panoramic Lofoton tour. The tour was three hours long and started out with a boat ride from the Leknes Cruise Terminal to Henningsvær. From there we bussed back to the cruise terminal with a couple of wet picture taking stops. The boat portion was on some fairly rough seas, but it wasn’t unpleasant. And we did see a (faint) rainbow. On return we shopped a bit in the small terminal gift shop. Then we had lunch and decided to stay on board rather than take shuttle bus into Leknes (where most of the shops would have been closed on Sunday anyway). So it was a quiet day reading, napping, and attending shipboard lectures/movies.

A Map of the Tour

The sea route is not marked. Use your imagination. We took the dark blue road back

On the Boat

The blue patches of sky occasionally spotted were pretty much the end of blue skies. Can you spot Henningsvær’s Eiffel Tower? See the rainbow?

On the Bus Ride from Henningsvær to Leknes

The stops were cold and wet. See the cod drying racks? Dried cod and cod liver oil are big products here. Remember cod liver oil from childhood? Yuch. See the Viking Longhouse on the hill?

Back at the Dock

See my new Shelta Seahawk hat? Cool dude, eh?

UPDATE:

6:30 am Monday morning. We are sailing into Tromsø, well above the Artic Circle. It is snowing lightly. The high temperature today will be 38º. Brrrrrr.

Brief post, no pictures.

Saturday was at sea and the end of bright sunny weather. We saw glimpses of sun, but it was mostly cloudy and there was some rain. The seas, however, are as calm as could be. The Norwegian Sea is like a lake. You would hardly know you are on a ship.

We attended a lecture on Norwegian history and watched a National Geographic movie on Viking longboats. And, of course, we ate. The food on the Saturn is very good. It may be a tad less good than we used to experience on Oceania, but it all very enjoyable. We have breakfast each morning in the World Cafe, the casual dining venue. The choices are many. We’ve had lunch there as well and also at the Pool Grill. For dinners, we have dined twice The Restaurant, the main ship dining room. No reservations required. We had dinner once in the serve yourself World Cafe, and it was very enjoyable. They have plenty of sushi and almost anything else you could want. And we dined once in the reservations-only Italian restaurant, Manfredi’s. My steak was excellent. We have the “all-you-can-drink-of anything” package and are making good use of it. Very good wine choices. They make excellent vodka gimlets. And we normally have after- dinner drinks in the Explorer Lounge, the ship’s biggest bar.

I should add the full king-size bed is extremely comfortable and the pillows are great. Makes for good sleeping at night and at nap time.

Tomorrow we will be in the Lofoton Islands at the port of Leknes. More on that tomorrow.

UPDATE:

Now it is Sunday morning and we docked in Leknes. No tendering today; we can walk off and walk on. And I can add a few pictures of the town from our dock point. I get two weather forecasts – Accu Weather and Wunderground – they are quite different forecasts. Highs will be in the 50’s and either there will be some rain and some sun or no rain and no sun. Meh. It’s all good. You can see plenty of clouds and some blue patches in the pictures.

Ciao for now!

A fjord is a long narrow sea inlet. Ok, you knew that. So today we sailed up one of Norway’s longest and most beautiful fjords, the Geirangerfjord, to the small town of Geiranger (population about 250 or 3,000 when the tourists are in town). And today is May 17th, Norway’s Constitution Day celebrating their complete independence from Sweden. It’s a national holiday very similar to our Fourth of July. Most women and some men dress up in old traditional dress. There are parades and celebrations all over Norway. We tendered to the dock past the Norwegian Cruise Lines Prima (3,000 passengers to our 950). Geiranger had the local children’s band play and a lead a parade through the whole town with all the townsfolk following. It was great to see. I have some videos of the band, but uploading them won’t be possible with the ship’s limited wi-fi. But I have plenty of pictures. There is a great waterfall/river that flows right through the town. We took a two-hour bus tour that included a climb into the mountains to a mountain lake and then to Eagle’s Bend (Ørnesvingen) overlook. Then it was back on board for drinks and dinner and chat with our new best friends, Jim and Theresa. Sailing back down the fjord on the way back to the Norwegian Sea, we had a great view of the Seven Sister’s Waterfall.

Sailing Up the Fjord

Around the Town of Geiranger

The Lake and Eagle’ Bend Overlook

Sailing Back Down the Fjord and Seven Sister’s Waterfall

Sea Day tomorrow. And bad weather is finally coming our way, probably by Sunday. I may skip tomorrow on the blog as we will be at sea with not much new in the way of pictures. Or I might get inspired.

We awoke to Elaine’s birthday. While we were out and about, Viking delivered a birthday cake and a bottle of sparkling wine to the room. Nice touch. I didn’t order or request it. Viking, of course, knows the birthdays of passengers because they have passport information. I’m impressed they took the initiative to deliver a surprise.

We had breakfast in the World Cafe, the Saturn’s casual cafeteria-style venue. They have everything you could want. There is also a picture of the long corridor to our stateroom.

At 8:30 we left the ship to take Viking’s complementary “Panoramic Bergen” tour. It was 2 hours, by bus, and made three stops. We saw some interesting graffiti (note especially the one of a seagull shitting on Putin’s head), some ruins, a Lutheran church, the National Theater, beautiful flowers, and some other stuff. Can you spot Elaine amongst the tour group participants? Actually, you need to spot her twice. We departed the tour at Bryggen (Old Town) as we had already strolled that. From there it’s but a 10 minute walk back to Saturn.

Back on board we had lunch at the Pool Grill – burger for me, hot dog for Elaine, both accompanied by Norwegian amber ale. We sat with some people we met at dinner last night. I was talking about my time in the Army when the guy at the next table heard me mention Schwetzingen, Germany. It turns out he was stationed at Tompkins Barracks in Schwetzingen too, and our times overlapped by a few months. That was 57 years ago! Small world. After lunch we did more of a ship walkabout and played a 9-hole round of miniature golf on the sports deck. I won by a stroke.

Then nap time before sailing at 5:30 pm. We left on time. Very smooth sailing. The Norwegian Sea on day one was like a lake. Drinks in the Living Room. Dinner in the Restaurant. After dinner drinks in the Explorer Lounge. All good. We had a nice conversation with a Norwegian couple at dinner. So far, all EXCELLENT.

Tomorrow is Constitution Day in Norway, a national holiday. We will be in port in Geiranger. More on all that tomorrow.

Good night.

We awoke to yet another perfect weather day in a city (Bergen) where it rains 220 days a year. We had the morning free so we walked through the old town (Bryggen) to the Funicular up the mountain. We got the first car going up. The views from atop are spectacular.

And a panorama (click to enlarge):

Then it was time to check out and board our ship. Yay!

After lunch on board and unpacking in the room, we got off and did a walkabout at the Bergenhouse Fortress just across the road. The link tells you all that you need to know. There is a temporary mini amusement park set up right in the area too.

More ship pictures on an onboard walkabout.

We stay overnight in Bergen and do a tour tomorrow. We sail tomorrow night. Later.

I’ll be short on words and heavy on pictures today. The weather continues to be unbelievably good. This morning we had our last breakfast at the fabulous buffet, checked out, and headed for the railroad station with just our carry-ons. Our suitcases are being transported from the hotel in Oslo to our hotel in Bergen by a company called Porter Service. That sure beats schlepping with our heavy bags to the train and then to the new hotel (about $27 per bag).

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The train ride from Oslo (at sea level) rises to over 4,000 feet before falling back to sea level at Bergen six and a half hours later. It is the highest elevation train ride in Europe. The views are stunning. We enjoyed sandwiches and chips on the ride. The first class seats were comfortable and roomy. Pictures (and more pictures, some with odd reflections as all the pictures are through the train window at our seats):

On arrival in Bergen, we took a taxi to the Thon Hotel Orion. It will be interesting tomorrow morning to see how their buffet compares to the one at the Thon Hotel Opera in Oslo. (Oddly enough, we took one taxi while in Oslo where our drive was from Eritrea. Our driver here was also from Eritrea.) We checked into our normal sized room and then went for a walk. Our suitcases arrived a short time later.

We stopped for a couple of pints of French 1664 beer near the harbor and in Bryggen, the UNESCO protected old wharf area of Bergen. There we met Bob and Lindsey who we chatted up and found they will be on our cruise with us, so we have our first friends on the ship.

Then we meandered down the wharf area and chose Olivia Zachariasbryggen for dinner. Elaine started with an Aperol Spritz while I sipped on a pink gin and tonic. We shared calamari fritters (good, but not great) and then each had a very good pizza (Margherita for Elaine, Prosciutto di Parma for me). They are shown half eaten in the pictures.

Pictures from the walk around Bryggen (including one of a firefighter motorcycle jacket for my friend Bob):

Then it was home to bed. Tomorrow we transfer to the Viking Ocean Liner Saturn (which is already in port). Stay tuned.

Aside: once sailing, internet access will be spotty at best. I’m not sure how often or how many pictures I’ll be able to upload. We’ll see how it goes.

Our last full day in Oslo. Weather: sunny and warm. It reached 75º today. It’s quite cool in the mornings but warm by noon. Normal in Oslo at this time is mid-60’s. Do not doubt climate change.

After another scrumptious breakfast, we took the tram down to the harbor area and visited Oslo City Hall. If you come to Oslo, don’t miss it! It’s normally a beautiful two-towered building from the outside, but one tower is encased to plastic and scaffold for restoration work. But the real beauty is inside. We walked around and took (too) many pictures of the beautifully muraled rooms.

Then we walked the short distance to visit the Akershus Fortress located right on the water. Great views. A statue of FDR. We saw some police riding horses at what appeared to be a training area for police. The highlight (for us as we didn’t walk the whole huge fortress) was the Norwegian Resistance Museum. It’s very well done although it doesn’t translate well in photos.

Then we walked back down the promontory to the harbor and had lunch at the Salmon where we ate on Saturday. We both draft Hansa Beer and Skagan Toast. Yummy good. After that we both had gelato cones and watched the action on the harbor walk. We saw lots of police and Army officers at one point, and I chatted one officer up. It seems the King and Queen of Denmark are sailing into Oslo tomorrow, and today the police are practicing security procedures. The damn royals could have come while we were here. We’ll be gone in the morning.

Oslo Harbor Panorama (click to enlarge)

Then it was home to nap, rest, read, and pack. We have to have our bags in the lobby tonight as a porter service is picking them up to deliver to our hotel in Bergen. That way we don’t have to schlep the big bags onto the train for Bergen which leaves at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Cocktails were on the balcony as were our dinner of sandwiches. Our MO in Oslo was big breakfast, nice lunch out, and sandwiches in the suite for dinner. We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s train ride. More about that in the next post.

Cheers!

Ok, weather continues to be perfect. Couldn’t ask for more. Breakfast. Here are some quick snaps of the Thon Hotel Opera breakfast buffet. Breakfast has become our main meal of the day in Oslo.

After breakfast it was off to the nearby Munch Museum. It is 12 stories of Munch works. Edvard Munch was Norway’s pre-eminent painter. He was prolific and he did everything — portraits, self-portraits, landscapes (at the beach, in the forest, etc.), themed works (love, hate, sickness), wood blocks, sculptures, etc. Yup, even he did penises. He is most famous for The Scream. We visited all twelve floors. Great views from the top. His work is interesting and worth seeing. Here’s a big sample.

As I said, great views from atop. Also here are some shots from the area nearby. Note the first picture below. That area is known as the Barcode Area because the buildings resemble a computer bar code. Do you see it? That’s the Opera House next door.

Then it was onto the Metro for a ride to Holmenkollbakken, the Oslo ski jump. Once off the Metro, it’s a steep twenty-minute walk up to the ski jump and ski museum. We sure got our walking in today between the ski jump and 12 floors of Munch. We had a great lunch at the Holmenkollen Restaurant (salmon and potatoes for Elaine; veal carpaccio with asparagus for me). The views were fantastic and it was a fun thing to do. (We could have zip-lined down from the top, but we both wisely demurred.)

We finished the day with drinks in the hotel bar at 5:30. We sat outside in the beautiful weather. I had a beer followed by a gin and tonic. Elaine sipped glasses of rosé wine. After cocktails we had sandwiches in our room that we bought at the train station on the way home. Tired after a long day with lots of walking, we retired early. We’ll be back at it tomorrow. Later!