Norway Reflections

We did see a sunset on our last night on the ship.   But now we've been back for a few days now, and are getting settled back into normal life... Back to cooking our own meals, making our bed, and missing the mountains.  Speaking of mountains, check out these pictures (which are only a small subset of the ones I took) : https://photos.app.goo.gl/s9eZaQcRFp7PRyMs9  Three of those are Panoramas which I wasn't able to send from the ship, so click the little circle-arrow in the middle of each panorama picture to scroll right and left to view it. You can also zoom in to see more detail.

Overall Mary and I agree this was a fabulous cruise. The ship was great (we loved our convenient cabin location on the pool deck), and the food and service were outstanding.  I was surprised that Princess only offers this itinerary once a year.  They have several others that go as far north as Geiranger, which is one of the more spectacular fjords,  but only once do they go to North Cape.  Some smaller Norwegian lines do sail there throughout the summer. 

More to come when Mary publishes her trip album which will completely cover our trip.  But I wanted to add this post with the links to the Panorama pictures to help you appreciate the beauty of these fjords.  

Cruise Day 14 - Sea Day #4

We had a quiet day, a few games to be played, meals to eat, and, unfortunately, suitcases to pack.  I did win a few medals and some nice Sapphire princess coasters as well, in shipboard activities. Mary was happy to have some sun on our balcony today.  Also, we received our Arctic Circle Crossing certificates.  Very cool and this came as a surprise as we did not expect them. 

We enjoyed Pub Lunch (traditional British pub food) today.  I had Bangers and Mashed while Mary had Fish and Chips.  In the afternoon we passed a large field of oil rigs along with some large windmills (for generating electiicity). This is one example of the many that we spotted.

We will actually have a sunset tonight at 10:25 p.m. with sunrise close to 4:00 am tomorrow. After several days without seeing the sun go down, that will be different.  

I do not expect to blog tomorrow as it will be a very long day with our flight home.  It’s been a great cruise.  I plan to do a retrospective blog on Sunday or Monday with some additional pictures.   Many thanks to Mary for being my blog editor!

Cruise Day 13 - Bergen

Mary and I had an excursion scheduled, but cancelled it and went into town on our own.  This worked out well as we had a very good shopping experience. Click on the picture to enlarge it to see where we shopped.  Pretty cool!  

Bergen is a pretty town and seems to be quite pedestrian-friendly. While our ship docked in a commercial port, a shuttle took us part way to town, and then it was a fairly short walk to go the rest of the way.  Brrygen (the name for “old Bergen”) is a picturesque lineup of quaint shops, including the Schjott store along the old harbor.  Lots of tourist and souvenir stores. 

After we got back and had lunch, there was a Longest Putt contest which I was fortunate to win (I have a total of 4 medals now!).  That was followed by a Fastest golf Play contest where I tied with another guy by making putts in all 7 holes in 1:17.  That contest won a Sapphire Princess coaster for Mary.  

Tonight we enjoyed a Lobster dinner in the dining room. There were no King Prawns  included with the lobster as in previous years, just a lobster tail on a bed of rice.  It was delicious!  And to top it off they had Mary’s favorites Princess dessert - Floating Islands.  YUM!  

A sea day tomorrow as we head back to Southampton for our flight home on Saturday.

Cruise Day 12 - Alesund

We had a morning “City Drive” excursion around Alesund today.   Our first stop was a very nice aquarium. We arrived before it officially opened so we got to see the morning feeding of the seals.  Mary also got a picture of this cute otter posing for her. 

Next we visited an outdoor museum which had a lot of thatched-roof cabins from the past several hundred years.  Some were dated back to the 1600’s.  A nice job was done of showing the progression of house development over the centuries.  It resembled what we see when we visit Greenfield Village (in Dearborn, MI), but with much older buildings. 

We walked around Alesund afterwards. It is very picturesque, having been totally rebuilt with a common building design after the entire downtown burned in 1904.  The city leaders at that time showed a lot of initiative to decide this when rebuilding the city. 

Just as we were getting ready to head to dinner, we had a surprise.  From our balcony I spotted an unusual boat.  It was a fireboat that started pumping streams of water into the air as we left our dock!  That’s a first for us, to experience a sendoff like that.  

Bergen tomorrow, then…..

Cruise Day 11 - Sea Day 3

No port visit today. We had a few ship activities, but they were spread out across the day.  One night on the ship the cruise director announced the passenger counts by country. Great Britain had the most ,with USA second. I found quite interesting that Australia was #3 and New Zealand #5. Those people sure had to come a long ways!  To round out the top five, Canada was #4.

As we have done on most sea days, In the morning I went to Zumba and Mary went to a presentation about the next port. At noon, I participated in Champagne Golf (the winner gets a bottle of champagne) and tied for second by making 5 pf 6 holes-in-one. I did better in the afternoon by winning at Quick Cricket.  Later as I was walking around the ship, I saw that Doc (Adam Bricker), from the Love Boat tv show, was available for pictures. The line was short so I lined up and got my picture taken with him!  

After an enjoyable dinner we went to the production show Do You Wanna Dance which was as good as we remembered from seeing it on past cruises. We sure love the Princess production shows!

We could get spoiled by this Midnight Sun.  Right now at 9:30pm, Mary is on the balcony catching some rays! 

Two ports left, Alesund and Bergen, then a sea day to pack before heading home.  Our time in London seems like it was so long ago! 

Cruise Day 10 - Lofoten Islands

We were late into our port today because the ship’s pilot that Princess hired at Tromso was not certified to take our ship on the southern route, so we had to backtrack over 80 miles which added 4 hours to our travel time.  So the Shore Excursion staff had to scramble since we arrived at Lofoten Islands at 1pm rather that 9am.  The Captain decided to stay at Lofoten for the scheduled 9 hours so we did not depart until 10 pm. To make matters easier, they moved all excursions back by 5 hours so our excursion had to meet by 6pm and was not scheduled back until 8:30 pm. As you can understand, that made eating dinner a bit of a challenge. 

On a positive front, the delayed arrival did let the staff add a Zumba class in the morning and a few other activities like Lawn Bowling (I came in second out of 10).  We did enjoy seeing the mountains as we sailed in.  But having seen mountains like these for many days now , our picture taking was limited. After lunch, Mary and I used our Elite privilege to tender to the shore with no waiting.  But it was rainy and not much to see so we came back to the ship fairly quickly.  

After a light supper at the grill we headed out on our excursion.  Our excursion was a bus tour around a couple of the islands stopping at a small fishing village, then at two white sand beaches.  At first we were worried about getting back to the ship in the dark DUH!  (See post abut the Midnight Sun).  The scenery was beautiful with mountains soaring above the sea but the beaches, while quite nice, were not as impressive as those in our Great Lakes state.  After returning, we went to the buffet for a quick pasta snack and dessert.

Tomorrow is a Sea Day so we can rest up and participate in a few shipboard activities. 

Cruise Day 9 - Tromso, Norway

We had a quiet morning today since our excursion was at 1:00 pm.  The excursion was a short tour of the city, with three stops: a cable car to the top of Storsteinen mountain, a Lutheran church, and a local museum.  It was pleasant, but quite crowded at the cable car ride due to the number of buses and a cable car capacity just 22 people every 5 minutes.  But the scenery was nice, even if overcast and a bit rainy. 

The Lutheran church (also known as the Arctic Cathedral) was beautiful!  We even heard the organ being played.  Again, we felt a bit rushed, but were able to appreciate the architecture and beauty of it for the few minutes we had to visit.  We did not spend much time in the museum, which specialized in the local Sami people. But we did get to see a couple of nice videos there, about the Northern Lights. 

Nothing special going on tonight so we will enjoy dinner, then watch a movie.  On to Gravdal on the Lofoten Islands tomorrow!

I wrote a special Midnight Sun blog, but I don’t think it was emailed out so check it out here.