Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Well, the bloom is well off my romance for Norway. Perhaps I
paint with too broad a brush stroke and I should instead say that I CANNOT
recommend Hurtigruten. We never expected a luxury experience. We have always used
every ship we’ve ever sailed as transportation so we should not have been
disappointed. But Nordkapp/Hurtigruten cannot decide whether they are running a
cruise or a ferry and they are doing poorly at both. We have evidently
completed our 3rd or 4th port call since we boarded. Two
were while we slept supposedly, we don’t know. Two were this morning and we
arrived late for both and left immediately. I know they boarded things, cars,
people, but I am not sure anyone had a chance to see anything. We are leaving
Alesund now. Clay set foot ashore. I gave it up. I feel seasick and heartsick
that we are wasting our time and money with this part of the trip. Instead of
the 45 minutes we were scheduled in Alesund, we had more like 20. The other
thing is that the tour director warned that if you left the ship and did not
get back on that you would be left. OK, fair enough. But, we had a morning stop
in Alesund and then we sail onto Geiranger and tender the shore trip people
like us, then the Nordkapp is scheduled to stop at Alesund again this
afternoon/evening. They made numerous announcements with dire warnings about
not going ashore because of the late arrival and not to miss the ship’s
departure and make sure you are back onboard. But, why couldn’t people without
an excursion get off this morning and spend the day in Alesund and reboard on
the return stop of the ship? We’ll never know because we’re getting off in
Geiranger and don’t rejoin Nordkapp until after dinner at Molte.
We had a quick buffet breakfast. They had a lot of fish
again as well as brown cheese and cinnamon rolls. You can serve yourself tap
water at breakfast. Tap water on Nordkapp is potable. You are only allowed to
drink it in your cabin. At dinner, you have to buy a bottle of water. Unless you
buy a bottle of wine, in which case, if you ask they will give you a bottle of
water. Buying a beer doesn’t not get you water. They do not serve tap water at
dinner and you may not bring your own into the restaurant. Forget about ice or
a cold drink. Room temperature.
As far as scenic cruising, we are glad we did the parts we
already did because we have not found a way to enjoy the views. There is not
enough public viewing seating for everyone onboard. Some passengers don’t even
have cabins, so demand is higher than normal as well. There is reasonable open
deck space but it is too cold and/or too wet out to enjoy it. I am usually
willing to own my part in disappointing experiences by blaming my expectations,
but in this case I am not. I am putting a lot of blame on Hurtigruten for the
design of the ship and the experience as well as their marketing and selling it
as a cruise experience.
They say they charge $11 (I believe per person) to you cabin
account per day for tips. There is no turn down service. You are reasonable for
marking your own beds/cots up. This is not that big a deal as every bed we’ve
had since leaving Marina has a duvet folded into a small rectangle in the
center of one person’s sleep space and you have to shake it out and cover the
bed and tuck the loose fabric at the foot of the bed. So, we have to pull the
cots out flat and then do the same thing. If you put out a sign that is in the
cabin, the attendants/stewards/stewardesses are supposed to make up the cabins
between 8am or so and 2pm or so. We have been out all morning and ours hasn’t
been made up. We’ll be gone all afternoon so we’ll see. But if we don’t ever
have cabin service or meal service, I think they’ll need to rethink those tips!
The other thing is laundry. We needed to do laundry after a
week on the road. I charged 30NOK to the account for a token for the washer
(with soap) and a token for the dryer. We started the load at 7am and went to
breakfast. The timer said the wash would take 30 minutes. It was over when we
got back. We put the wet clothes in the dryer and put in the token and started
it with it set to sense dry clothes and stop. It ran for 1.5 hours without
stopping. Clay opened it and the clothes were still soaking wet. He tried but
you cannot restart the dryer without putting in a new token. He went to
reception and bought 2 new tokens. He split the load into another dryer and
both machines ate his tokens without running. He didn’t close the doors first.
An attendant arrived and he complained. She gave him 2 new tokens and restarted
the dryers. Clay has gone to check again to see if the clothes are dry yet.
With all the hordes of people and the incessant
multi-language announcements and in general just the crappy experience we are
having, I am failing to look beyond it and find a way to appreciate the beauty
of the setting. I believe Hurtigruten is blocking my enjoyment of Norway rather
than facilitating it which for the money is what they should be doing.
Our cabin did wind up being serviced about 11:30am. The clothes
did dry after another hour. We had a good excursion that was ruined by the
handling of the 160 or so participants by the tour director. This excursion
Geiranger and Trollstigen pass was 1595NOK. It was to leave at 13:25 which was
our scheduled arrival time in Geiranger. Geiranger fjord is 16km long and is
said to be one of the most beautiful in Norway. I am happy that we already
sailed the Naeroy fjord of which the same is said because we did not see the
Geiranger. Nordkapp sailed into the end of the fjord amid a Princess ship,
Disney Magic and Le Boreal. Nordkapp stopped to allow a ferry to pull up
alongside and empty arrivals and then load the tour people and the departing
passengers. That would have been fine, but the tour director made a loudspeaker
announcement that the tour participants should report to deck 3 reception 5
minutes earlier. We were all packed in there and the halls and stairwells. When
it was actually 13:30 (remember that we’ve been late arriving everywhere) he
led us down one deck of stairs and led us into the car deck by scanning our
keycards one at a time to confirm that we were on the tour. Then he scanned
onto the car deck one at a time the departing passengers. During this time, we
heard the loudspeaker announcements about turning into Geiranger fjord, about
the water, the mountains, the waterfalls, the seven sisters falls, the man with
the bottle across from them, but all we saw was each other packed into the
inside of the car deck breathing warm foul air and rocking against one another.
The people who did not pack the high price for the excursion got to witness the
sailing of Gerainger fjord twice as Nordkapp steamed out as soon as we were
off. This was badly done. The good news is that the landscapes we toured on the
excursion were phenomenal and the tour was well done. I still think highly of
Nordkapp, but my opinion of Hurtigruten keeps lowering. We drove over Eagle’s
road or route 63 to exit Geiranger. The first photostop was at the top. We
could see the town of Geiranger from above and to the other end of the fjord,
the seven sisters falls. The man with the bottle falls was on the other side
and was not visible. The Geiranger fjord is kind of an s shape, so we only saw
about half of it from the viewpoint. Better than nothing, I guess. But at the prices
we’re paying, I guess I expect more than better than nothing. We drove on to
Eidsdal where we drove the bus onto a ferry and crossed the fjord to Linge. We
continued on route 63 to our next photostop at Gudbrandtsjuvet which was a
series of foot bridges over a confluence of rapids and falls in gorges. It was
amazing! Next stop was the highlight. It was Trollstigen Pass. There was a new
visitor’s center there at the top of the 11 switchback road down the other side
which lays between 2 big waterfalls. It is incredibly impressive. In addition
there is the troll lore affiliated with the area and all the little rock piles
built to appease the trolls. I built a tiny one to appease little trolls! At
the bottom, we had a coffee break. It was complimentary and at 5-6pm, we all
needed something. It was open face sandwiches and waffles with coffee or hot
tea. The waffles were room temperature and folded in half with some powdered
sugar inside. Maybe this the authentic Norwegian way to eat their traditional
snack. We’ve been wondering as we ate ours that we made in the waffle iron in
Bergen with jam and a knife and fork. We drove on down to Andalsnes and changed
roads to E136 to Vestnes. We went through several tunnels to get there and it
was because a tunnel on the other side before Molde that we had to go this way.
Molde is the port where we rejoin Nordkapp and the tunnel on the other side
before Molde closes at 6pm. When we got to Vestnes we drove onto a much larger
ferry and took a much longer ride across the fjord to Molde. The first ferry
ride was about 10 minutes, the second was about 30 minutes. We got to Molde at
the Hotel Alexandra about 8pm I think. About an hour later we crossed the
street to wait for Nordkapp to arrive. Dinner was lamb with gravy and mashed
potatoes and brussels sprouts and dessert was an apple goo topped whipped cream
with crumbles served in a short glass. At least we were spared the meal plan
discussion at the restaurant door again. On that subject, at lunch I was pulled
aside as I scanned my card and it bonged. The restaurant manager told us that she
was assigning us table 24 at 6:30pm while this gets sorted out. That will start
tomorrow night. In the meanwhile, the bus had wifi and Clay got our email on
his phone. For whatever reason, Clay’s Outlook cannot access the Internet on the
ship so we are doing all our email on the phone. It was our Kensington Tours
booking agent. She confirmed that the ship was correct and that the booking did
not include meals. She said she had tried to add the meal plan to our cruise
with the company’s credit card, but that since we were already onboard with our
own credit card attached to the shipboard account that she couldn’t. She blamed
the Hurtigruten booking agent and told us to pay to add the meals and get an
itemized invoice to send to her and Kensington Tours would reimburse us. Clay
went to Reception to handle it since it is on his credit card. The guy asked to
see Clay’s email, but Clay refused to let him see it. The ship was still
waiting to hear from UK booking to find out whose fault this was and how to
handle it. Anyway, within hours the phone showed the charge made to the Capital
One card of $436.91US. Clay figures that is about $40 per meal at this point
since the guy told Clay he would only bill him for future meals as it was clear
we had already paid for meals and been told they were included so the blame for
the error lay elsewhere. Clay just agreed with him. So, assumed he was paying
for 2 lunches and 2 dinners remaining. We will seriously hope Kensington Tours
does reimburse us when we get home and can scan the invoice and send it in.
We went to sleep ASAP after getting back onboard. I swear I
didn’t hear Clay go to bed or anything all night. I woke up at what turned out to
be 6am the next morning and I was exactly as I had laid down and my left ear
was smashed and asleep. I got up to pee and learned it was time to be up
anyway.
