Thursday, June 25, 2015
Breakfast this morning was a little different. I still
started with berry yogurt with granola cruchies, but then I had a Norwegian
pancake. It was similar to a Swedish pancake, but thicker and chewier. I had it
with raspberry jam.
So, in all our emailing we have gotten notification that we
should be bringing waterproof hiking boots to Spitsbergen for the next cruise.
Our US Hurtigruten booking agent advised us to shop at any of the Norwegian
coastal cities we would go ashore at and not wait for arrival in Spitsbergen.
He also advised that Nordstjernen did not have boots to loan or rent as their
main excursion ship Fram does. So, today we had a blustery, gray wet day in
Trondheim and from about 9am to noon to be ashore. We did not have any plans
here and it turned into a boot shopping morning. I found a pair of over the
ankle rubber boats with a good tread and a supportive insole that fit with room
for an extra pair of socks for 199NOK. That is about $20 to $25 so not cheap
for boots that I plan to leave behind after using them, but nothing here is
cheap and as Clay said it was cheaper to buy them here and leave them there
than to have paid extra luggage to haul hiking boots we already owned from
home. Finding a pair for Clay was a little harder and he wound up buying a very
good pair of GoreTex hiking boots. We’ll have to see how he feels later about
abandoning them. We don’t have any extra luggage space though! He paid 399NOK.
We did also manage to see the Old Bridge, the old wharves and the outside of
the Nidaros Cathedral. We also managed to find and walk through a street
market. The Nidaros Cathedral is the world’s northernmost gothic cathedral. It
was begun atop the tomb of St. Olav, the Viking king who brought Christianity
to Norway. We sailed past Munkholmen, a rock island fortress, on our way in and
out of Trondheim. It has been occupied since Viking times.
We sailed from Trondheim at a little after noon. We went to
the restaurant and had our first meal without a meeting involved. Our new
keycards binged us right in. They had beef stroganoff and rice or catfish plus
the usual assortment of cold dishes. You have to buy a 1NOK labeled bottle of
still water at lunch in order to have a drink of water. You have to pay 25NOK
on your keycard for it and they still have a tip line for it. I have done this
twice at lunch now and have not tipped. I think there should be limits and this
crosses them. They have a self-service tap water dispenser by the juice
dispensers by the coffee machine at breakfast, but at lunch they pull a metal
screen over it and lock it so you have to buy drinks outside of coffee, tea and
I think maybe milk. There is no excuse for it but greed. For dessert, I found what looked like
blintzes or blinis. I got 2. I was in for a surprise. Remember this morning’s
pancakes? Well, put raspberry jam and whipped cream inside and instead of
folding, roll them up. Voila, dessert.
I typed up these notes and posted yesterday’s while Clay
napped. I just witnessed the Panorama Lounge during a featured historic
lighthouse sailby. It was like a scene of hell by Bosch. I am not exaggerating
by much! Clay had the camera in the cabin and it was on the port side so I hope
he got up and took a photo. It was a nice dark red lighthouse. I had seen on
the schedule that we were to sail by a beautiful lighthouse and an hour earlier
I had turned my head and looked out our window and seen a beautiful little
lighthouse on an island. I took photos of it, so we’ll see what gets posted!
Our first assigned seating, fixed menu dinner tonight was
not bad. Our table companions were from WI. There was another table for 4
separated by about 2 inches and there sat a single woman from NYC and a couple
from Portland, OR. They had plenty to talk about and other than introductions
the 2 tables stayed separate. My special requests for no seafood/no fish had
taken hold. There were 2 little tags of green and red on the table. Clay asked
the people who wondered where we had been if they were for them and they had
not seen them before. Clay moved the tags to my place and sure enough, I was
delivered no seafood and then no fish. Lucky! I had a little hard toast with
serrano ham and some greens and vinaigrette. The others had the same toast and
greens with what Clay thought was a tuna salad on it. For dinner I had potatoes
and potato salad with 2 pork cutlets wrapped around white cheese. I ate one and
it was fine. Clay ate the other and his white fish. The others said the white
fish was mild unto flavorless. Dessert was flan. Coffee and tea are self-served
upstairs in the Panorama Lounge. Our dinner companions told us that they bought
the coffee mug/coffee & tea package. I can’t tell you what it cost, but the
tour director had worked out the math and informed us at the information
meeting that you had to drink 12 cups of coffee outside of what is included
with meals to break even unless you were just interested in having the mug to
keep. It is our understanding that the mug was good for a year, so it might work
out better if you really wanted coffee or tea 24/7 and were doing a lot of
sailing. We were not clear whether the mug transferred between ships or was
only good on one ship. Anyway, they bought it because they are on the
northbound/southbound back to back and 2 weeks. She left dinner last night and
went and got their mugs and took them to deck 7 and filled them and tried to
bring them back to the dining table. Evidently it caused quite a commotion as
they stopped her at the door and refused to let them bring the mugs into the
restaurant. They were told it was not allowed to bring the mugs into any of
their restaurants. They replied that was not told to them when they bought the
mugs and the drink plan and it wasn’t written anywhere. They pointed out to us that
now it is written at the door to the restaurant. How ridiculous! I cannot
understand how they are failing to sell Internet minutes which has to be a huge
profit center for most ships and this one is trying to increase profit by
selling water or access to water at any rate. Who deprives people of water? Why
don’t they charge extra for air? Internet profiteering would not be as
offensive as water profiteering.
Going to publish this now. Trying to decide whether to try
to stay up past midnight for the expected sail by of Torghatten. It is a mountain
with a 160 meter long x 35 meter high x 20 meter wide hole through it! That
would be something and I did have a nap as well as Clay did. But, still it
seems all I want to do is sleep on here because it feels to me like the ship is
always listing and that makes me want to lie down which makes me tired…
Tomorrow morning between 6 and 8 am we are to sail across
the Arctic Circle! I have to confess that I don’t know what they call a person
who has or not sailed across the Arctic Circle. Order of the Blue Nose. First
shellbacks and now this.
Oops! Posting later because it seems we are going to dock
for a little while at Rorvik. We went ashore for 20 minutes or so and bought
Clay a Coke Zero and some candy at the Coop. They also had a Renni 1000 (I
think that is at least close. It is the only other grocery store chain we’ve
seen here.) Richard With, a southbound Hurtigruten came in while we were
docked. Rorvik had a fish house on the dock which we haven’t seen a lot of.
They also had some kind of fancy metal finned building. The building was the NORVEG – a cultural centre and museum of coastal life. The new building by the architect Gudmundur Jonsson is situated directly by the water. Opened in 2004, its sail-form roof surfaces take up the theme of the maritime location and seafaring tradition.
