Re-boarding Marina

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

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It wasn’t raining this morning and the skies were struggling to turn blue with a chilly stiff breeze. We had breakfast at the hotel. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are still here. Today we also saw some Oceania luggage tags at Freys Hotel. People are coming and going from Marina! Including us! Clay had asked the front desk to order a cab to Frihamnen Port for us at 11:30am. With our complimentary upgrade to Concierge level came at noon boarding time as well. We hope to get on and get an early load of laundry done. We’ve been gone from Marina 3 weeks or 22 days now and have only done laundry once since leaving. It is time.

We took a final walk around our neighborhood after breakfast. We went back to Vete-Katten on Kungsgatan and finally had a slice of Princess Cake to share. It seems like it would be very tricky to make. I am not sure if I loved it or not. I felt like I was eating Kermit the Frog! I told Clay that it looked like Kermit’s round belly had been sliced. He asked if I thought Kermit was filled with whipped cream and I think he could be all soft and sweet inside. Anyhow, we tried it and it was pretty good, if a little odd. It seemed like a crazy amount of work and I have no idea how they sliced it.

We got to the port about 5 of noon and got in line behind a few hundred people. Our cabin was ready at 1:30pm. That was good as we did get laundry done before the mandatory lifeboat drill at 4:15pm. We have a new Captain and Cruise Director now. The stiff winds had only increased but did not keep us from leaving port this time. We left right as scheduled. The only person I recognized from our previous time aboard was Lisa, the Social Hostess. She was the leader of our muster group this time. We went up to Horizons for the Cruise Critic Roll Call Meet & Greet. We met quite a few people from the roll call. We had dinner reservations at 6:30pm at Jacques so we did not stay long. Dinner in Jacques was the best we have had of the 4. If this had been our 1^st dinner there, we might have felt differently about it. We stopped by the Boutique and got Clay 2 t-shirts on the 2 for $30 special. He got an extra $3 off for some reason. We stopped by and checked out the Concierge Lounge. Very nice. There is a big laptop taking up the center desk drawer and there are 2 computers in there. You would not need to carry a computer if you always traveled in O’s concierge class. We have an issue in that there is a sign on the top shelf of our closet asking us not to remove the cashmere lap blankets but that they are only for use in the cabin. Fair enough, if there were actually any lap blankets in there, but there aren’t. Clay spoke to our stewardess about the missing blankets so we are clear that we did NOT remove them. We never had any. After dinner, there were still no blankets. The other snafu was that as we are spending our $300 shipboard credit, I had dropped our tour request at the destinations desk before the drill. We expected ticket before bedtime. The booking deadline had been 6pm today. There were no tickets by 8:30pm, so we went down to check rather than waiting to see if they appeared at the door overnight. The woman at the desk seemed unconcerned but eventually checked the computer and then everywhere else and our request was lost. I was afraid of that as the drop-off box looks just like the pickup box. She said sometimes other passengers take them. Ya think? Here’s the thing though, if I picked up someone completed form by accident I would take it back! Anyway, she waived the deadline and printed us tickets. I guess Picturesque Porvoo wasn’t a big seller. That is what we are doing tomorrow. Rain is predicted tomorrow, so I guess we are just as happy not to be wandering on our own in Helsinki.

So, here we are back onboard Marina and on our way home at last!

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Stockholm, Day 2

Monday, July 6, 2015

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We awoke to a new weather day! Gone was the heat and bright sunshine. It was low gray clouds and rain all day. The high temperature was only about 65F. The bad news was that we had booked a 1pm Segway tour. The good news was that once we were out and wet it didn’t really matter and it was too cold to be out and wet anyway. So, it could have been a nicer weather day but it wasn’t.

We slept in to after 6am again. Breakfast on Monday is earlier but we still weren’t down there until after 8am. It was not crowded today. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are still in town, so they were either earlier or later today.

We took the T over 1 stop to try to get back to where we started yesterday, which was not where we wanted to be. Of course, since that was where we wanted to be, it wasn’t where we wound up. Eventually we found our walking tour starting point. I had a 2 hour Gamla Stan walking tour that I had photocopied out of a guide book. It was clearly dated information but it was helpful. We took time out in the middle to visit the Nobel Museum here. We had visited the Nobel Peace sites in Oslo, so there was some symmetry. But, mostly it was to get out of the rain for an hour or so. Nobel was from Sweden/Norway before they split into 2 countries. I don’t know what it was called when they were one country. But, he wrote in his will that the Peace Prize was to be presented in Oslo, so it is. But, he left the others in Sweden, I believe. The building we visited is where the Literature Prize is announced. The dinner for the winner is held at the Stockholm City Hall which we did not get to. I am certain that even though it is a landmark building that we never got a photo of it because of the rain. We shared a sandwich and a hot chocolate and a water in the Nobel Bistro. It was good, the sandwich, I mean. The hot chocolate was weak! Norway wins at hot chocolate too! We checked out some shops this morning and I found a patch. It has Prince Eric on it. He is on manhole covers and trash cans! Talk about posterity. Around 12:30pm we arrived outside the Segway office. We sat on their window sill and waited. About quarter of a guy arrived and invited us in. Soon, Ida (I don’t know how she spelled it but she said E-duh.) our guide came and asked us if we’d like to cancel at no penalty. No, we are already here and wet. She wasn’t sure if any others would show up and told us to go ahead and suit up in their rain gear. We were both already wearing waterproof sandals and waterproof pants. Clay had gone with a waterproof jacket with a hood and was soaked from the chin to the waist. I am not sure but I think it may have been a camera problem. I had no jacket but had been using an umbrella and I was mostly dry and pretty comfortable. The problem was no umbrellas on Segways! I borrowed a rainproof jacket and I wore my southwester hat I had bought in Nova Scotia. It had a big brim all around so it helped keep the rain off my face and neck. It went under my helmet. My glasses still got wet when we were moving. I had to wipe them off every time we stopped. We headed out off Gamla Stan and headed for the heights of Sodermalm. It was a good tour. It would have been even better if the views had been clearer! It was nice because we could use the bike paths and we went up and down lots of little lanes and alleys and through a bunch of parks. Since there were only 4 of us (another couple from Hong Kong joined us) and we had skipped the ice cream break, we had extra time and got a bonus whirlwind tour through Gamla Stan. With all the cobblestones, we were glad our entire tour had not been in Old Town! It was a 2 hour tour. It was $63pp. It was very reasonably priced as Segway tours go in our experience. Ida asked me if we were going to go have a hot chocolate somewhere after the tour and maybe a cake. I told her that sounded good and asked for a nearby recommendation thinking we’d stay in Gamla Stan through dinnertime. She didn’t have one. I told her about my disappointing hot chocolate this morning. She asked where we were staying and asked me to show her on my map. She was pleased when she saw it and said we should go back to Central Station near our hotel and to Vete-Katten on Kungsgatan a few blocks away. She said that would be her best choice for Princess Cake (or Princes’ Cake) and hot chocolate. That sold us and back to the T we walked. We went to Vete-Katten right where she marked it on the map (though the building was under a scaffolding). Sadly, they were out of Princess Cake (but we saw a display in the window and it was a rounded green cake so we weren’t sure we missed anything). We each had another pastry and both were very good. The hot chocolate looked promising served in a giant bowl-like cup made with steamed milk, but alas it was as pale and watery as the first even though both were topped with whipped cream.  Now, we are worried about finding a slice of Princess Cake to try!

We are ready for dinner, but haven’t pinned down a location or even a food to look for. Luckily it has stopped raining and I’ve even seen some blue skies. We are heading out and going to search locally, I think. We are back and it is nearly a late bedtime again. We went to China Wang, a few blocks away. It was almost across the street from where we ate the pastries earlier. It was OK. It was good and filling. Afterwards we walked over to find the Swedish state alcohol store, Systembolaget. It turned out it was almost next door to the Pizza Hut where we ate last night, but we didn’t know what it was called or what to look for then. Clay got some beers and I got a couple small boxes of white wine. It is a short cruise that starts tomorrow on Oceania’s Marina. Then we stopped at 7-Eleven for Clay to get an ice cream bar and some peanut M&M’s. Lastly, we did something I had been making noise about ever since we bought our 3-day Access passes. We did a round-trip ride on Tram 7. It is about 20 minutes each way. We nearly had the tram to ourselves outbound. Coming back about 30 people boarded that were clearly leaving the amusement park at Tivoli. It was a nice ride outbound! We had to walk further than we thought. The Sergels Torg stop was closed due to construction so we had to walk all the way to Kungstradtgarden. This is the T station we have been riding to. I had told Clay as much time and walking as we’ve been doing to find our way out and away once we are above ground, we might just as well walk where we want to go! 

This is the last post from land! Tomorrow we’ll be posting from a ship again. The end is in sight! We only have about 2 more weeks before we’re back home.

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Stockholm, Day 1

Sunday, July 5, 2015

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Of course, we didn’t go to sleep last night until almost midnight. It almost looked dusk-like outside. I guess that is the difference in latitude! It may take us a while to get over yesterday and the literal 24-hour day of daylight and travel and messed up sleep schedule. People up there will tell you within minutes of meeting you if they’ve stayed through a “dark season” or more than one. Hardly anyone will tell you they’ve stayed up there through consecutive dark seasons or winters. To me, I would think the endless sunshine would be as hard to take as the endless night. Evidently, the endless night is a bigger than you’d expect tourism attraction. I guess I can see it. There is dog-sledding and snow-mobiling and cross-country skiing and the aurora borealis. If it was about a constant 10C in the height of summer, I can’t imagine how constant cold it would be!

This morning we slept in. Breakfast was an hour later at Freys Hotel because of it being Sunday, so we had nowhere to be early. Breakfast was a lot busier than when we were here before. It was mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are everywhere in Stockholm. I don’t know where there convention is actually being held but they are everywhere we’ve been in Stockholm. So, we enjoyed a hearty crowded breakfast buffet.

We had plans to buy transit passes at the T station across the street and go down to the harbor and take a HOHO boat tour. We planned to get off at the ABBA Museum stop and go to Skansen, the Swedish outdoor museum. We did that. It did not go as smoothly as planned, but we didn’t have any deadlines so the excessive wandering we did was not a loss. We wound up with tickets on the Grayline Green HOHO boat. You could also buy a combo bus/boat ticket. But we just stayed with the boat. It was 175SEK per person. We went all the way around once by changing boats at the beginning because we had lucked onto the one boat in the fleet without guiding. We wanted the guiding to refresh ourselves from our last orientation tour here. The second pass we got off and went to Skansen. I am sure we only saw about half of this huge park. It was amazing. It was the one place full of locals and not Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is sunny and hot here now. Clay is happy but also unhappy because of the ice problem and no A/C. Otherwise he prefers hot to cold. He was happy to get his shorts back out of his big suitcase! And he can wear his sandals outside (they were his indoor shoes up north!).   After Skansen, we went back to the dock to catch one of the last boats back to Gamla Stan. The HOHO boats stop running with a last boat at 4pm. If we weren’t on the last, it was only 15 minutes behind us. We got off at the first Gamla Stan stop mostly because it was rough in the harbor this afternoon and also because Clay booked us on Segway Tours at 1pm tomorrow in Gamla Stan and we wanted to be sure we knew where to find it. The sign said he booked us on the Sodermalm tour. Looking at his confirmation email, it says Stockholm Heights and Shores so that is probably right. He thought he was booking a tour of Gamla Stan. Oh well, we had a guided walking tour there the first day we were in Stockholm and now we have wandered it some more ourselves and we can do some more tomorrow before and after the Segway tour. We had dinner tonight sitting outside on the curb at Movitz, a bar/restaurant in Gamla Stan. We both had beef. Clay’s came with mashed potatoes and a strong beer. Mine came with fries and bernaise. I had a big glass of water with ice cubes! Clay had to have some. We had eaten snacks in Skansen. They were baking in wood burning ovens and stuff and that was what we had except for a Coke and a pear juice. We were thrilled when we found a water fountain and got drinks and refilled my water bottle. A guide leading a group of Indians, saw them staring at us (in thirst!) and pointed out that it was perfectly safe to drink the water here. About 18 of them lined up! So dinner was good and there was a cool breeze off the water since it was less than a block away. It was a nice atmospheric meal. We walked on down to the waterfront street and found the T stop and the Segway place a block from it. We took the T one stop back to the Central Station and then struggled to find our way back to the hotel since we took different train lines out and back. Those stations go for blocks underground and it seems like you never come up where you expected to. It was a good day.

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Flying from Longyearbyen to Stockholm

Saturday, July 4, 2015

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Before I leave Longyearbyen, I should talk about portholes. We had a porthole on Nordstjernen. We were happy to have it! But, when we were in rough seas, seawater came in! The first time we didn’t hear it and were surprised to find water filling the well of the porthole. The next time it happened I heard it slosh in and splash. It was a little alarming and messy, considering there was no housekeeping going on.

We were on the SAS flight to Stockholm through Oslo that departed at 4:40am. The hotel said they would have breakfast at 2am. It was basically bread with butter and jam or cucumbers and cold cuts and cheese. There was water, milk, juice and coffee. It wasn’t like we were really hungry at 2am! The bus was supposed to leave at either 2:30am or 2:45am. We were told both. We were early and the bus came and left at 2:15am. I have to assume there were later buses as we saw at least 3 as we drove around Longyearbyen making stops.

We had some low skies and overcast and even some rain, but blue skies came back yesterday. There were still brilliant blue skies at 2am this morning! In the beginning as we were still on Marina and the summer season progressed and we traveled further north, we noticed it never really got fully dark. But here now, it is fully light. There is no sign of dusk or dawn. The temperature doesn’t vary between day and night because the sun doesn’t set.

We got our bags checked and through security with no problems and had plenty of seating and room to wait with another flight on Norwegian air from the single gate. We walked across the tarmac again to board. The flight was over 2 hours long. Somehow coming from Tromso we weren’t expecting that.

In Oslo, things kind of fell apart. On the airplane, they announced that all arriving passengers in Oslo had to claim their luggage and go through customs and immigration even if the bags were checked through. The problem was that this was not true. Unfortunately, we had already stood in a passport control line for over a half-hour and only had an hour or so between flights. They eventually let the Americans go through the empty Europeans’ lines but that was when we hit the snag about not picking up luggage and had to be lead back. In any event, we rejoined others from our cruise and our flight that were still in the security line where we rejoined them. I don’t understand how we were not already secure as we had been herded from the plane (where we were already inside security) through passport control and back to security screening. Clay was randomly selected for a weapons search. That slowed us down some more and we wound up boarding with only 5 to 10 minutes to spare.

We got to Stockholm and picked up our luggage and walked right out with no passport control. Sweden may be in Schengen, but they aren’t checking any passports in our experience. We come here by sea, by air and left by air and nothing. We’ll see what happens when we leave by sea, but I don’t expect any changes.

We found our way to Arlanda Express and waited 7 minutes to board and 5 to leave. Twenty minutes later we were in Central Stockholm. Another 5 minutes and we were in Freys Hotel, where they claimed they did not have our reservations and were full up. I produced a printout of our reservations and problem solved. We asked about our held luggage. They had it, but the bad news was that they did not have a room ready for us. We added our luggage to the other luggage and went in search of lunch. We were already exhausted from being up since before 2am and the 2 flights, but the bigger problem was the heat! We had dressed for 10C in Longyearbyen and it was about 85F here. The sun was bright and the streets were packed. It turns out there is a Jehovah’s Witnesses convention in Stockholm now. The hotels and restaurants are packed. We picked the Kebab House down the street. Clay had expressed interest in it last time. For about $10 each we had about a 1 pound plate of shaved beef and French fries. It was a lot of food! They had fountain Cokes, so we each ordered a Coke Zero and got a plastic glassful with no ice!

We walked over to the mall where Clay got gelato before and we each had a cone sitting in the sun. We walked a ways down a shopping street, through an air conditioned mall and out to a busy main street one block off the waterfront. I couldn’t take anymore and started back to Freys. Clay asked what my plan was and I said to use the restroom and sit in their lobby until the room was ready. The guy recognized us when we walked back in and without asking names again, checked to see it they had a room ready for us. They did! We hauled luggage up and sort of reorganized and then put on a fan and laid down on top of the bed and passed out. Clay woke me up and insisted we dress and go out for dinner. I agreed if it was pizza. We had each seen a Pizza Hut in different places. We went to Clay’s because there was a 7-Eleven next door. There is an ice machine on the 1^st floor and he has big plans. I will be happy to have some cold water.

We each ordered a small thin crust pepperoni pizza. We should have shared! Clay had a big beer and I had a glass of water with some ice cubes in it, unfortunately it also had lemon in it. Clay put the lemon in his beer. Our waiter was a character. He was grilling all the people around us and us too. He knew the battleship USS North Carolina. Clay gave him and NC flag patch. We went to 7-Eleven and Clay got his Coke Zeros. We came back and split up. He went to the ATM and I came up with his drinks and went for ice. The ice machine was dry and not cold. I went downstairs to report it and the girl at the desk jumped down my throat about the machines overuse. I backed up and said I just wanted to make sure she knew it wasn’t working. I had expected to be offered ice from the bar/restaurant instead. No she said the janitor was off until Monday and after the machine had rested it would probably work again or get fixed by the janitor. Clay was livid. He felt for $250 a night we should have ice. I agreed. I told him to go down and tell her that. I had been so taken about by her verbal assault like I was the hundredth person in minutes to ask about ice. Clay pointed out that I probably was and that they should have solved the problem before I got there. I agreed and told him he was better prepared than I had been and to go down and demand ice. He did. She told him to go to the bar and ask for ice. They told him no. He just came back upstairs. I told him he needs to ask to speak to management then. I expect this will just end with him angry and iceless. He says he’ll rant on Trip Advisor. Of course, they will probably reply that it was a big convention weekend and he didn’t speak to management to give them a chance to resolve it. We’ll see.

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Disembarking Nordstjernen

Friday, July 3, 2015

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This was a civilized departure. Reception was not open late or early for bill settlement. Clay had to drop by several times before he could pay. I should say here that Hurtigruten never charged us for tips on the Coastal cruise and there was no tipping information on the Svalbard cruise either. We noticed the last day or so a couple of tip boxes on the reception desk, so we put some US dollars in there to tip the guides and the serving staff. There was no evident housekeeping (though a housekeeper was introduced this morning with the rest of the staff and crew). I did see her (or some woman) randomly cleaning public bathrooms. There were a lot of cabins on our deck 2 that did not have en suite baths. They shared a men’s and women’s toilets and there were maybe 4 large showers open to the hall. We saw those being cleaned. The first morning we were off the ship for over 2 hours after breakfast and there was a card hanging on our doorknob. One side for privacy and one for make up my room. I had seen some privacy ones out before, so before I left the ship, I put out please make up my room. That afternoon it was not made up, so we didn’t put the sign out again and we never saw a cabin being serviced and ours wasn’t. There was a basket of wet/used towels out in the stairwell along with a cart full of new towels. Clay said he saw people just going and swapping or taking towels and offered to do it, but we just got along with what we had. In any event, tipping has not been the expense we had budgeted for with Hurtigruten.

We placed our luggage in the midship area where we had picked it up on arrival. Breakfast was at 7:30am. It was the same buffet as usual. There was a predeparture meeting at 9am. They recapped the cruise and said they had blogged about it on www.spitsbergentravel.com (I looked and couldn’t find any daily log of our cruise as they described though). They gave us each a polar hero certificate for sailing across the 80^th N parallel. The 2 Finnish women who nude bathed in Kongsfjord also got special certificates.  We docked at 10am to find 2 or 3 other small cruise ships in Longyearbyen. We walked off and found our luggage on the dock and waited for the buses. We were at the Spitsbergen Hotel by 10:15am and they were not prepared for us even though the itinerary said we’d be here by 10:30am. Anyway, eventually he unlocked the spa/fitness room on the 1^st floor and had us drop our luggage in there. He told everyone (and had up a sign) that a baguette lunch would be provided in the lounge after 1pm. He told everyone that the previous guests did not have to check out before 1pm and our rooms were not promised until after 3pm. That was fine. Yann, our guide, had recommended the Spitsbergen Polar Expedition Airship Museum after our visit to King’s Bay and Ny-Alesund. It was a long walk. About as far apart in Longyearbyen as 2 places could be and still be walkable, but we had hours. And it wasn’t straight vertical climbs like the last couple of hikes! So we went. It cost about $21 for the 2 of us to enter. We spent more than an hour in there and if we had watched all of the archival video footage that they were playing, it would have been much longer. On the walk back we went into a shop we hadn’t reached the first time through and I finally found a long-sleeved t-shirt. It has a polar bear on it (which will remain a bit of a sore point with me!) and 78 degrees N. We got back after 1pm. Clay used the lobby computer to check in to our SAS flights tomorrow. We got our baguettes and some water and hot chocolate and found seats. While Clay was checking us in with SAS, I had gone to the reception desk and gotten us checked in the room. We were assigned room 106 again! After we ate, we came back down and got the luggage and moved in. We have some repacking to do before we can fly. We have a group farewell dinner tonight at 6pm. We have a light breakfast tomorrow morning at 2am. The bus for the airport leaves at either 2:30am or 2:45am. The flight leaves at 4:40am. It will be a long day tomorrow. We will have a few free days to recover in Stockholm where we hope to be reunited with the 2 big suitcases we left there at Freys Hotel where we will stay again. On July 7, we reboard Marina and the pace picks up again. As Clay pointed out yesterday, in 3 weeks we’ll be home! It is almost over!

I will assume that nothing of note will happen between now and tomorrow and stop here and go ahead and get caught up with publishing the past few day’s entries.

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Nordstjernen sailing, Day 3

Thursday, July 2, 2015

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On the map this morning there is a sleeping polar bear marked and the one Clay didn’t see marked. They were both on Smeerenburgfjord that we sailed back south through overnight. Apparently, we did sail into and out of Magdalenafjord at 2am. We slept right through. Evidently we stopped there to pick up four cross-country skiers and their 2 dogs. It was really rough again about 4 to 6am. Looking at the map, it must have been as we entered Kongsfjord to enter Krossfjorden and now we are in front of Lilliehookbreen, a large glacier. Evidently, they plan to give us zodiac trips to the glacier face and back at 9:30am. I got to breakfast and ate, but still feel shaky. It is raining outside and I haven’t decided if this is something I want to do or not.

There was an obligatory information meeting at 9am. There was some confusion because the speakers throughout the ship don’t all work or work well. It was lightly attended. We learned that the Lillihook glacier cruising this morning is to be in 30 minute zodiac rides per group. I can see it from here so will not aggravate my constitution by going. If I had never taken a zodiac ride before a big tidewater glacier face before I might go. But, I have, I don’t feel well and it is raining and I can see it perfectly well from here. Clay has gone. The other thing we learned in the meeting is that evidently everyone on the ship except us is claiming to have seen 2 polar bears last night. I know why I didn’t but I don’t know how Clay didn’t if he was there with them Oh, well. We had both seen polar bears before too. So, I guess in the end we didn’t really have a lot riding on this trip and therefore can’t be too disappointed.

I stayed onboard and skipped the morning glacier cruise in Polarcirkels. I saw it calve 3 times. I could hear it too. Clay said I didn’t miss anything. It was a huge expanse of beautiful blue ice! As I sat there, 3 women from I think 3 other countries sat in a seating cluster in the center of the room and discussed their “polar bear” sighting last night. It went something like this. Yes, I saw it. I did too. At first, I thought is it a bit of snow, is it a rock. No it is a polar bear. Well so for the 2^nd one I knew what to look for. Yes it is a polar bear. I don’t feel too bad now. In Churchill, we didn’t even count a sleeping bear a half mile off as a sighting!

Lunch was at 12:30. About the time we arrived at a bird cliff full of nesting kittiwakes and Brunnich's guillemots. I stayed inside while Clay went out front on the foredeck and jostled for a space. When he came back, he used the binoculars and looked out the nearly empty front lounge windows with me and said again, you didn’t miss anything.

We are back out to the mouth of the Kongsford where we had rough sailing early this morning. Guess what, we hit those big swells again as lunch was ending. I am about to get back in bed. I feel bad that we’ve come all this way for a special place like Svalbard and now I am hitting an endurance and functioning wall but I’ve had a good long run for the past 58 days! I think we must be the only people I know who’ve been to Svalbard and not seen a polar bear!

We will have another landing this afternoon near a bird cliff. A final stop around 8 to 10pm where we will dock at Ny-Alesund.

The landing was not exactly as advertised, again! In Barentsburg, no one announced at the mandatory information meeting that there were 270 stairs to go up to get to join the guided tour. Today, no one said if you come ashore you have to hike straight up to the top of the bird cliff to look down. I really didn’t care about seeing kittiwakes nesting from above! The good news is that on the more or less vertical hike we saw 4 reindeer, a rock ptarmigan and 2 arctic foxes. We also saw 2 glaciers and across the fjord, the village we’ll visit tonight, Ny-Alesund.

Dinner tonight is duck. So whether I am up and around then or not, I guess I’ll miss dinner again tonight. More good news. I had an excellent appetizer in lieu of scallops so I was fed already. It was fried brie with raspberry sauce and iceberg lettuce with enormous toasted pine nuts, some alfalfa sprouts and dried capers with a strawberry. Clay had a few tastes of things on the plate, but I ate most of it and I never finish anything! Dinner was duck, but it was a piece of roasted duck breast, a thin slice of chicken breast wrapped in prosciutto and a half a potato with some veggies in a brown gravy. I ate the chicken and Clay ate my duck. For dessert, we had strawberries in chocolate sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I felt very well fed.

By the time dinner was over, it was time for the mandatory meeting on going ashore at Ny-Alesund. Ny-Alesund is a former mining company town. I guess it is still owned by the mining company, but now it is a center for international research stations. There are maybe a dozen different countries with researchers there. There is a well-researched colony of barnacle geese. They had a lot of fuzzy little chicks. It is also a Roald Amundson hot spot as this is the launch site of aerial exploration of the North Pole. It was a nice final visiting spot. We had a guided tour with Yann our normal onboard English language group guide. He has been very informative and helpful. His particular area of expertise seems to be in poop. We have examined a lot of poop! We had about an hour of free time in Ny-Alesund. We read a few of the historical marker signs and walked to a polar bear warning sign. Evidently they have more of a polar bear problem here than in Longyearbyen. We had time to shop and to see the northernmost post office as well as the northernmost pub. Ny-Alesund is at just under 79 degrees North.

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Nordstjernen sailing Svalbard, Day 2

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

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We slept well last night, all things considered. I have about 18 to 24 inches of headroom up on the top bunk and there is not much of a rail to keep one in bed. In addition, we have found it too hot in the cabin and it was even hotter up there near the ceiling.

A few comments about this cruise vs. the Hurtigruten coastal cruise. Hurtigruten has as their bread and butter that coastal express cruise north and south bound along the Norwegian coast. It was an unpleasant experience. Even though this ship is older and smaller, the spaces are better designed and thus more functional. Internet access was better on Nordkapp and seems to not exist on here. Also there is the fact that this is not a Hurtigruten cruise. In fact, Hurtigruten sold Nordstjernen a few years ago. It seems it is owned by Vestland Marine now. Spitsbergen Travel is the company putting on this cruise. They are either a partner or at least partly owned by Hurtigruten. Spitsbergen Travel owns the Spitsbergen Hotel where we began and will end. According to their uniforms, all the guides onboard are employed by Spitsbergen Travel. The complimentary insulated mugs they gifted us are logoed with Spitsbergen Travel. So, it seems Hurtigruten has very little to do with it other than advertising and booking it. That would probably explain the ever-refilled pitchers of complimentary ice water available onboard!

This ship is so old that I can’t imagine that it meets SOLAS standards today. I could only find one metal/magnetic surface in our cabin and it was the bathroom door. The outer door is solid wood. There is a lot of wood exposed and I have to assume a lot unexposed. I have never sailed on a ship without metal cabins walls!

The seas are rougher today and it feels colder. There is more snow on the mountains. Clay took a shower last night when the seas were calm as we were still in a fjord. I took mine this morning in open seas. It was a different experience. There is a shower curtain that curves across a portion of the bathroom floor with a drain in the corner of the floor. Clay had put a hand towel down in front of the sink to keep part of the floor dry. That towel spent the night on the floor in the corner by the drain so it was still mostly damp this morning. By his example, I re-spread it outside the curtain in front of the sink again. Problem! The floor stayed level when he showered. I got in and turned on the water. The water was pooling in the corner by the drain, then the ship listed hard to port and a wave of water rolled over the tops of my feet and under the shower curtain and across the floor. Forget the towel absorbing splatter! Clay had told me that he dropped a baby aspirin in the bathroom and didn’t find it. He assumed it had gone down the sink. Wrong! I don’t know where it was but it came back under my feet in one of the many waves of shower water I experienced this morning. Needless to say, I had a bigger post-shower cleanup problem than Clay did. He asked how it was. He had stayed in the cabin he said to hear me fall if I toppled over in there so he could help me. It really was that rough that it was hard to stay upright. He said, well I didn’t hear you fall. I told him about the waves of water across the bathroom floor and his aspirin being washed out from somewhere. He thought about it and then laughed and said that yeah he could see how that would work and he didn’t have that problem.

We had breakfast at 7:30am. Clay went with me to hunt for Internet and we’ve decided there just isn’t any even though there is a wi-fi network we can log on to. Breakfast was a buffet. We have our first zodiac excursions this morning. We have arrived into the fjord yet. Our destination to go ashore is Mushamna. I have no idea what we are looking to see there. We have an information meeting about it at 9am. 9:30am we are supposed to start going ashore. We have been divided into 6 groups, mostly by language. There are 15 in the English boat. There are 2 Norwegian boats. A Finnish boat and a German boat. There is also a boat with people who opted to join Alonzo, the professional wildlife photographer who is onboard. I think I need to wear long underwear and waterproof pants ashore as it is so cold and windy but I have been in the lounge where they hold the meetings and it is too hot to go dressed like that. I hope we have time to change clothes between the 9am meeting and the 9:30am departure! If not, I’ll either be very cold or else late!

So, at the obligatory meeting we learned what we already suspected. The wind was blowing too hard and in the wrong direction to allow our landings. So we are leaving Mushamna and sailing an hour further into and across the Woodfjord to Texas Bar. They originally picked some other place but then the wind changed direction! So here it is shortly after 10am and I have not heard them call the Germans yet. We are in group 3. So it will be a while yet. They have 6 zodiacs or polarcirckel boats. They say they will put 7 people in each boat plus a guide in each, or in every other one. We are to stick to each other in our groups ashore in case of polar bears. They will be scanning ashore from the bridge and if any polar bears are spotted we won’t make land. If they miss the bears and they see us we are to remain calm and quiet as move as a group back to the zodiac and follow instructions as each guide will have a flare gun to frighten a polar bear and a rifle if needed. I’d still really like to see a polar bear here! We have another landing further in this fjord at 4pm. I don’t remember the name of the place, but I’ll get it later. We have Moffen Island and the 80^th parallel to look forward at 10pm before we head back south to Longyearbyen. We are scheduled to sail into Magdalenafjord at 3am but without a landing. I don’t know why. Is it just for timing things or is there actually something to see in there. Should we get up for it? I’ll let you know.

We got ashore and I can tell you that it may have been wind-chill but it felt much colder than the 5C that the lead guide told us to expect. I was OK. I wore a lightweight pair of long underwear, fleece pants and waterproof pants, 1 pair of medium weight socks and the Trondheim 199NOK boots. On top I had the long underwear top, a French terry top, a hoodie and a rain jacket. I had on a single lightweight pair of gloves and a headband and both jacket hoods. Only my face ever felt cold and I did have on a scarf that I could have arranged to pull up to my nose if I’d thought of it. So Texas Bar is the name of a trapper’s hut that was built in the early 1900’s by a well-known trapper who overwintered more than anyone else. I think our guide said something over 40 winters over the guy’s lifetime. He evidently built dozens of these cabins over that time so he could travel around to where the animals might be. That and a hilltop rock cairn and some pretty big tidewater glaciers were all there were to be seen. According to the computerized map they display in the lounge there was a polar bear sighted in the area on June 28, 2015. We found signs that ducks or geese had been feeding there recently. We found reindeer hoof prints and poop. But the only animals we saw well were birds. Once as we were on a hilltop ashore talking about errant boulders, I watched a single seal swimming along up and down in front of a glacier, but it was very far away and I soon lost him as someone stepped in front of me. We were ashore about 2 hours. Lunch was moved back to 1pm since our shore time was moved back. We sailed in gentle circles in front of the glaciers for an hour or more during lunch. I think our guide said the main glacier was Monacobreen.

We sailed on down Woodfjord to a side arm fjord, Bjornfjord where we were dressed and ready for our 4pm zodiac landing or scenic sail. We weren’t clear which. The good news was that we were out on the back deck early and the wildlife photographer onboard spotted reindeer ashore and we got to see them. After we got the news that they had decided it was too windy to put the zodiacs in the water again and we turned around and started to sail out, I was looking for the reindeer again. I was scanning with the binoculars and came on a big cloud of swarming birds over the water so I stopped. I saw a big black shape with a small black pointy fin surface and go back down. I yelled whale to Clay and he looked in time to see it happen again and he yelled humpback. We both thought it looked like a humpback. Soon others joined us and quite a few people could see the cluster of birds and so saw the final blow and black hump surface. The guides and the wildlife photographer showed up several minutes later but the whales had vanished along with the birds. I don’t know how they got out of that dead end without us seeing them go, or stay! The guide and photographer assured us what we had seen had to be a minke whale because they are known in the area and a humpback sighting would be too rare. We don’t know because we didn’t get any photos and we don’t have Internet so it isn’t like we can look up minke vs humpbacks and tell. Anyway, we missed our second outing but got reindeer and whales. So now we are sailing for Moffen Island. Originally we had been scheduled to arrive at 10pm. Now we should be earlier. We went to one of the guide’s informal lounge talks about polar bears at 5pm. There was another guide to speak at 6pm but the first 40 minute talk was too painful for me to take a chance sitting through another. I have no idea who the next guide was or what the topic was. (Oh, we’ve just missed another announcement so I went up and asked and it was for the next lecture on Svalbard’s Weather Wars. The Nazis as well as the Allies wanted control of Svalbard and Northern Norway for weather stations because being able to predict the weather coming from the North was critical to winning WWII. We did already know that, so we’re still skipping it.

Dinner is at 7pm. Moffen Island is a protected sanctuary for walrus breeding colonies. There should be a good chance of seeing walruses at a distance. We are only allowed so close for so long due to the protected status. Also this is our chance to sail north of 80 degrees. Then we turn around and start sailing back down to Longyearbyen. Originally, we were scheduled to sail into Magdalenafjord at 3am. Now we should be there earlier. It is supposed to be a scenic beauty and historically significant as a center for whale processing. I don’t know what to expect to see.

Scenic beauty is on overload here. If you love fjords, come to Norway. North America has them, South America has them, but Norway wins hands down at fjords!

We crossed the 80N parallel just before 7pm. They served champagne on the back deck outside and the captain blew the horn when we crossed. In minutes, they announced that Moffen Island was dead ahead and there were walruses. Everyone went forward. They let us out on the skip deck where they keep the polarcirkel boats. Moffen is just a small flat sandy spit of land. It was covered with driftwood and some darker logs that were sleeping walruses. As close as we were and even with binoculars, I could not identify them as walrus. I did see one scratch with a flipper, but none lifted their heads so I could see their faces. I believe they said mating season was around May. I assume these were all gestating females.

The bad news is that we had to cross some really rough open ocean to get there. I had been upstairs earlier to find out what the announcements were that we cannot hear in our cabin. It was nothing important and I cannot even remember now what it was. But, I got washing machined around the stairwell and got sea sick. I made it up back and outside for the crossing ceremony. I made it up front to see the walrus logs. We sat there and rocked and rolled and I got sicker. I didn’t know how long we’d be there but dinner was being served at 7pm and I knew we had to sail back across. I went to bed with a sick sack and took some drugs to knock myself out. Clay went to dinner alone. He went to the 9pm photography talk. He came back and showered for bed when he could hear another announcement outside. He dressed and walked up upside and they were saying there was a polar bear. The professional photographer showed Clay his photo and where to look on land. Clay confessed that he didn’t see a polar bear in the photo or on land but photographed the spot where he was told the bear was. Still didn’t see it. Evidently it was a very shy ice bear. They said maybe 10 minutes later that a big male walked around in great view but I guess a lot of people like Clay had already left by then. It is too bad they don't have a better or fully functional public address system. I mean this is what we all came for and it was the name of the cruise and when polar bears were found, we were not all notified. 

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