This is not our ship, but we traveled for three nights and days on one just like it. Joy and I were lucky enough to have a room with a view … of the lifeboats. A lovely construction zone orange vista. That’s okay, we didn’t spend much time there.
The Hurtigruten’s Coastal Steamer adventure begins near the Russian border and ends in Bergen. The trip takes 11 days and each day one ship leaves from each end. We were fortunate to be able to jump aboard in the middle where there is no open sea to deal with and there is still plenty to see before the landscape flattens out as the ships sails toward Bergen. We sailed from Tromsø to Molde. The trip according to the Norwegian broadcasting system is 134 hours long. They did a “slow” TV show that records the entire voyage which has been condensed to 5 minutes and can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXKATEeB64U. This particular voyage was not made in mid-summer as it gets dark at night in the video. It is fun to watch, but I like my pictures better <g>.
We boarded the ship at 12:30 am and stayed up taking pictures for a while until the weather moved in and it was just too gray to bother to be out. Besides, it was well past bedtime!
There are quite a few of these photos so I will call some out and put others in a little captioned video for you.
This is my favorite shipboard photo. It was taken in the Lofoten Islands, another important area during WWII. We were also lucky enough to find wool from the Lofoten Islands in three shades of gray. You’ll hear about that project when it gets on the loom.
One of the fun things they do onboard ship is to have a ceremony when crossing the Arctic Circle, which this globe marks. The ceremony involves a lot of laughter and consumption of a spoonful of cod liver oil followed by a glass of champagne to wash it down. At 9 a.m. Well, I did cross the Circle (for the second time), but I do not have the souvenir spoon from downing the castor oil to prove it! Eeew.
We had plenty of time to knit on board and scout out knit shops when we were in port. Probably a good thing it was evening and this yarn shop was not open. The ball of wool is from the Lofoten Islands and Joy made this beautiful ball using only her thumb as a nøstepinne. The group of knitters are in the “relaxing lounge” aboard ship. We kind of took over the area most of the day and into the evening. It was a very pretty space with homey decorations on the wall, doilies on the tables and even tables with jigsaw puzzles in partial stages of completion. My orange hand painted knitting was obviously not “conversational knitting” as I frogged the entire thing when I got back home. Oh well, I certainly had plenty of reasons for distractions, the scenery and even a few folks requiring knitting help.
Parting Shot: This yummy looking ice cream may not be so appealing after I tell you what it is. Two scoops, one was beer and the other fish. The beer was good. The fish had chunks. Nuff said.
joansheridan 