SUMMARY Another lovely “At Sea” day. Warm enough to sit on our balcony. Instead of brunch today, there is a massive “barbecue” lunch set up around the pool. It’s impossible to be good when confronted with SO many delicious looking options. Did penance in the form of a long walk around the track above the pool and a session at the gym. Dinner in the main dining room and the Disco show in the Cabaret Lounge. - Karen
DETAIL Of late we’ve been in ports with lots of cool, gray days. Now we’re back for another day at sea and we’re having very sunny weather, gentle blue skies, a delightful temperature and almost no breeze to speak of. There’s no land or other ships in view. The seas are calm with swells under half a meter. If you told us we were in the Caribbean, we would have no way of knowing otherwise.
Being at sea means we have no shore excursion lined up. So we enjoy a lazy morning, having breakfast in the buffet dining room with strawberries we bought yesterday. So good.
Some days at sea they have a big, fancy brunch in the main dining room, but not always and not today. The fancy thing they do have planned is an outdoor BBQ lunch by the pool. They clear out the dining tables normally set up there and set up stations for so many types of food. More than we need and lots that don’t go together. We don’t mind. We try to be good but also to sample some new things. Small portions where we can.
Other things that typically happen on At Sea days are talks in the Cabaret Lounge. Today experts will be talking about tectonic plates shifting and how that forms the ever changing layout of the continents and the landmass shapes. They also talk about the northern lights, but we miss both of these two briefings. What we do attend is a talk about the cities we’ll be visiting above the arctic circle.
These places sound fascinating (at this time of year) and we makes some plans for places to check out (like the WW II museum in Svolvær.) Among other things they’re reported to have the condoms the German soldiers took with them (always a careful people) emblazoned with a swastika. This is something we think we have never seen.
We hear about the Norwegian Roald Amundsen who reached the South Pole first, amongst a number of explorers vying to be first. Other explorers didn’t make it first, and in fact many died in the effort. How then did Amundsen pull it off? Cold blooded planning. They knew they would need their sled dogs to help transport the supplies, and then later they knew they’d need to eat those same dogs to succeed in the harsh conditions. They did and they came in first. Many in the audience didn’t like that story.
We have dinner again in the big dinning room. We get a table for two, by the window. For the first time on this cruise they seat us on the port (left) side of our ship. But as we’re in open water it doesn’t really matter which side of the vessel you’re on, we won’t see anything (but water) anyway. By chance at the table next to us they seat Lisa and Greg. We met them on our first day on the ship and know they’re from “Dripping” (Dripping Springs, a quickly growing community just southwest of Austin).
There’s talk about this cruise and about everyone’s cruising experience. We ask if they have plans for their next cruise? Yes. They’re going to sell their house and travel the world (by rail) for a year, maybe more. My goodness, that’s definitely a plan. They don’t have a blog or instagram page yet for us to follow their adventures. They’re considering to do YouTube videos, which is a very common, easy way to do this.
We cap off the night in the Cabaret Lounge for the 8:15 show. It’s the ship’s singers and dancers doing disco. It’s well attended and entertaining. At nine we’re shuffling off to our cabin for bed. In the morning we should be 100 km further along, north of the Arctic circle for the first time.
Photos
With the views (or lack thereof), temperatures, and sunshine, one would be hard pressed to know you weren't in the Caribbean.
The oil platform might be a give-away as to where we are. This may have been the only other human made thing we saw all day. We didn't see any land, either!
At breakfast I augment my bran flakes cereal with the ship's fresh fruit, prunes we brough from France, and strawberries purchased here in Norway.
Soon it's time to eat again. A BBQ on the deck, by the pool. Lots of (partially cooked) protien getting finished over the hot, smokey coals.
These two pigs were cooked in the oven, we think. We saw at least two other similarlly preparred pigs being wheeled out. For sure there were pigs aboard the ship. Hopefully we weren't counted in their number.
At one of the Enrichment talks we learn about the cities above the artic circle we're scheduled to visit. Half of these we'll be hitting on our way northward and the rest on our return journey south.
Back in our room our cabin steward, Joel (two sylables, please) ensures we always have plenty of water. We're currious to know what he's heard about, you know, "those Americans" and their habits.
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