Monday, we woke up sailing into Bodø. The day before, during his daily announcements, the captain warned us that on his last four attempts at mooring at Bodø, they had not been able to dock due to either high winds or waves. The channel that leads into the protective harbor is just about big enough to fit Venus. Anything bigger has to tender, which I think with high winds and waves would not be a good idea.

We were lucky enough to be able to get through the tiny break in the sea wall and dock. But then what? What is there to do in Bodø? The answer is…not much. There was one included excursion, and that was a three-minute ride in a “luxury motor coach” to the Bodø Aviation Museum, where you were dropped off for three hours before your bus was back to return you to the ship. Kathleen and I had already decided to skip it. In Seattle, we have a place called the Boeing Museum of Flight. While the others who went told us they had an actual U-2 spy plane and an old cargo plane you could walk through as long as someone wasn’t hogging it, we countered with our Museum of Flight, where you can walk through Air Force One that LBJ was sworn in on and flew JFK’s body home from Dallas, the Concorde, a Space Shuttle simulator, the first Boeing 747 ever built and a lot more. We seem to go there every couple of years with the grandkids. So we decided to stay on board so Kathleen could do laundry, nurse her cold a little, and I could get my post on Tromsø finished.

I do need to mention that sailing into the port was kind of cool, and I got lucky and saw it coming. Kathleen was getting dressed, and I was looking out our stateroom window when I saw some men dressed as 17th-century Norwegian soldiers firing a cannon and making a general noise to welcome us into the harbor. I have that and some other photos from the sail-in for you right here. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Did I mention the weather was terrible? We had rain on and off since we sailed in, so after I worked on my Tromsø post for a while and got it online with all those photos, we had lunch. The rain had stopped for a short time, so I decided to go out and take a walk and some photos to see what I could discover about Bodø and why Viking chose to make this a port stop.

One of the first things I realized is that Bodø does not get many cruise ships. I could tell this from two indicators. First, as I left the ship, we were moored on a reasonably busy road. In the first five minutes, I was off the ship, I saw at least six cars pull over on this busy road so the drivers could get out and take a photo of the ship. Some took multiple photos and selfies with the ship in the background.

As I walked, I saw the second indicator that they don’t get too many cruise ship visits—there was not a single souvenir store anywhere near the port. Not one. There were no magnets, postcards, tee shirts, troll statues or anything else. It’s like they were not expecting us (not that I need a souvenir shop). No wonder the soldiers at the fort were so excited. Maybe they had never seen a cruise ship before. But if Bodø is going to attract more ships, they will have to find more things for those people to do.

That said, I had a nice walk and took a bunch of pics of the harbor, and here they are:

That was about it. I did take a couple of more photos of Kathleen on our verandah (while I was off the ship). We do this just about every cruise to see where our stateroom is from the outside. Here’s a four-stateroom zoom-in.

That about covered our day in Bodø. It was relaxing for us, and those who visited the Aviation Museum said it was “just fine.” They did mention that on the three-minute ride to and from the museum, they would have loved someone to tell them something about Bodø, but there was only the driver, who spoke little English—not a guide on site.

“I want to travel. Maybe I’ll end up living in Norway, making cakes.” – Eva Green