Gorgeous Geiranger

by | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized

WARNING! This is a LOOOONNNNGGGG post. Feel free to read it in two or three parts. But there are a lot of beautiful pictures of Norway.

As we were ending our day last night, I told Kathleen that while I still thought Scotland was the most naturally beautiful place in the world, Norway had to be a close second. This has been an amazing trip so far because we have been able to visit both these places and see their incredible beauty. We had been impressed with Norway so far, but when we sailed into Geiranger that went over the top—this place is incredible.

If you have never sailed into or out of Geiranger on the Geiranger fjord, you need to do it. The night before we arrived, our wonderful cruise director André had told us that the sail-in would begin up the fjord at 4:30 a.m. But he reminded everyone that we would also sail out in the afternoon, and it would be much better weather then. Of course, the photographer and writer in me wanted both. So there I was at 4:30 a.m., standing outside the Explorer’s Lounge in the rain, taking pictures.

As any good photographer will tell you if you have a chance to shoot something twice—in a different light—do it! So I did. And I was glad I did because natural beauty comes in many forms, both wet and dry, dark and light and getting to shoot Geiranger fjord was worth getting up early. I am going to shut up now and post the photos of the sail-in, and you can see what I mean. 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…

A slight problem here. WordPress (the software I use to create this site) won’t let me add more photos to that gallery. So here are more, starting with The Seven Sisters.

One other photo I want you to see so I can reference it later is this one of the village of Geiranger. Pay special note to the waterfall that flows down to the town. If you look closely (you can click the photo to enlarge it), just to the right of the waterfall is a staircase. We were told it has anywhere from 321 to 384 steps. My brother Steve and I climbed it a few hours later—more about that, with photos below.

Our morning was planned for us as we had signed up for the included shore excursion, “Panoramic Geiranger.” So at 9:10 a.m., we piled onto our “luxury motor coach” and were off up the mountain to see the incredible views. Sadly, some of the folks who had the early excursions saw nothing but clouds. Clouds from the bottom, the middle and the top. Which means they basically saw nothing. Those of us with the later excursion had better luck.

Our first stop was a gorgeous alpine lake at the very top of a long set of hairpin-turn switchbacks (which I kept my eyes shut for—pretended to be asleep—don’t tell anyone, but I am afraid of heights). There we were, above the clouds. The photo at the very top of this post is of that lake. There is not a lot else to take photos of at the top—a little gift shop, pay toilets and a restaurant.

Then, it was back down the hill to a spot that overlooked Geiranger. When the “luxury motor coach” first pulled over, we were still socked in with clouds, but by the time we had been there about 10 minutes, it cleared up. YAHOO! Here are a couple of shots I got from this stop.

After this, we went down the switchbacks (I kept my eyes closed again) to the bottom. I breathed a sigh of relief when we got there because I thought we were going back to the ship…but no…we were going up another set of switchbacks that were even worse. And when we got to the top to take pictures, we were in a cloud/fog and couldn’t see a thing. So much for that. Once off the second hill, we were off the “luxury motor coach” and back on Venus for lunch. After lunch, Jamie and Kathleen went back to their respective staterooms to nap, and Steve and I climbed the staircase next to the waterfall. It was an amazing walk, as you can see from my photos. 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…

After we were back down from the waterfall staircase, Steve and I  did a little shopping (or tried to) and went back to the ship (Geiranger has a cool floating dock that extends into the fjord, and you get to walk off the ship and in to dry land in about five minutes—there’s a picture of it in the slides below.) About an hour later, as we headed up to dinner at the World Cafe, the captain announced we were leaving Geiranger and that the sail-out would be much different than the sail-in early that morning. If you don’t believe him, here are the photos I got as we sailed up the fjord.

That’s about it for Geiranger. As you can tell, it was quite the day. We had every kind of weather you can have (except snow—thankfully), and we got to see the best of the fjords in the best of ways. The next day we would be in Bergen. We had heard amazing things about Bergen but our first day there would turn out to be the worst day (for me) of the entire trip. More soon.

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.  —Mikhail Lermontov

AAAGGGHHHH!!!!

by | Jun 26, 2024 | Uncategorized

This is to let you all know that I am not taking too long in putting up my next post…the internet on this ship is. As I mentioned before, the internet speeds on this ship are atrocious, but I have managed to work through that. Today is the worst. I’m trying to understand why, as we have sailed south, where Starlink is supposed to be better. But as you can see above, it is only getting worse. I have a literal TON of photos to upload for you from incredible Geiranger, but this morning, over two hours, I have been able to upload precisely three photos. And it isn’t the speed that makes me want to pull my hair out; it’s the inconsistency. Yesterday afternoon, when finishing my Bodø post, I was able to upload all the photos in less than five minutes. Today…three in two hours. Yesterday, in the late afternoon, everyone returned from shore and was online. It’s 5:00 a.m. this morning, and no one is up and online, so what’s the problem?

I want to make it perfectly clear that this is NOT Viking’s fault. They are providing me with a solid connection on their end. It’s the connection from their end to the internet that is horrid. And for that, I blame Starlink (Viking’s internet provider) and, ultimately, Elon Musk ?. I like blaming him for everything ?.

So, I will ask your indulgence for a couple of days. I haven’t come this far to quit on you now. Here’s the plan. We arrive in Bergen later this morning (Thursday, June 27). We have all of today to tour Bergen and then we are back on the ship for tonight and will disembark tomorrow.

At that point, Kathleen and I will move to the Moxy Hotel in Bergen tomorrow night (Friday, June 28). Then, I should have great WiFi as I will be connected to an actual hard line connection and not Starlink’s ssssllllooooowwww satellite. So, I should be able to upload my Geiranger post, followed by Bergen. The next day (Saturday, June 29), we fly to London from Bergen. We are spending the night at London Heathrow and flying home around noon the next day (Sunday, June 30). Sometime before we fly home, I hope to get Bergen and disembarkation online. Then. my goal is to write one final wrap-up to the cruise during our nine-hour flight back to Seattle and post it on Sunday night or Monday morning, and that should be it.

So please stick with me and know that I want to write and post, but all I can do is text-only stuff. Nothing else will upload. Have a great day. Time for us to go enjoy Bergen and our last full day onboard the wonderful Viking Venus.

Bodø is (kind of) Boring

by | Jun 26, 2024 | Uncategorized

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

A Long and Beautiful Day in Tromsø

by | Jun 24, 2024 | Uncategorized

Your favorite travel blogger (hopefully, that is me) really cares about you getting the complete travel experience. Since I am currently blogging a cruise called “Into the Midnight Sun.” I thought I better ensure you got a photo of…the midnight sun. And there it is…right above this paragraph. Before we went to bed on Saturday night (after leaving Honningsvåg), I set a silent alarm on my watch to wake up at midnight. When it went off, I checked outside our stateroom window to see if we were clouded over. If we were, I was going back to bed. But no such luck. The sun was up. It’s not high in the sky, but it’s definitely still up.

So I got up, got dressed, went up to the front deck outside the Explorer’s Lounge, and took this shot and one other I like a little more (but this one fits the page better), then I went back to our stateroom, got out of my clothes and went back to bed. But not before setting another silent alarm for 5:00 a.m. because that was when the Captain had said we would be sailing into the beautiful area that leads to Tromsø. Was he ever right? I have taken around 300-400 photos on almost every other day of the cruise. Between midnight and 9:30 Saturday night, when I went to bed, I shot 1,131 photos. Don’t worry; I am not going to make you look at all of them. I have reduced the total to around 85 and will break it up into smaller groups. I wish there weren’t so many, but I could not cover the city and the beautiful weather without them.

So here’s the first batch from our sail-in. The day was remarkable. The weather was incredible. I will try to put captions on all of them, but some need no explanation. 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…

The sail-in went on for quite a while. The captain had said in his noon announcement the day before that we would cross under the Tromsø bridge at approximately 6:00 a.m., and he was right. We did. Here are the photos of that crossing.

Tromsø is on an island. As we approached the island, there are two bridges, and the harbor was on the other side of both of them. Unfortunately, a ship the size of Viking Venus can’t fit under the older bridge, so we went under the new bridge and then had to sail all the way around the island to get to the port almost underneath the lower and older bridge. But that was OK with me because it provided me with even more photographic subjects.

After we docked, it was time for our (you guessed it) our “luxury motor coach” panoramic tour of Tromsø. This would be one of the best we have had. We jumped on the bus with our guide, Mirko Maiutto (sounds Italian to me), and we were off to the University in Tromsø (the Fighting Ravens), where we stopped for 40 minutes or so to watch a movie in their planetarium. Usually, this would have put me to sleep, but this one was about the aurora borealis, and we loved it. It was made by a local Tromsø filmmaker, and he did an outstanding job; their planetarium is very cool, with wonderful seats.

After that, it was time to tour the rest of the islands. Mirko was an excellent guide, and we learned a lot. You will have to read the captions on the photos to see what we did. 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…

After our tour with Mirko, we had some lunch, and I headed out for a long walk. I toured the harbor area, found the start of the old bridge and decided to walk across to the Arctic Cathedral to get some close-ups. Then, I walked back to the downtown area to get a closer look at some of the things we had seen on our panoramic “luxury motor coach” tour. It turned into a two-hour, six-mile walk, but the weather was so beautiful it barely felt like it. Here are the shots I got on that walk. Enjoy.

Sadly, I took several beautiful panoramic shots in Tromsø. Still, after combining them in Photoshop (one of my panoramic shots is usually composed of more than ten individual photos stitched together), they are just too large to upload with the current internet connection. The one at the top of this page is just one of the nine I wish I could include in this post.

That about does it for Tromsø. As you can see, it was a BEAUTIFUL day, and we had a wonderful time. Tomorrow, I will tell you all about the city of Bodø. The only hiccup this week is that Kathleen has now caught a cold. She keeps telling me it’s not my cold she caught because it has been too long since I had it, but at least I am over mine and can fully empathize with her.

Adventure is just bad planning.  —Roald Amundsen

Cold, Crowded Honningsvåg

by | Jun 23, 2024 | Uncategorized

Sorry I was missing in action yesterday. Saturday in Honningsvåg was one busy day, and Sunday in Tromsø was even crazier. Thankfully, tomorrow is Bodø, so there will be less to see and do (at least it sounds like it so far), and I should have time to catch up.

Today is all about Honningsvåg. On our last sea day, we crossed the Arctic Circle (I have a certificate to prove it ?—for non-cruisers, they give you one of these every time you cross the Arctic Circle or Equator, etc.—we have a bunch of them), and on Saturday, we arrived in Norway, the 53rd country we have visited. It’s hard to believe that we have been to that many places since Kathleen and I met 27 years ago, but we have!

Since this is our first time in Norway, this is a very appropriate place to visit. Honningsvåg is the home of the North Cape, commonly called “the furthest north point in Europe.” It has since been proven that one more spot, a big rock further north, is the furthest northern point in Europe. But don’t worry, I got a photo of that one too.

The weather that day started windy and very cold, especially for those from warmer climates. As we sailed in, I was on the deck with my camera and got some shots I will share below. We were signed up for the “included” excursion, a panoramic tour on a “luxury motor coach” out to the North Cape to see the continent’s end. On the way, we saw reindeer, lots of people camping on rocks and many hills without a single tree. Once there, we had about an hour to take photos and then back on the “luxury motor coach” to return to the ship. Here are the pics from that morning. You know the drill…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…

After our excursion, Steve and Jamie went into the village, and Kathleen and I went back to the ship for lunch and a nap for Kathleen while I went back out exploring. Since we had arrived, the village had become VERY crowded. There were now six (SIX) ships in the harbor. It wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds because two of the ships were fairly small (under 200 passengers). Another was owned by a new single-ship cruise line from France, and their only ship was there (the old Holland American Maasdam), with 1000 passengers; there was us (Viking Venus) with 960 passengers and then Sky Princess arrived with a little more than 4,000 passengers. All of this in a town with a little more than 4,000 people. If you have been on an Alaskan cruise, it felt like Skagway on a four-ship day.

It made for a crowded day in the village, but the weather changed, and it became a glorious day for hiking, so I set off to walk through town and then hike up the hill above the village. With the better weather and the chance to take better photos, it turned into a great day. Here are the shots I got of the village and from the hill. You know what to do.

By the end of the day, we had great weather for sailing away from Honningsvåg, and I was able to get some pics of that as well. I would say our day there was a good one. I got to take a scenic bus ride, hike a hillside, and visit a beautiful Norwegian village that seemed to handle all the people, keeping them mostly in the downtown core. Once I had walked a ways and run into the antique car festival, the crowds just melted away to an idyllic Saturday afternoon. Here are the sail away photos. I am posting most of these landscapes because I love the light. These are just beautiful patterns that were shaped by an amazing combination of sun and clouds on beautiful backdrops. 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…

I forgot to mention one last thing. This cruise is called Journey to the Midnight Sun. Honningsvåg was the first place we truly saw the midnight sun. From mid-June to mid-July, the sun never sets. It can be very disconcerting for those who don’t live here. Your body is tired, but it’s also telling you that the sun is up; you don’t need sleep now. I will talk more about this in my next post because any photo taken at midnight belongs on its own day.

In Norway, everyone knows everyone, and everyone is very supportive of each other. If there is anyone new or a new song is coming out, everyone will probably know about it. —Astrid S.