Our own Amazing Race…30 Days…3 countries…2 very tired people

by | Jul 1, 2024 | Uncategorized

This is the last post of a 30-day trip. It is going to be written over a very long day or two. I am starting this while sitting in the lobby of the Hilton Garden Inn at London Heathrow. It is 6:08 a.m. here in London. We flew in here from Copenhagen on SAS yesterday, and we will fly home at 12:45 p.m., arriving at SeaTac in Seattle at 2:30 p.m. this afternoon. So it is going to be a long day.

The worst part of any vacation for us is flying…and airports—just the total hassle of them. As we have gotten older, it becomes more and more of a hassle every time. I do my best to make it better, and some stupid thing (like yesterday’s screwup on Passport Control in Copenhagen) screws up the entire plan. I will let you know how the whole day went before I finish this post.

Air travel is also strange. It messes with my head. For instance, I sit here now in London at 6:00 am, knowing that before I go to bed tonight, in my own bed, in Redmond, I will have boarded a plane, flown nine hours, gotten off the plane, cleared Passport Control again, been driven home, unpacked, gone shopping for groceries, grabbed takeout Mexican food from Ooba, eaten it and watched a few TV shows we have to catch up on. By the time my head hits the pillow in Redmond, it will be 5:00 a.m. here in London. When is Scotty going to invent the Star Trek Transporter so they can just beam me up and beam me down? That’s what I want.

I should also add that we have those miserable Virgin Atlantic Upper-Class seats to contend with on the way home. No recline unless you flip them into a bed. And while I can usually sleep on the way out from the USA to Europe, going back is much worse as it never gets dark. When we arrive, it will only be a couple of hours before my usual bedtime, but at the same time, the middle of the afternoon and there will be lots of stuff I need to do…one of them is getting back on schedule for PDST.

So, let’s get this review of our Viking Venus cruise on the way. To sum it up in one sentence, although there were tiny things that irked us just a little bit, this may have been the best overall cruise experience we have had (other than Celebrity Flora in the Galapagos—but that’s a yacht, not a cruise ship) so far. And this is our 39th cruise. That says a lot.

What we loved
  1. Our Stateroom. I detailed that with photos on this page you will find by clicking here. Stateroom 5030, our home for the last two weeks, is ideal. Big enough that I am not stubbing my toes to get around the bed, it has plenty of storage, a great verandah and, as far as I am concerned, the perfect spot on the ship. Deck five on a Viking ship means only two flights up (I never take elevators on a cruise except to bring luggage on or off the ship) to the buffet and Explorer’s Lounge (my favorite place on a Viking Ship) and only three flights down to the specialty restaurants, the Living Room and to get off and on the ship in most ports.
  2. The ship. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And to my eye, Viking Ocean ships are just about perfect when it comes to appearance. Nothing ever jars my eye. The color palette for the entire ship just works for me. Some folks say it’s just Viking and IKEA getting together to design a ship. Well, if that is the case, that’s fine with me. But it is a really high-end IKEA. Just think of Scandinavian design. Clean, muted, nothing jarring. No flashy colors. No Las Vegas at all! See photos of what I mean in a previous post by clicking here.
  3. The quiet. Even though there is music in some venues sometimes (I wished the pianist in the Living Room had played a little softer the night we had drinks there), it is a very quiet ship. There is always someplace I can go and sit in silence to write, process photos, read or have a conversation. But the one place that breaks this for me is The Restaurant (a Viking ship’s main dining room), which I find to be VERY loud. Other than that, I love the quiet.
  4. The crew. I mentioned in a previous post. They are the best overall crew we have ever sailed with.
  5. Itinerary. This was a good one. Some of my closest friends would have disliked the temperatures. They prefer warmer weather. We like the cold. That’s why we live in Washington State. It’s cold but not too cold, wet but not too wet (Seattle averages 37 inches of rain a year/Bergen 88 inches of rain a year), and perfect for us. I always prefer cold over hot. You can always put on another sweater or jacket if you get too cold, but once you are naked, you can’t get any cooler without AC ?. I would have picked Norway as the most beautiful place on earth if we hadn’t been to Scotland before the cruise. We loved every port we stopped in (I will forgive Bergen for one teen’s actions), and we have already told others they must do this cruise. Kathleen said to remind you that the weather changes by the minute. We didn’t get snow, but our full day in Bergen is a great example. We went up the funicular in beautiful sunshine, barely a cloud in the sky. An hour after coming down, the rain was also coming down…horizontally. A deluge we had to take shelter from for an hour (with lunch), and then it was back to sunshine.
  6. Embarkation and disembarkation. Smoothest ever! Less than 20 minutes from car to ship on the front end and 10 minutes from ship to car on the back end. It doesn’t get much better than that unless it’s during a pandemic and no one else is getting on or off. OK, river cruises are easier but I am talking ocean here.
  7. Cruise Director Andre Gaffney and his activity staff. He does outstanding port talks—lots of info. And for us, the best part was that his port talks were televised live every afternoon (before a port day), so we could have a cocktail from our included mini-bar while we watched the port talk from our stateroom before dinner. It became our routine. His announcements during the cruise were also excellent. His assistant (I am so sorry that I can’t remember her name) runs the best trivia game at sea. She is excited, in control and asks questions that are just hard enough to challenge you but not too hard so that she stumps everyone. I just wish the trivia had been at a different time. They were either at noon or 8:00 p.m. At noon, I have lunch, and at 8:00 p.m. I am in bed.
  8. Entertainment was perfect for us ?. I put the emoji on there because, for us, on a Viking ship (river or ocean), the entertainment means watching Downton Abbey on our stateroom television. We just don’t do shows anymore. I guess we are old or just jaded—they all seem the same. So after dinner, it was back to the stateroom where I would process photos, Kathleen would read, and we would watch an episode of Downton. Of course, we have already seen the entire series (and both movies) when they first came out, but it’s nice to catch up with old characters we love again. And we only watch it on Viking ships. So, on our 3-week Med cruise in the fall of 2022, we watched seasons one, two and a little of season three. On our December 2023 Christmas Market River cruise, we watched the rest of season three and a little of season four. We finished four, five and the first three episodes of season six on this cruise. Guess what we will watch on our October 2025 Douro River cruise ??
  9. Shore excursions. Every single Viking-included excursion (even the one on Orkney) was better than any of the included excursions on our 2022 Viking Sky Mediterranean cruise. My favorites were our guides in Greenwich, Tromsø and Geiranger. We did feel a little short-changed in Lerwick when our excursion was cut from 2.5 to 1 hour. Not cool. But the rest of them were great. And all the “luxury motor coaches” were pretty nice.

Let’s talk about the food

We ate in the following spaces (in order of the number of times we ate there), and this is what we thought of them:

(Before we start, a word about the Steve Test. My brother Steve created this test about six cruises ago. It works like this: If you eat in a restaurant while traveling, and that restaurant is near you once you get home, would you go there again?) 

  1. The Restaurant/Main Dining Room. We ate there once. For lunch. On a sea day. When the sea was at its worst, rocking and rolling. We figured we should go there then because no one else would be there and because it was close to the water and much less rocking than the buffet on deck seven. We were right about the rocking and the emptiness. We were four of about 30 people there. Still, it was a little louder than the buffet, and the food was basically meh. I had a dry Rueben sandwich that was not on rye bread, had little Russian dressing and came with almost cold fries. The service could have been more consistent as well. See why we don’t eat there? That’s a fail on the Steve test.
  2. The Chef’s Table. This is one of the ship’s specialty restaurants. It features a fixed menu. They rotate three menus throughout the cruise. You can see the menu on the Viking app or on your television and know what menus are coming up. The only problem is that you can’t see them three months before the cruise when making reservations. We had reservations for two nights. When we got on board and looked at the three menus that would rotate through our cruise, we canceled our first reservation. Three people in our party of six could not (allergies) or would not (preference) eat anything in the first three courses. We did keep our second reservation, and when we got there, the menu did not match what was on the app or our TV. Thankfully, the menu had turned to a Mexican meal, and everyone could and would eat all of it except the first course. It was very good and restored my faith in The Chef’s Table. The food was excellent. The molé sauce was a LOT better on Oceania Vista but the rest was great. That’s a pass on the Steve test, but only for this menu.
  3. Manfredis. This is Viking’s Italian specialty restaurant. We ate here twice on our previous 21-night Viking Ocean cruise, and once Kathleen got food poisoning, and the other time was just meh. This time, there was no food poisoning, but it was still meh—just not great Italian food. Maybe I say that because I am half Italian, love to cook Italian food and love a great Italian restaurant. We went to one in Glasgow (Banca di Roma), and on a scale of 1-10, the one in Glasgow was a nine, and Manfredis is barely a three. This does NOT pass the Steve test—FAIL! Come on, Viking, you can do better.
  4. Mamsens. This is a small deli-type place just inside the door of The Explorer’s Lounge. They serve amazing Norwegian waffles with fruit, sour cream and brown cheese for breakfast, which I love. You can also get substantial pastries there. Actual Norwegian bakery goods. YUM! At lunch, they have great open-face sandwiches that I also like a lot. When we were on Viking Sky, there were usually three choices: two meats and one seafood. On Venus, there were just two choices (one less meat), so we ate there less as Kathleen couldn’t eat the seafood choice. But they still pass the Steve test with flying colors. I could eat breakfast there every day.
  5. The Pool Grille. I love this place. It’s out by the pool with delicious hamburgers, hotdogs, a few salads, fries and onion rings. It’s in the open air when the weather is good (it has a roof that opens and closes). I ate a few lunches there and loved the food. It’s a big fat PASS on the Steve test. I would eat here once a week if it were near our house.
  6. The World Cafe/Buffet. As you know, if you have followed along, we ate here for most dinners, about half of our lunches and breakfasts. We thought the food was of high quality and well cooked, and the hot was usually hot, and the cold was usually cold.One of the nicest surprises was the new Asian counter, where you could get some excellent Asian food prepared in front of your eyes. And the two guys that worked that counter were great! What we didn’t like (compared to our Viking Sky cruise in 2022) was that there seemed to be less selection. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying there weren’t plenty of choices every day. It was always a completely full buffet. But the same food was often repeated over and over again. For instance, on the first night, Steve and I were thrilled to find a massive seafood display with ceviches, seafood salads, salmon, marinated octopus, and so much more. There was also an outstanding selection of sushi on the opposite side from the fish…but it was exactly the same EVERY NIGHT! I mean, in 14 days, how often can you eat the same fish dishes or the same sushi? At lunch, that seafood spot was the salad bar. But at night, that went away. That means if you just wanted a salad for dinner, you better like seafood because that’s all there was.There was too much red meat. I mean a lot of red meat. Beef, venison, veal, lamb…all stuff we love, but too much of it. Kathleen said, “It was like your choices were red meat or seafood. If you want to eat vegetarian for a night, good luck.” There were always steamed veggies but very few vegetarian entrées. We loved the red meat dishes but we are going to have to go full vegan for a few weeks to get over this cruise.Lastly, pizza on Venus was the WORST I HAVE EVER HAD on land or sea. I am a pizza lover. I make the best pizza I know of. Of course, I am a little bit prejudiced. During the entire cruise, they only had three kinds: Margherita, cheese, and one night, they even threw some mushrooms on one. It was just awful.

Overall, the food was as good as any cruise we have ever been on, except last year’s cruise on Oceania Vista. It just needs a little bit of improvement. We ate too much. Here are some food pictures to make you hungry.

What we DID NOT love

Nothing. I can’t find a single thing I really disliked. It was just as we expected, except that the ports were so much better than we thought they would be. As you all know, I was unhappy about the speed of the internet, but that wasn’t Viking’s fault. The problem lies with Elon Musk, Starlink and a lack of satellites at the poles. Get with it, Musk.

x

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.  —Seneca

Beautiful but Dangerous Bergen

by | Jun 29, 2024 | Uncategorized

For this post, I am going to tell you about our visit to Bergen right up until it became the worst day of the trip for me. It could have been much worse, but thankfully it wasn’t. We did like the city; I am just not that impressed with some of the populace.

We arrived early on Thursday. Of course, I was awake and took photos out on the deck in front of the Explorer’s Lounge.

Please excuse this editorial interruption, but I want to mention something while I am writing about the beautiful deck in front of the Explorer’s Lounge on deck seven.  About 90% of the photos I have taken while sailing into and out of someplace have been taken from that deck. It is easily accessible to every person on the ship. Anyone can go to the Explorer’s Lounge, open one of two doors and step out onto that deck for a beautiful view ahead of the ship. I point this out because on our former favorite cruise line, Celebrity, in their new E-Class ships, you can’t look forward to where the ship is going UNLESS YOU ARE IN A SUITE.

Our friends who still cruise Celebrity tell us that Viking is so much more expensive. But if I have to choose between a suite on a Celebrity ship in order to have access to the entire ship or our Penthouse verandah on Viking at just about the same price, I choose Viking. Besides treating me like I am in steerage unless I get a suite, Celebrity also gives me a “suite only” restaurant (where I can’t eat with my friends who are not in a suite) and they have all the things about cruise ships that Viking doesn’t (like kids, a casino, art auctions and more).

Viking gives every single person on the ship the exact same thing. Yes, if you get a Viking suite, you can purchase shore excursions and make dining reservations earlier than others. Still, once you are onboard, everyone is like everyone else except for the size of their stateroom. And that’s why we switched. So I could look forward as we sailed into someplace and not be treated like a second-class passenger.

Back to our sail-in. It was a gorgeous day weather-wise, and I had lots of photo opportunities. Here’s my first batch. Don’t worry; there are nowhere near as many photos today as yesterday in my post on Gearanger. 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 just remembered that I should mention that, like many Viking cruises, we were getting an overnight in Bergen before we disembarked on Friday. So today was a touring day. And we were booked on our usual, included “panoramic tour” of Bergen. We met our guide Nikolay on the pier, and we were off on our “luxury motor coach”. Even though Nikolay was from Germany and had only been in Bergen for a year, he did a very competent job. The first stop was downtown, where we could look back on the old port, then a visit to the basement of a church, which had been an old crypt but was now open to everyone for contemplation. Then, it was off to downtown, where we walked about six blocks through some old town area. All the way, Nikolay gave us a very informative talk.

Here are the photos with captions from our “Panoramic Bergen” excursion. Enjoy!

After the tour, just like usual, Kathleen and I were back on the ship for lunch while Steve and Jamie did an E-Bike tour with Viking. They really enjoyed it, so if you have a chance to do it, they endorse it.

After lunch, Kathleen went back to the stateroom to start packing for disembarkation the following day, and I headed back into town for an unexpectedly warm walk in the sunshine. I took lots of photos, so here’s another gallery.

And right after I took that last photo, it happened. My walk through beautiful Bergen took a bad turn when I was assaulted. It started with a young teen riding an electric scooter, passing me very closely while I was walking. He came so close I could feel him before I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I said Roy Kent’s favorite word. For those of you who have no idea who Roy Kent is, he is my favorite character on my favorite television show, Ted Lasso. His favorite word has four letters and starts with F. The kid (who was with another kid) turned and sneered at me, and then they went off down the road and turned a corner.

About five minutes later, I was still walking on the same residential street (looking for cool houses to photograph) when the same kid snuck up behind me again and passed me pretty quickly, but this time, he leaned toward me and pushed me out into the street. Luckily, no cars were coming, but I did take a pretty hard fall. Enough that my watch went off, asking me if I had fallen. Luckily for me, a very nice driver turned the corner just after the teens took off, and he stopped to check if I was OK. I debated calling the police but couldn’t identify the teens; there were no other witnesses, so why bother? Who knows what a pain that would have been to deal with?

I got up with a bruised knee and two bruised hands to go along with some road rash. I saved my camera—no damage, but I will be sore for a few days.

I was about two miles from the ship (on a total five-mile walk), so I got up, wiped off the blood and walked the rest of the way back to the ship. Got some ice on all of the bruises and bumps, left blood stains all over the stateroom (I felt bad about that) and limped around for the next day.

Of all the places I have walked around at crazy times taking pictures over the last 25 years, the last place I would have expected this to happen was Bergen, Norway.  I will be fine (everything except one thumb and the road rash feels a lot better two days later). And it could have been a whole lot worse. I could have broken my camera ?…or something else.

I didn’t want to spoil the cruise’s last night, so I made it up to the World Cafe for a final dinner (and a photo) with Steve, Jamie, Julie, Jamie and Kathleen. Not to mention the head waiter who managed to photo-bomb us. One of his staff members was taking the photo, so he couldn’t tell us what his boss was doing. But his boss was one of the nicest crew members we met all week, so we were OK with that.

Thanks to ice and Aleve, the next morning, I felt well enough to disembark (they wouldn’t give us a free cruise for something that happened in Bergen ?) so we grabbed an Uber and headed to our home for the night, the Moxy Hotel. It was a nice enough hotel, but when I booked it, the website said they were at the top of the port area. Well, Bergen has two (or maybe three) port areas. We wanted to be near where the ship docked in the interesting part of town. Instead we wound up a 2000 Kroner (for those who want to know, that’s about $20—transport is expensive in Bergen) Uber ride away from there (it was only 1.9 miles to walk from the ship to the hotel, but 6.4 miles to drive there due to one-way and pedestrian streets). Better planning next time. Bergen looks small on a map.

The hotel was very nice, but obviously, we were not their demographic. They are looking for 30-50-something tech professionals. Not 70+ retired people. But it was still OK. After we were off the ship (easiest disembarkation ever), at 9:00 a.m., we were at the hotel by 10:00. Of course, we didn’t expect our room to be ready. Check-in was at 3:00 p.m., but the nice person at the front desk said it should be ready by 1:00 or so. Since we knew this was going to happen, we had planned a couple of things to do in the meantime.

First up was the Bergen funicular. We decided to go there first because we had heard that by 10:30 a.m., it was a madhouse. We arrived just before 10:00 and made it up to the top in no time. We didn’t have to wait in line at all. We bought our tickets and jumped on. By the time we came back down around 11:00, the line was halfway down the street. If you go, go early! We took some great pictures while we were up there. Here’s the result.

That about covers our day. We did a little shopping, dodged a terrific rainstorm by having lunch in a nice restaurant, and then returned to the hotel. By that time, we were both just wiped out. We didn’t even go out to dinner. I canceled our reservations, and we just went down to the hotel bar and had a drink and a flatbread. If you ever stay there, know that their flatbread is really flat…it’s a flour tortilla ?. That’s OK, after the last month of eating out everywhere we went, we didn’t need any more food. It was good to skip a meal.

This morning (Saturday, June 29), we headed to the airport early and caught our first flight from Bergen to Copenhagen. It went just fine, but when we got to Copenhagen, we ran into problems. We only had about 70 minutes to change planes for our flight to London, and we figured since we were on the same airline, we would be close. First, our flight was about 15 minutes late getting in, then when we left our arrival gate, the board above the door said it was a 12-minute walk to our gate. They didn’t mention Passport Control (why do you have to go through that just to pass through a country and never leave an airport???) or the fact that the woman directing traffic at Passport Control told us we couldn’t use the ones for our D gate but had to walk past our gate to the E gates and go through Passport Control there…and then come back to our D-Gate inside security. This was not a 12-minute walk. This was about a 25-minute walk.

As we walked towards the E-gate Passport Control, we walked by our gate D-103 and we talked to someone at the gate, but he told us he could not let us in there and that we had to go to Passport Control and return on the upper level. I told them I wasn’t sure Kathleen’s knee could make it that far and back before the flight left. He said he would order us a wheelchair, which would be there in 15 minutes, and that would get us cleared right through. We waited 20 minutes until we could see them boarding our flight at the gate right above us, and we decided to walk it. We finally found the E gates Passport Control, and another couple headed for our flight was there. They helped us get through, and the folks in line were nice enough to let us go to the front of the line. Once through there, we had to hike back to our gate. I went ahead and told Kathleen I would make that plane wait if I had to hijack it ?. Luckily, I didn’t have to go that far, but we were supposed to be in the first group to board, and I think we were about the last people on board. Maybe five got on after us. I chastised the gate agent who had promised us a wheelchair and told him he had almost made us miss the flight.

When we boarded our SAS flight, one of the attendants noticed Kathleen was wearing a knee brace and limping (pretty badly by then), and she immediately got ice for her knee. She was awesome. I mean REALLY AWESOME because while we were in the air, she radioed ahead to Heathrow and had a wheelchair waiting for us. The man who they sent to push the wheelchair was AWESOME as well. He not only got us through Passport Control at Heathrow in about three minutes (the lines looked to be about a 30-minute wait), he helped us with our bags and took us all the way to the Hilton Garden Inn at Terminal 2, where we are spending the night tonight before flying home to Seattle in the morning. That’s where I am sitting, finishing up this post. Part of the day was a bust, but it turned out OK in the end.

That about covers Bergen and the day after. My plan is to sum this all up (the cruise) while we fly home tomorrow. At least, that’s my plan now. It depends on how tired I am. But we don’t fly until noon, and we will be home by 2:45 p.m., so we shall see how much I can get done in two hours and 45 minutes ?. Stick with me; we are almost done. It’s hard to believe we left our house a month ago, on May 30th and will get home tomorrow, June 30th. Home sweet home.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.  —Winston Churchill

 

 

 

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