Sunday, December 30, 2018

Hunting the Light

"Hunting the Light" is Hurtigruten's catch-phrase for traveling to see the Northern Lights. Given that it has been cloudy every day so far, we may or may not see that particular light. Hunting the polar night, on the other hand, is quite doable.

Our first day out, at noon, I shot this photo from the upper deck with my camera set on automatic.


The next day, at the same time, from the same place, shooting manually with the same settings as the above gave this photo.


I wish I had thought to take a shot on automatic, but I didn't, and I think the cloud cover made this shot somewhat darker than it really was.

Today, I took this photo from the upper deck at noon, in automatic mode.


The same shot, using the same settings as the first day's automatic shot gave this.


I think I might end this experiment now, since I don't think the shots will lighten up again until we're on our way south.

We crossed the Arctic Circle just before 7:00 this morning, There is a marker in the water, but either it was not lit or we got on deck just a hair too late to see it. The activity leader forgot, in the weather excitement of last evening, to announce the contest of guessing the time the ship would cross the Circle. The winner, chosen at random since there were no entries to compare, received the Hurtigruten flag that had been flying above the ship when she crossed the Circle; the captain had added his signature to the flag. The flag was awarded in mid-morning, by which time it was light enough to see, right before King Neptune made his entrance.


The "ceremony" was the baptism of all of Neptune's new citizens, those who had crossed the Circle for the first time. Knowing that ice water and cubes poured down one's back is endurable, especially given the shot of cloudberry liqueur one gets after, I took the empty seat no one else wanted on the first time through. The activity director took my camera and captured the occasion.


I tried getting a shot of the husband's baptism by ice, but found myself behind several other people obviously not shooting the husband.


The fun is when some of the cubes go down between your inner and outer layers of clothing. I had a hoodie on under my coat with a shirt under that. Even close to a half hour later, I was still having ice cubes drop out from the hoodie.

Just after lunch we docked in Bodo (there is supposed to be a line through the second o). We walked into town where just about everything was closed due to its being Sunday. The husband had hoped to find a coffeeshop that sold bagels so as to be holding one while standing next to a Bodo city sign. Alas, while we found one or two open coffeeshops, bagels were nonexistent. Bodo was still a nice-looking small city (or would a population of 50,000 make it a large town?).


I always find the murals put on the sides of buildings interesting. I have no real idea what sort of creature this is supposed to be, but it reminded me of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.


The husband found the angles of this building to be quite interesting, saying they added more visible interest than might have been done in the States.



The sign below caught my eye. It was outside a "golf center" that sold golf equipment and possibly contained a video sort of driving range, but there was definitely no golf course nor any golf carts in there.


And on the interesting playground equipment front, we found this.


I might have bcen tempted to try it, but the pavement's being wet and occasionally icy coupled with a serious desire not to need to seek medical treatment made it easier for me to give it a pass.

Finally, here is our home away from home for another eight days. I must admit that I'm getting spoiled. No cooking, no bed-making, and laundry only if I really want or need to do it.


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