First Full Day Afloat

It turns out that our cabin, small though it may be,

does have a porthole. The view out said porthole is not too scenic, but the water can be mesmerizing.

It does not let in enough light to make it useful for awakening, though a big portion of that is that the sun does not rise here until close to 10:00 a.m.

Neither of us slept particularly well, it being the fist night in a strange bed and one that rocked a bit at that. We were up, dressed, and going into breakfast just about the time the ship entered the first “open stretch of sea.” There was a quite noticeable change in terms of balance. I was quite happy to have one of the servers pour my coffee rather than carrying it myself from a pot across the room. While my balance walking was definitely impaired, my stomach handled breakfast and after just fine. Perhaps the anti-seasickness wrist bands and doing the trick, though I’m certainly not going to take them off as a test.  

There are a couple of ways to tell how rough the sea might get. For one, the furniture is chained to the floor.

The dining room tables have frames that can be removed, flipped over, and put back on with a lip to keep things from sliding off. It is interesting to watch crew members walk as if everything is stock still. Even carrying bowls of cereal or cups of coffee, they walk as if the floor is totally stable. 

At noon, I took several photos from the upper deck using the automatic setting of my camera (a Canon EOS 60D). Here's one of them.

I looked up the settings that the automatic function used. Tomorrow, I will go to the same deck at the same time and take a photo using the same settings. I plan to do that every day with the exception of the day will be on the "Into the Ice" excursion at noon. I'm hoping to get a nice sequence of shots getting darker and darker then lighter and lighter. We'll see how that turns out.

When it's light enough to see, the scenery is pretty incredible.

The towns themselves are quite photogenic as well. The ship docked in Alesund for three hours. We did the walk-around-town excursion here in 2015, so we just went on our own little walk. 

  

In Southeast Asia, we got accustomed to seeing beggars. It's a bit more out-of-place here.

One way to know you're not in the States any longer is playground equipment that kids big and little would love but that could possibly be deemed "unsafe." My kids would have loved this one as children and would even go crazy with it as adults.

Some shots I just have to take for inspiration. Both of these could make pretty nice quilts.

The ship's program director has told us that New Year's Eve can get quite raucous and that Tromso, where we will be that night, has quite the fireworks display. In the meantime, though it's still Christmas and will be until January 6.