When we visited Iceland last year, we thought we'd set the room alarm to a time that would let us eat the hotel's free breakfast and the get ready for our excursion to a lava cave at noon. We screwed up on how to set the alarm and slept until 10:00, at which time the hotel breakfast was over. We got dressed (no showers if I remember correctly), found a coffeehouse that wasn't too far away, and actually were waiting for the excursion bus without being out of breath.
We had no set plans for today save for visiting a museum or two. Still, we both wanted to shower not to mention get a free breakfast, so we set Blaine's phone alarm to the chosen time. Should I also set my phone, I wondered. We decided that one alarm was enough given that we knew we were setting it correctly. Old Man Time got the best of us. We slept through the alarm we know went off. We did make it down in time for breakfast, though showers waited until after. We ended up only making it to one museum, the Norwegian Maritime Museum, but it was a good one.
Photos, at least with my camera, were few given the on-again-off-again rain. I finally just packed my large camera into my rucksack and let Blaine use his pocket-sized one. As it turned out, cameras were not permitted in the museum, so we have nothing to show from there unless I now take a photo of the book we bought on the rune alphabet.
We've been to our share of maritime museums including the ones in Newport News, Virginia, and Reykjavik, Iceland. The one here was small compared to those two, but still very interesting. The section on the Vikings was especially interesting given that last night I finished reading The Book Of Viking Myths that younger son gave me for Christmas. The fact that we'd visited the Viking ship Museum in Oslo twice also helped fill in any gaps there were here.
We spent a fair amount of time there and, upon leaving, decided one museum was enough so we'd stop for coffee and a snack and then get back to the hotel in plenty of time for the 5:15 bus to the ship. It was too dark and rainy to adequately photograph the triangle of coffee shops at one intersection. We skipped the first as it looked fairly crowded and two people were entering ahead of when we would. We skipped the second because it was Starbucks, and went to the third, the Camel Coffeeshop. Besides Starbucks, other establishments we chose not to enter were Burger King, McDonalds, Seven Eleven, and Subway.
It was impossible to get a photo showing both together, but it caught us by pleasant surprise to see two bookstores within spitting distance of each other. There used to be a couple that close together on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall, but I don't think there are today.
While killing time in the hotel lobby, I took this photo already up on Facebook.
It was just a hair before 4:30 in the afternoon, giving us a taste of the days to come. It was even darker when the bus picked us up at 5:15.
So we're now aboard, having attended the mandatory safety presentation and eaten dinner. For dinner, I invited a couple to join us at our table for four. He works in South Africa; she works in Khartoum. Because it had been raining, I was not wearing Della, my confidential hearing assistant, what I heard was that he worked in cartoons. Fortunately, the husband asked an appropriate follow-up question before I asked an inappropriate one. As might be expected, they had questions about the current happenings in the States. We told them we hoped that the air traffic controllers or TSA personnel did not all call in sick by then due to mandatory work and nonexistent pay.
We are now sitting in a presentation on the various excursions possible. We know a bit about these having already registered for the one we want, Into the Ice, on polar exploration. We had also registered for a trip to a brewery but for some unknown reason that one was cancelled. My principal goal here is to ask if I really can fish off the deck of the ship. The reservation agent with whom I booked told me that because of the small size of the ship, it was possible to fish from the deck. I do intend to ask if that about deck fishing if it does not come up as part of this presentation.
They just announced that the weather for the next few days is forecast to be good. Up north, the forecasts are more uncertain. In rough weather, we are supposed to always hold onto one thing and, above all, not go out on deck. They do have "stormy weather bags" available at various points around the ship. Interestingly (or not), they're identical to the airsickness bags one finds on commercial planes.
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