Are We There Yet?

Below is what I wrote last Sunday night before getting interrupted. I thought I would finish it the next night, in our hotel in Bergen. The cancellation and rescheduling of one of our flights the next day meant getting up at 3:00 a.m. meaning that bed took precedence over blog. I had a tiny list of other things I had planned to include in this post. Even if I could find it now, they seem somewhat outdated. I will, however, share the photo I got from the Into the Ice excursion discussed in my previous post.

I am the third person from the left side; the husband is on my right. The lack of light makes detail hard to come by. But in terms of the lack of light, the walk on this excursion offered our only glimpse of the sun in our time in the polar night. We could see it on the horizon, bright orange against a royal blue sky. No more than a third of the sun's circle was visible, which is what makes it the polar night. I was afraid we would not get to see it and was glad we got that one chance.

The day we saw the sun led into the night we saw the aurora. It was the only night of the trip that could be called "clear." It was not the almost gaudy aurora that we saw in Iceland two years ago, but it was impressive nonetheless, visible on the horizon and curling around the nightscape. I did not take any photos, having done that on our first Iceland trip and feeling that all the technical aspects of aurora photography took away from my simple enjoyment. Our Australian friend did get some good shots with her point-and-shoot and has said she will email us copies. We had two desires in taking the trip, to experience the polar night (nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live in it) and see the aurora. We scored on both.

The previous, unfinished post:
Tonight is our last aboard ship; the trip draws to its inevitable close. Did I get bored? Not at all. The sitting and reading or sitting and crosswording times, while not what one would call at all exciting, nourished my soul. It is good to do and good to be, and this trip offered both. We got to know some of the staff, even to the point of developing a few inside jokes. Two nights ago we saw the restaurant manager, Ole, come aboard with two pizzas. Besides the obvious threat to tell the chefs, we have repeatedly commented on the absence of pizza from the lunch buffet or dinner entrees. We got to know some other passengers. We met Oliver on New Year's Eve, watching the fireworks, and finally exchanged names after the Into the Ice excursion three days later. Kerrie, an Aussie, boarded at Kirkenes, the turn-around point, and fit right in for a table for four.

Waxing philosophically now, I noted, and the husband agreed, that at meals, our table for four features smiling and laughing, something sadly lacking at every other table. Most of the other passengers seem to be Norwegian or German; I can't accept that those are two so dour nationalities that they swore off humor. Besides, Oliver is German. Is it that people are not making connections with other passengers? Even the tables with obvious family units are quiet. I sometimes wonder if the laughter coming from our table is rude. The serving staff don't seem to think so, approaching with the pitchers of tea and coffee or picking up the used dishes with smiles on their faces.

Cell phones and laptops have airline mode, but so do Apple Watches and BAHA units. My replaced knee does not require airline mode, but then it does force the choice of the full-body scanner over the metal detector at TSA checkpoints. Technology eases some things while complicating others. Based on our experience on the trip here, facial recognition seems likely replace paper boarding passes or passes shown on smartphone screens.

Set an Alarm? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Alarm!

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.

... Two if by Sea ...

I must admit that I married well, to someone nearly as offbeat as I am and who indulges my desire to travel and see the moon shine on the other side of the world. Only this trip, we're thinking more about the sun than the moon.

In February 2015, we flew to Oslo, Norway, took a scenic train ride to Bergen, boarded one of the ships in the coastal ferry/mailboat fleet, and sailed over the Arctic Circle to Tromso, where we got off and flew back to Oslo. spending only four nights on board the ship. There were some people who were taking the full 12 days and 11 nights to sail from Bergen to Kirkenes and back to Bergen. The husband and I wondered how they could do it; wouldn't they get bored? Here we are, approaching four  years later, and we're quite looking forward to the full sail. When I saw that there were discounts to mark the 125th anniversary of the coastal fleet, well, it seemed like time for another adventure.

Did I mention "offbeat" above? After doing some research, we decided that we wanted to take one particular ship. In 2015, we sailed on the MS Midnatsol (I'm pretty sure that means Midnight Sun). If you read to the bottom of the linked web page, you'll see that she can carry up to 900 passengers, though she was far from full when we sailed. We decided that for just for the heck of it we would this time sail on the MS Lofoten, the oldest and smallest ship in the fleet. She can take up to 400 passengers. As a better measure of the size, the woman with whom I spoke to make reservations told me that MS Lofoten was so small you could fish from the deck. (Guess who now wants to fish from the deck.)

One other distinguishing mark about the MS Lofoten is that you will not see it listed on any of the websites through which you can book lower-priced, unsold cabins on relatively short notice. All the other ships in the fleet will be listed, so why not the MS Lofoten? It has no stabilizers. We will be sailing in the North Atlantic in December and January on a ship with no stabilizers. I will admit I have no idea just how much rougher that will make things. I am planning ahead and have purchased and packed enough seasickness preventative for the whole trip plus the wrist bands plus ginger gum and candy. I'm so well prepared that I may have no problems at all and will have wasted some cash. But what do other people's mothers say? Better to have it and not need it ...

Besides taking a particular ship, we decided to make the trip as low-cost as possible, meaning that we are sailing in one of the cheapest cabins on the ship. We did get a cabin at the center of the ship which will be a bit more stable. It's not a large cabin. No porthole, but then as the husband and I discussed, we did not spend much time in our cabin last time. Bunk beds, but then our cabin last time had two separate twin beds, one of which became a couch during the day. Just a sink, no bathroom, but then the toilets are just right across the hall from our cabin. The showers are a bit further along. This was the thing that the reservation agent had trouble with. She kept trying to book us into a more expensive cabin, with en-suite facilities. She had trouble with the idea that this was an adventure and we really did want the cheapest cabin.

This will be our fifth trip north in winter, and on which we hope to see the aurora or Northern Lights. We've been to Iceland three times and Norway once before. I fully expect that we will see them on this trip, at least once and likely more often. What I am even more excited about, though, is that for about six days we will be north of the Arctic Circle, and in the polar night. Some people go north to see the Midnight Sun; I've never had the desire to do so. The polar night on the other hand, I really want to see.

As for our thought four years ago that the people going the whole way got bored, perhaps they did. Perhaps we will, though right now we're actually quite looking forward to some down time. Walking the deck for exercise, reading while watching the coast go by, continuing the cribbage contest we began on our honeymoon and continue whenever we're on vacation. At our stop in Trondheim, we hope to have coffee with some of the husband's Norwegian cousins. And, travel gods willing, come back refreshed and ready to start the new year.

As if I needed another hobby ...

Look3, the third annual Festival of the Photograph, is going on here right now. It's a pretty amazing event that I haven't really taken part in before. Actually, I'm not really taking part in it in a big way this year, but if there's a Look4 next year, I just might. Today I took in one exhibit, World Press Photo '09. World Press Photo is an independent nonprofit supporting and promoting the work of professional press photographers. For 2009, 5,508 photographers from 124 countries entered a total of 96,268 images. The exhibit is of the 200 winning pictures in 10 theme categories such as nature photography, sports news, etc. I was blown away by the exhibit. There were several images, one in particular of a soldier with the most penetrating stare, that kept calling me back for one more look.

There is another exhibit called YourSpace to which anyone can submit a photo to be professionally printed by Canon and then put on exhibit. You don't need to be registered for the festival to take advantage of this, so I took a photo in today. Had I known that the limit for non-festival folks was one photo per day rather than one for the whole festival, I'd have taken another one in yesterday. As it is, I'll try to get another one printed tomorrow. The range of works displayed in the YourSpace exhibit is pretty amazing. Some are by professional photographers. Others are by very serious amateurs. A few are by people like me. I must admit that I got a bit of a rush seeing my photo hanging up there with the others. It almost looked as if it belonged.

So what photo did I take in? Readers of my Sail A-Hue, my trip blog, might think it was the photo that I said blew me away when I first saw it. It wasn't because there was a photo I took later that, like the one of the soldier I mentioned above, has continued to call me back to it. Interestingly, it was not one I put up on Sail A-Hue since the posts at the end were sort of rushed. It was one of the first shots I took early one morning in Trondheim, Norway, as we walked around the harbor area. Seeing the photo last night, the husband commented that it showed the color of Norway (many of the houses are the shade of red shown in the photo) as well as the darkness. That's an interesting interpretation, but I don't know if that's why I keep going back to the photo. You tell me. As for the title of this post, I must admit to several moments of thinking that I really should get back to taking photography seriously, working at the shots I take both before, in terms of conscious thought about the composition, lighting, etc., and after, in terms of touching up things like the slight angle the photo above is off by. But do I really need another hobby that can require nontrivial amounts of time and money? Probably not, but then that hasn't necessarily stopped me in the past. I'll just have to wait and see if the urge passes or persists, and then take it from there.