Inside Passage

I never paid much attention in geography and so I didn't know that Norway had an inside passage. It's a narrow waterway that extends right up the coast and allows you to sail through the start of the crinkly bits. It's an absolutely beautiful journey with snow covered peaks on either side. Last year in Arcadia we sailed on the sea side and I'd assumed that Boudicca normally uses the sheltered internal passage because she's only small. I sat next to the customer relations officer at dinner last night. We are old friends from the episode when someone tried to build a gym above our cabin on a previous cruise. She told me that Boudicca usually uses the sea route because of the cost of employing the pilots who are an essential safety feature along the inner route. Apparently after our force 11 gale more bad weather was expected in the open sea and the captain contacted head office and insisted on using the sheltered passage. Who says an ill wind never blows any good.

Last night sailing down the inside passage towards Tromso we saw the Northern Lights. We'd escaped from the singer in the show to our cabin and heard an announcement from the captain that he thought conditions were about right to see the Lights. We got all the kit on and went on deck, waited a while, went back to the cabin, heard another announcement, put the kit back on, went on deck and so on until on the third or fourth try there they were. Swirling clouds of fluorescent green plasma drifting across a clear sky. In a few minutes they were gone but at least we've seen something even if it's overcast for the next few days.

I've got one of those tubes of material you put over your head to make a face mask or a balaclava. It's a sort of designer accessory for fashion conscious bank robbers. On one of our frantic dashes to the top deck I stood by the rails trying to get this thing over my head without any success. I gave up and when we got back to the cabin I discovered I'd picked up a pair of Janet's tights by mistake. It was dark. I think I got away with it.

Dave

Tuesday 28th February – At Sea

It was the turn of the comedian in the show lounge last night. He was OK, not wonderful, but by no means the worst we've sat through on previous cruises (think Dave Evans and Peter Goodwright, to name but two).

The ship was rocking and rolling again a bit overnight, Gale force 9 dropping to 7, but Boudicca copes extremely well with that sort of weather. The captain makes a daily announcement about weather conditions, our progress, and the health status onboard. His catchphrase appears to be 'wash, wash, wash', or rather 'vosh, vosh, vosh', as he has a strong Norwegian accent. He assures us that we have no health problems (Norovirus – though the 'N' word is never uttered) at the moment, but I was rather worried to see a man dressed in face mask, plastic apron, shoe covers and gloves entering one of the cabins on Deck 7 yesterday, so am continuing to squirt anti-viral gel onto our hands at every opportunity. We're always pleased to see the Doctor in the audience of the shows in the evening, as it means she's not busy making house calls!

We skipped breakfast again this morning, opting for tea and biscuits in the cabin instead. That meant we were hungry enough to go to our allocated lunch sitting at noon, and listen to some of our table companions gush about how many nights they've notched up on Fred Olsen cruises. Four of them have cruised with no other company, and seem to have no other topic of conversation. We stunned them today by having declined to attend the pre-lunch cocktail party for Gold and Silver Oceans Club members! They always ask to sit on table 39 (or its equivalent on the other ships), knowing that it'll be hosted by an officer. Fortunately, the other two ladies on our table are lovely, and I'm fairly sure one of them would beat everyone on the table hands down if we were to play 'cruise ship poker' as she's on her THIRD cruise this year! (New readers should read our previous cruise blogs for poker rules).

Advice from the speaker about dressing for the next two ports of call... If you ask the question “does my bum look big in this?”and the answer is “No”, then you're not wearing enough! So the salopettes and thermal long johns may get their first outing tomorrow.

All for now

Love

Janet

xx

Saving Money

We'd already “done” most of Trondheim because, as Blog followers will know, we were the only customers on a tour last summer when we'd had our own personal guide. Therefore, we decided to have an early lunch and take the shuttle bus into Trondheim when the rush had died down.

Janet has booked a cruise on the Balmoral for next Christmas. Actually we both have, but I don't want to take the credit because all I had to do was nod. Apparently with the Gold discount, the free cabin upgrade and the “It's almost your 40^th Wedding Anniversary” free package we'd have been crazy not to it book on-board. The ship was deserted and the crew were doing emergency drills when, just before lunch, we took the signed forms to the Future Cruises office. In front of the closed shops, several dozen crew members were lined up in rows. As we passed them a seaman further down the corridor waved his hands at us just as the tannoy announced “water tight doors closing, watertight doors closing”

Two steel doors clanged shut in front of us and as we turned two more closed behind. Locked in a watertight compartment we glared at the crew and the crew glared back. Normally crew members are all smiley but these were definitely hacked off about something. In the Costa disaster some of the crew rushed for the lifeboats ahead of the passengers. I expect that the Boudicca's crew have now been psychologically profiled and that these were the ones that have failed. Fred Olsen must have decided that, in the event of a potential disaster, there was no way that this lot were getting to the lifeboats first.

On last summer's tour we didn't get to see inside of the Cathedral so that was our first destination. The bouncer on the door said we had to buy the reassuringly expensive tickets from the tourist shop. The nice girl in the shop suggested that we waited a couple of minutes because the Cathedral would soon be closing and the last 20 minutes were free. Overcome with gratitude Janet decided to buy some post cards and stamps. Obviously something got lost in translation because, from the cost, it was obvious she had sold us the ones that are personally delivered by hand picked couriers who only travel first class. Still, it will make a change if the postcards get home before we do. The Cathedral was well worth a visit but twenty minutes was enough. It's impressive with intricate stone work and beautiful stained glass but it's, well, all a bit gloomy.

After the Cathedral, we took the tram out of the city into the surrounding hills for a walk in the snow and some lovely views. The cost of the return trip on the tram was, amazingly, about £2 each. The tram ride was the high spot of one of the ship's expensive tours but a lady we'd met at lunch had convinced us that we could do it on our own. On our way back down we were passed by what the tour brochure had described as an “historic” tram full of Fred Olsen passengers. The writer who called it an historic tram had obviously never been to Blackpool. Finally we visited the “Old Bridge” for a quick kiss. Last summer we had kissed at this point on the advice of our personal tour guide who had assured us that it was guaranteed to bring eternal love and everlasting happiness. That was now nearly six months ago and I reasoned that a top up wouldn't do us any harm.

Back in the shuttle bus we both experienced a warm glow. That was partly due to the cold weather gear we had been testing and partly due to the ten minute panic we had when we discovered we had forgotten the way to the shuttle bus stop. Mainly however it was due to the fact that we had beaten the system by taking a tram ride for a fraction of the cost of the official trip. Later in our cabin we reflected that, with the notable exception of the postcards, we had saved an amazing amount of money in just one day.

Dave

Sunday 26th February- The Fjords

Today has been absolutely wonderful. We woke to sunshine, and after breakfast donned our heavy duty cold weather gear and went on deck as the Captain steered the ship into the 'Inner Passage' as we headed towards our next port of call. This is the scenery we expected on our Norwegian cruise last summer, but which was for the most part absent. A constantly changing vista of small villages and craggy snow topped peaks. At first there was no more than a dusting of snow at the top of the mountains, but as we've got further north it's become increasingly spectacular.

There's an air of excitement onboard. Will we be lucky and see the Northern Lights? Not tonight, I'm sure, as it's going dark now and there's thick cloud overhead. But the pilot who is onboard at the moment has reportedly told the captain that today has been the first time they've seen the sun in several weeks, so you never know.

As we sat in the show lounge last night, watching a talented muscial duo perform on the saw and recorder, Dave leaned over to me and whispered “Well, at least it's a lot calmer tonight”. “That's probably because we're still tied up in Bergen” Durrrrrrr.... But it has been calmer, and we both slept well last night (though in my case the Alabama Slammer cocktail probably helped!)

True to my word, I'm enjoying lots of different activities onboard and we've so far missed none of the shows in the evening. I went to the Nintendo Wii session this afternoon and met up with someone who I'd come across on the Balmoral Canada cruise (Di, if you're reading this – do you remember Annette?). After that I attended the craft class and made a rather frilly card.

We've settled into the same evening routine as when we last cruised on Boudicca. Early dinner is followed by a couple of hours in the cabin watching dvds, then down to the Neptune Lounge at about 10pm to see the gigolos do their stuff, followed by the late show. Then to the Observatory for a nightcap. It's a hard life.

Trondheim tomorrow. We're hoping it won't rain!

X Janet X

Bergen - 25th February 2012

Janet's asked me to do a sensible blog before we leave Bergen. The internet signal is quite good here but it may go off tomorrow as we sail into the crinkly bits of Norway.

Did I mention we're on the Captains table? We'd wondered why it was the only shaded table on the seating plan and it turns out that it's the one used by the Captain for his special guests. That's not us of course. He uses it on second sitting and we're on first but we do get a couple of crew members and free wine and liqueurs on formal nights. Anyway, last night, one free glass of wine led to another and after dinner we went for another drink and listened to a singer who rocked, mainly due to the force 11 gale raging outside. We finished up at Observatory, which is the highest point at the front of the ship, just to see how much moved in a gale, The answer is quite a lot. If you are ever planning on having a similar evening can I recommend that you don't end it with a hot chocolate nightcap topped with lashings of real cream.

Due to the bad weather we were late into Bergen and it was 2.30 before we were on the quayside. The plan was to take the funicular railway to the top of the tall hill/low mountain which overlooks city. We had seen the magnificent view last summer and we now wanted to see what it looked like carpeted with snow. The sun was out when we left the ship but by the time we had joined the queue for the railway it was starting to rain and the mist was coming down over the tall hill/low mountain. By that time we had also finally noticed that there wasn't any snow and so we decided to abandon the queue and head for the Kunstmuseum which surprisingly turned out to be full of old paintings.

The gallery had a few paintings by “famous” artists although most of them were not their best works, The Picasso's were from his “I'll knock your nude portrait off before lunch and then we can spend some quality time together” period. What was interesting however were the numerous works by Norwegian artists from the last couple of centuries. They loosely followed the fashions of the time but in a gloomier style. It was the darker side of impressionism or cubism and so on.

We left the gallery to find it was sunny but by the time we were half way back to the ship it was raining again. In the morning we had been to an on-board talk on Bergen and the lecturer had said that if you round up the number of days it rains a year you get to 400. No wonder their paintings are a bit gloomy.

Dave C

Quick ps - 24th February

Gale Force 11 - interesting!

Packing

“I'll never get it all in” cried Janet making me regret that this is a family blog. As seasoned cruisers we've got packing down to a fine art. For about two weeks before departure, our dining room looks increasingly like an unsuccessful charity shop as piles of possessions build up on every available surface. Two days before we leave Janet checks everything off on a list that has been honed by years of “guess what we've forgotten this time” and then packs it into our three well worn suitcases. Surprisingly, we've never been to the Arctic in winter before and this time there is an additional pile of snow boots, thermal underwear, wet weather trousers, scarves, gloves, lumberjack hats with hairy ear flaps, Salopettes and other “stuff”.

Digressing for a moment, did you know that Salopettes only come in one leg size? The lady in the first shop told me that as I stood there looking like my legs had been amputated at the knees. Four more shops and a trawl of the internet later, I believed her. Apparently you're supposed to concertina the legs up but it's not a good look unless you're the Michelin man. Anyway I eventually got pair for the amazing price of £19.50. They've got a detachable top and the double layers of water and wind poof fabric are stuffed with enough insulation to do a small loft. I don't know how they make them for the price unless there's a local authority grant for the insulation.

I searched the loft and found four of the kids' old sports bags quietly decomposing in a corner. I picked out the least offensive and scrubbed off most of the mud and DNA so that we could use it to hold all our cold weather gear. Everything will smell faintly of liniment and jock-straps but that should be OK as long as we stay well clear of any huskies. The “stuff” we had to pack included two sets of walking poles, with more accessories than Batman’s utility belt, and two hot water bottles to fit the secret pockets inside our Berghaus coats. Janet bought a pair of heated gloves that flattened batteries at such an alarming rate that she had to buy some rechargeable ones.

Disappointed with the gloves, she then brought a box of 80 hand warmers which are magical sachets of gel that when activated stay hot for up to eight hours. In test walks she has concealed up to six of these about her person although she won't tell me where she puts them. We've also got insulated stainless steel mugs and a flask. It was only on the coach that I started to worry what might happen when the sports bag went though the x-ray machine at Southampton. The stainless steel cylinders, the packets of gel, the batteries in the charger with it's digital display and the wires from Janet's iPod might all look uncomfortably like a bomb.

“Hello, hello Sir, do you own a sports bag” --- “Yes Officer” --- “ Black, smells a bit funny, really got our sniffer dog going” --- “Er, yes Officer, that's probably the one” --- “Well I'm afraid we've had to open it with a controlled explosion Sir. If you'll just step into our examination bay, I'd like you to identify the contents. Mind how you go Sir, it's a bit of a mess in there, everything's covered in sticky goo and bits of insulation.”

Dave
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