Practising for Newfoundland

It is Wednesday and this day has been circled on the cruise calendar since Day 1. We set our alarm for this morning so as not to miss a minute of the action.

A quick breakfast is followed by a stroll to deck 7 where many of us congregate for THE event. Before the fun begins, someone spots what appear to be whales not far off the back. The siting turns out to be positive....3 Orcas. (see our photo....look for 3 black fins in middle of pic)

Then the real reason we are all here .....we are mere minutes from crossing the Arctic Circle. Photos are snapped and bubbly is poured (sold actually) and then the staff, including the Captain and first mate, start tossing shots down passengers' throats as well as their own. The bottle reminds me of a lemon gin bottle. The first customers walk away wincing at the flavour. I figure, "what the hell....not like I'm driving today." I step up...take my medicine directly from the Captain and am no worse for wear. Cath soon follows and then heads off to buy bubbly. Meanwhile, the first mate AND Captain have grabbed me and told me "time for more." Thankfully another passenger offers to take my camera and record the proceedings. I don't just get one more shot, I get 2 !!! The stuff is bland and turns out to be cod liver oil....YUCK. I had been telling our dinner mates about kissing the cod and slurping a shot of Screech. This is the polar opposite !!

The festivities lasted about 15 minutes.....likely the most fun 15 consecutive minutes we have had at this early hour while on board. If you didn't have fun this morning, you had better check that you have a pulse. In addition, we briefly spotted whales AND crossed the Arctic Circle. Pretty successful day and it was only 9:45 a.m at that point.

Given it would be difficult to top the goings on of the morning, we settle in for some cruising, lunch and a rainy stop in Bronnoysund. We pass the "7 Sisters" mountain range but it is cloudy. While that is happening, we get passed by not 1, but 2 Navy patrol boats that are painted in camouflage and look menacing. Thankfully the Navy doesn't realize that I am on board...no doubt they would have yanked me off had their intel been better.

Captain's Dinner tonight. Bubbly for all as we enter the dining room....clink glasses with the head staffers.....short speech....a song from the staff and another wonderful meal. Afterwards, we pull into Rorvik where a second Hurtigruten ship docks directly behind us. Cath and I scoot over for a very quick look-see of the ship which has 9 decks to our 7 and carries about 900+ passengers to our 600. Both ships depart Rorvik within minutes of one another....in opposite directions. Quite a sight.

Sun FINALLY shines around 9:00 p.m !! Think about that for a minute....realize it never gets too dark here this time of year.

Tomorrow features a 3+ hour stop in Trondheim commencing at 6:30 a.m. We plan to hop off and walk around as Trondheim is suppose to be quite beautiful. So it is late to bed...early to rise.

Please note that we seem to have maxed our data for downloading pics to the iPad so excuse us if there are blogs with no pics these next few days. We can rectify that issue when we get home. We have only taken over 2000 photos (and a bunch of videos) so we can't understand that we're having issues !!!!!!!

Pics....Arctic Circle marker, orcas(look closely), slurping cod oil, Navy vesselRead more