The Sea Voyage that Was.

We enjoyed six days on the ship, eating far too much good food, making inland excursions, admiring the magnificent scenery and lazing about on deck enjoying Arctic sunshine when it was available.

D1, D2 and fellow travellers at the trough....

Seriously, these photos represent about 25% of the food options (who knew there were so many ways to prepare fish?) and I've just realised I didn't take even one photo of the desserts.

OK, I was just kidding about the trough thing (but you knew that didn't you?). Above are real photos of some of the buffet tables and of course D2 and I were very disciplined about our eating. *cough*

Norway has a rugged coastline and actually is made up of 50,000 islands (no, I'm not kidding) - some of them are only large enough for a couple of reindeer to stand side-by-side (if indeed there were reindeer on every island) while others are quite large. The population, though, is only 5 million, which makes Norway one of the most sparsely peopled countries in the world. The inland excursions opened our eyes to some of the prettiest little towns along this coastline, where we had the opportunity to explore centuries' old churches, walk paths barely trodden and to stand and marvel at the stark yet expansive landscape which supports so few people, but so many mooses and deer!

As we anticipated given the fact that we were on a working vessel, there was not a great deal of entertainment on board, if you don't count the German beer-drinking singalong each evening, the Travel Scrabble tables and the the groups of lovely Japanese tourist ladies teaching passers-by the art of origami. We made do with inventing stories about the other passengers, with calculating how quickly after the Germans vacated the deck chairs that we could pounce upon them and claim them as our own and with goggle-eyed observation of the amount of food American tourists can fit on their plates.

Anyway, the sun has set on our sea voyage and we're back on dry land now, having arrived in the south-western Norwegian town of Bergen, where we are spending a couple of days. More about Bergen follows in the next post.

D1