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To
celebrate our fortieth anniversary Susan and I
signed up in August for an Elderhostel Norway cruise aboard the MV Explorer in May. Over Christmas we heard that a ship named Explorer had sunk. We assumed it was a coincidence since a previous trip had taken us aboard yet another ship named Explorer.
After Christmas, Elderhostel called to say there had been an "incident" with our
ship.Yup, it sank. \Elderhostel was great, they booked the whole lot of us on Polar Star Expeditions for tour PS78-13:
From May 23 – to June 6, we traveled 3500 kilometers from Edinburgh to
Svalbard with stops at half a dozen ports in the northern British
islands and Norway.
I took lots of pictures; the good stuff
starts around May 31 and the best
around June 4:
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Most of
the descriptions of what we did are in the Expedition's voyage
log. Here I'll
just note
some personal highlights.
We left our home on Tuseday, May 20 to drive the five hours to Dulles.
From there we flew to Heathrow and then on to Edinburgh. I stayed up
the whole flight, watching four movies. This seemed to help me reset my
clock after I got there.
Edinburgh
Bus tours in Edinburgh. Old Town, "New" Town (built starting in 1765),
Holyrood, Parliament, around the base of Arthur's seat, Edinburgh
Castle, and Royal Mile. We opted out of the Royal Mile, having been
there before, and went to the Royal Botanic Garden instead. See
pictures for May 22 and May 23. Among the pictures are three
of a most amazingly animated and
expressive guide; though not one of ours.
Apparently I've changed over the years. We had arranged to meet old
friends in our hotel, and I awaited them in the lobby. The hotel clerk
said we had checked out and asked if I, across the lobby, could be the
one they were looking for. They said no and left. We never did meet. It
was a shame since they had taken the train over from Glasgow to meet us.
Polar Star in Svalbard
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Sometimes I rue missed opportunities. After we left the cathedral and
were beginning our walk back to the ship, we were interrupted by a
cheeky local teen girl amusing her friends by asking, "Excuse me, can
you tell me where the
cathedral is?" (It was directly behind her and she knew it.) I blew her
off with a lamely smart-ass reply and we continued on. Almost from the
moment we left her I began to wish I had asked
her to accompany us on our walk. I'm sure she could have told us much
more about teen life in a small isolated town than could or would our
council-approved guides.
Tour leader David Storrie lectured on Norway in World War II. And
talked about so and so many "divisions" here and there. I implored him
to tell me how big the various sorts of units are. He was kind enough
to respond with a full description.
Having endured a too-long prior visit to Edvard Greig's house, I
skipped that part of the tour in favor of doing laundry.
Fortunately I asked one of the ship's pilots where to find a
laundromat;
otherwise I'd not have found it in its poorly marked, upstairs spot on
a back alley. It was a fine walk and I enjoyed the sights of
Edinburgh and some less-traveled side streets. Further washing was
manual. Another laundromat visit would have been
excessive; the first cost twenty dollars at the current exchange
rate. Even at these prices we had too little time in Bergen.
There was much to do.
Since earlier visits I have wanted to move to Bergen (in the summer,
alternating with summers in New Zealand). On this visit I discovered
that prices were not going to allow it. What's more, I probably
couldn't afford a harbor side house but would likely windup in the flat
plain urban area just east of the harbor. Sigh, stuck in the States
through the bad times ahead.
Ålesund
aquarium
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I tried out E's camera. Got lots of shots of rocks and birds. Sadly,
the option wheel is just where I put my thumb to hold the camera. I
turned it by mistake. Most of the day's pictures have sixteen pictures
in them, taken fractions of a second apart. In some cases the results
were interesting. The rocking of the boat caused a head to emerge from
the bottom of the picture. Birds flew by, and fish swam.
Later in the day I fixed the option wheel and then jogged it again. The
results are movies, most of which show the sidewalk after I had taken
the shot and undeployed the camera.
Torghatten is a mountain with a hole right through it, visible from the
sea. Many of us climbed up, through, and down. Only I myself fell
during the
descent. No injury, but such a hoo hah. Guide Jane had to call it in on
the walkie-talkie, so everyone heard. And I had to "check in" with Doc
Mark. He duly glanced at my scratch, agreed that I would have a bruise
on my butt, and cleared me for further action.
When I told people tructhfully that it hurt when I pinched together my
thumb and forefinger they each, to a man and woman, gave me the hoary
doctor joke, "Don't do that." Of course, I left out the part about the
pinch hurting before I fell.
As I was falling, the thought occurred that holding my right arm and
hand out to block the fall was a stupid thing to be doing. Perhaps that
triggered some unstiffening of the arm. Anyway, it only got scratched.
I believe I can do quite a bit of thinking while falling. Once at
Stinson Beach, near Mt. Tamalpais in California, I fell off the top of
a rock. It seems to me I noted the path of descent and folded myself to fall between the
rocks onto sand. Or maybe I should just stop climbing rocks.
We landed at Alstahaug, a memorial to beloved preacher/poet Peter Daas.
Little church way out in nowheres, far from any city. Accessible I
supposed, only by boat. Imagine then, my surpise at finding an enormous
parking lot. This was my first inkling of the vast roadway
infrastructure investment the Norwegians have made with their oil money.
Trail
to Puffin view
(sign
is at left)
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We hiked on Lovund to an outcropping from which you were supposed to
see multitudes of Puffins. Hannah insisted they were there, but no
one else saw more than a very few. Nice hike, anyway.
I lagged behind, taking pictures and failed to spot the crucial turn
indicated by the arrow on the sign shown here on the left. Going
straight ahead, I entered the pretty little graveyard. Then climbed a
fence and successfully jumped a stream. A troll in the bog grabbed my
ankle, however, and I went down, splat. Face forward into the wet.
Fortunately, we weren't "climbing" and no one called in my fall. I was
wet, but dried quickly.
The sign, in case you can't read it, says "Lundefuglene," a clear
indication of the path. If you see
it and happen to read Norwegian.
Hnefatafl board
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The morning was our usual beautiful weather, but it turned cloudy after
lunch. We bused from Å to Svolvar. Prior to the roads and
bridges the
journey would have required twenty-four ferry rides and taken a
week. One stop was at a replica of the largest yet-discovered
longhouse. I took the photo to the right of a game they had there.
Pieces move to orthogonally adjeacent squares.
Captures are made by playing one piece at each end of a string of
opponent pieces. (A web search found the name "hnefatafl"
for this game.) This capture rule is related to that in Go, but in Go
the opponent clump must be surrounded both vertically and horizontally.
Trolls are supposed to be captured in the rocks, peering
out at us. After dinner we sailed into Troll Fjord, a nice little
fjord for viewing. Thanks to the continuing rain, great water falls
were to be seen. But no trolls. Finally I found a big round rock
jutting out over us with a crack right down the middle. As far as I
could see that was a troll mooning us.
Svalbard: June 3, 4, 5,
6
The rain and clouds continued as we cruised the North coast of Norway
to North Cape and across the Barents Sea to Bear island. Then back to
glorious weather as we beheld the sights of Svalbard fjords. There is
little comment to make here. I just sat around, took pictures, watched
the
scenery, and read books. Our furthest north was about 78.5º N
latitude. While there I tried my cell phone. Sure enough,
everywhere in Norway is covered. I talked to my daughter in Cincinnati.
Othes noted and started calling their own cell phones. Sadly some
discovered long queues of messages and started processing them instead
of watching the walruses at play.
We returned by plane from LongYearbyen to Tromsø to Oslo to
Edinburgh, where we overnighted in a hotel. Svalbard, we discovered, is
not Norway. We had to clear customs in Tromsø by carrying
all our stuff off the
plane, marching around to another gate, and getting back on. The next
day we flew on to Dulles, visited sister-in-law Karen, and drove on
home. Susan was glad to get back and find her garden healthy but
needing her.
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