Blogs from Northern Norway, Norway, Europe - page 5

Cruise day 9 Longyearben and Svalbard July 23rd 2019 It’s been a long wait but today we finally set foot on Svalbard which is as far north as you can go without being on an expedition. The town of Longyearben is the northernmost permanent settlement with over 1000 residents on the planet. We’ve been waiting a while and spent some money to get here! We had booked a private tour to get the most out of our day and were a bit worried when the guy we had been in contact with told us he had left the company. We were going ashore earlier than anticipated so Claire messaged him and luckily got a reply giving us our guide’s name. The shuttlebus into town took ages to set off and just a few minutes to arrive ... read more

Today we arrived in Honningsvåg, which is a port on the island of Magerøy (Meagre Island), or the Nordkapp (North Cape), the most Northern place in Europe - depending on who you talk to. Others may argue this point really is 2000 km north in Svalbard and my money’s on them to win this heated debate. Someone tried to say that this is the most northern part of mainland Europe, but actually it’s an island, so they got that wrong too - although connected with a tunnel. The name came from some sailor (Richard Chancellor) trying to find a northeastern passage through to India in 1533, who named it the North Cape. He never made it to India, so a failure all round. We disembarked at 8am to an incredibly quiet town except for the noise ... read more

After staying up till gone 2am waiting for a sun that never arrived, I woke around 10am to find it was back. Phew! It’s still warm in the arctic circle but when the sun goes behind the clouds, it can be a little breezy and maybe time to put the shorts away. Glyn and I have yet another favourite spot, now the back of deck 10 where the fjord and landscape drifts by as we gazed at it. We had a few visitors but I was able to blog, take photos and read! Afterwards I took the many flights down to deck 3 where our cabin is situated, changed into warm clothing, then climbed back up to Deck 10, where it got really hot again. I passed a man on the stairs who uses them for ... read more

Cruise day 5 Our last sunset and sunrise and finding our tribe July 19th 2019 Claire must have needed some sleep as she slept for over 13 hours and didn’t even set an alarm for ridiculous o’ clock or have a pointy stick. Crazy days. She woke at 10am and, after a late breakfast we headed up on deck as we were passing Torghatten. This is a small hat-shaped mountain with a hole in it. Our onboard expert told us, over the tannoy, the true story of how trolls made the hole then made up some nonsense about rock erosion. The twerp. The weather is glorious and it was nice hearing tales of rain back home...for the gardens I mean....obvs. One thing I haven’t mentioned so far is the hand sanitizing. To stop the spread of ... read more

Castellano debajo.... Il faut bien un jour tourner le dos au Saltstraum… et aller vers d’autres paysages… Nous voici donc repartis ce matin pour aller vraiment vers le chemin du retour et donc passer par des endroits déjà vus… Nous devons être attentifs, même si nous avons un jour ou deux d’avance sur notre programme, car fin du mois une autre aventure nous attend… Ou du moins l’aventure de quelqu’un que j’apprécie beaucoup et elle se reconnaîtra déjà sans que je cite son nom aujourd’hui… Alors le but d’aujourd’hui est d’atteindre Mo i Rana… Non non, nous ne sommes pas dans les Antilles française même si ça sonne un peu comme çi… mais encore bien en Norvège… Et pour arriver à Mo I Rana, par où devons- nous passer ??? Par le Cercle Polaire Arctique bien ... read more