CRUISE TO THE WHITE SEA ON THE NAUTICA

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YESTERDAY we were in Kirkwall, Orkney Islands. We didn’t get off the ship. We had been here before. Dennis’s back has not been doing well, so we decided to take it easy for a day.

Today we are in Bergen. It is still a beautiful city. We haven’t been here since 1985l Today is a beautiful day, bright and sunny and warm for Norway. We had a private tour to Lysekloster Island. A very famous Norwegian. Ole Bull owned this island and built a house here. Ole Bull was a violinist of great renown. He was a friend of Grieg. He was extremely popular during his life and traveled all over the world. He built his house in one year on this island using local workmen and native pine. It have bits and pieces of architectural details from around the world. It has an onion dome, arches inside and outside from the Alhambra, etc. It is really beautiful, very whimsical. We took a small boat out to the island and back. The boat ride was beautiful. We rode back into Bergen and went to the Kode museums. There are four buildings each having a different focus. The first building had a beautiful display of silver wear that had been made in Bergen during the past 500 Years. Really beautiful pieces. Then we went to the other two buildings which had landscape paintings by Dahl and modernist paintings. The last building had many works by Munch. His famous painting “”The Scream” is in the museum in Oslo, but this museum has at least 100 of his other paintings that are organized by stage in his life. It was quite interesting.

We came back to the ship in time for our special Indian dinner which our butler had arranged for us. It was absolutely delicious. we had Pepper Beef Stir Fry, Chicken Tikka Masala, Biryani Rice,Samosas, Raita, Chicken sausage, and Naan. I was absolutely stuffed. What a fabulous meal. Served by our butler who is from Chennai.

After dinner, our stewardess came in to tie down all of our deck furniture because it is supposed to get rough tonight. Her parting words were “don’t be afraid”. Thanks Veronica!!!!

I am sti;;having trouble getting pictures to upload. I was talking to a man yesterday who I think was a physicist and he was trying to explain about the effects of the magnetic north pole on cellular communication. The bottom line of his explanation is that it is going to get worse the closer we get to the North Pole. Supposedlyit is going to be fixed next yearL

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