Into the Midnight Sun—a live voyage blog from Viking Venus 6/14/24

[DrKoob]

Cold, Crowded Honningsvåg

 

Sorry I was missing in action yesterday. Saturday in Honningsvåg was one busy day, and Sunday in Tromsø was even crazier. Thankfully, tomorrow is Bodø, so there will be less to see and do (at least it sounds like it so far), and I should have time to catch up.

 

Today is all about Honningsvåg. On our last sea day, we crossed the Arctic Circle (I have a certificate to prove it 😜—for non-cruisers, they give you one of these every time you cross the Arctic Circle or Equator, etc.—we have a bunch of them), and on Saturday, we arrived in Norway, the 53rd country we have visited. It's hard to believe that we have been to that many places since Kathleen and I met 27 years ago, but we have!

 

Since this is our first time in Norway, this is a very appropriate place to visit. Honningsvåg is the home of the North Cape, commonly called "the furthest north point in Europe." It has since been proven that one more spot, a big rock further north, is the furthest northern point in Europe. But don't worry, I got a photo of that one too.

 

The weather that day started windy and very cold, especially for those from warmer climates. As we sailed in, I was on the deck with my camera and got some shots I will share below. We were signed up for the "included" excursion, a panoramic tour on a "luxury motor coach" out to the North Cape to see the continent's end. On the way, we saw reindeer, lots of people camping on rocks and many hills without a single tree. Once there, we had about an hour to take photos and then back on the "luxury motor coach" to return to the ship. Of course there are too many photos to upload here (especially at the SLOOOOOOOWWWW internet upload speeds but you can see them on my blog (no ads/no selling) at www.jimbellomoDOTcom.

 

After our excursion, Steve and Jamie went into the village, and Kathleen and I went back to the ship for lunch and a nap for Kathleen while I went back out exploring. Since we had arrived, the village had become VERY crowded. There were now six (SIX) ships in the harbor. It wasn't quite as bad as it sounds because two of the ships were fairly small (under 200 passengers). Another was owned by a new single-ship cruise line from France, and their only ship was there (the old Holland American Maasdam), with 1000 passengers; there was us (Viking Venus) with 960 passengers and then Sky Princess arrived with a little more than 4,000 passengers. All of this in a town with a little more than 4,000 people. If you have been on an Alaskan cruise, it felt like Skagway on a four-ship day.

 

It made for a crowded day in the village, but the weather changed, and it became a glorious day for hiking, so I set off to walk through town and then hike up the hill above the village. With the better weather and the chance to take better photos, it turned into a great day. More photos on the blog. 

 

By the end of the day, we had great weather for sailing away from Honningsvåg, and I was able to get some pics of that as well. I would say our day there was a good one. I got to take a scenic bus ride, hike a hillside, and visit a beautiful Norwegian village that seemed to handle all the people, keeping them mostly in the downtown core. Once I had walked a ways and run into the antique car festival, the crowds just melted away to an idyllic Saturday afternoon. Here are the sail away photos. I am posting most of these landscapes because I love the light. These are just beautiful patterns that were shaped by an amazing combination of sun and clouds on beautiful backdrops. Of course, you know where these are.

 

I forgot to mention one last thing. This cruise is called Journey to the Midnight Sun. Honningsvåg was the first place we truly saw the midnight sun. From mid-June to mid-July, the sun never sets. It can be very disconcerting for those who don't live here. Your body is tired, but it's also telling you that the sun is up; you don't need sleep now. I will talk more about this in my next post because any photo taken at midnight belongs on its own day.

 

 

 

 

[millybess]

11 hours ago, DrKoob said:

I will try and grab those for you today.

Thank you!

[DrKoob]

11 hours ago, millybess said:

Thank you!

Here you go!

 

[DrKoob]

 

 

A Long and Beautiful Day in Tromsø

 

Your favorite travel blogger (hopefully, that is me) really cares about you getting the complete travel experience. Since I am currently blogging a cruise called "Into the Midnight Sun." I thought I better ensure you got a photo of...the midnight sun. And there it is...right above this paragraph. Before we went to bed on Saturday night (after leaving Honningsvåg), I set a silent alarm on my watch to wake up at midnight. When it went off, I checked outside our stateroom window to see if we were clouded over. If we were, I was going back to bed. But no such luck. The sun was up. It's not high in the sky, but it's definitely still up.

 

So I got up, got dressed, went up to the front deck outside the Explorer's Lounge, and took this shot and one other I like a little more (but this one fits the page better), then I went back to our stateroom, got out of my clothes and went back to bed. But not before setting another silent alarm for 5:00 a.m. because that was when the Captain had said we would be sailing into the beautiful area that leads to Tromsø. Was he ever right? I have taken around 300-400 photos on almost every other day of the cruise. Between midnight and 9:30 Saturday night, when I went to bed, I shot 1,131 photos. Don't worry; I am not going to make you look at all of them. I have reduced the total to around 85 and will break it up into smaller groups. I wish there weren't so many, but I could not cover the city and the beautiful weather without them.

 

With all the photos I took and the horrific internet connection (especially for uploading) you will have to head over to my blog (no ads/no selling) at www.jimbellomoDOTcom to see the photos. Sorry. Here's one to wet your appetite. 

 

Tromsø is on an island. As we approached the island, there are two bridges, and the harbor was on the other side of both of them. Unfortunately, a ship the size of Viking Venus can't fit under the older bridge, so we went under the new bridge and then had to sail all the way around the island to get to the port almost underneath the lower and older bridge. But that was OK with me because it provided me with even more photographic subjects. Again, head over the blog to see the photos.

 

 

After we docked, it was time for our (you guessed it) our "luxury motor coach" panoramic tour of Tromsø. This would be one of the best we have had. We jumped on the bus with our guide, Mirko Maiutto (sounds Italian to me), and we were off to the University in Tromsø (the Fighting Ravens), where we stopped for 40 minutes or so to watch a movie in their planetarium. Usually, this would have put me to sleep, but this one was about the aurora borealis, and we loved it. It was made by a local Tromsø filmmaker, and he did an outstanding job; their planetarium is very cool, with wonderful seats.

 

After that, it was time to tour the rest of the islands. Mirko was an excellent guide, and we learned a lot. You will have to read the captions on the photos to see what we did. See them at www.jimbellomoDOTcom.

 

After our tour with Mirko, we had some lunch, and I headed out for a long walk. I toured the harbor area, found the start of the old bridge and decided to walk across to the Arctic Cathedral to get some close-ups. Then, I walked back to the downtown area to get a closer look at some of the things we had seen on our panoramic "luxury motor coach" tour. It turned into a two-hour, six-mile walk, but the weather was so beautiful it barely felt like it.

 

Yup,..more photos you can't see here. Again, my apologies. 

 

 

Sadly, I took several beautiful panoramic shots in Tromsø. Still, after combining them in Photoshop (one of my panoramic shots is usually composed of more than ten individual photos stitched together), they are just too large to upload with the current internet connection. 

 

That about does it for Tromsø. As you can see, it was a BEAUTIFUL day, and we had a wonderful time. Tomorrow, I will tell you all about the city of Bodø. The only hiccup this week is that Kathleen has now caught a cold. She keeps telling me it's not my cold she caught because it has been too long since I had it, but at least I am over mine and can fully empathize with her.

 

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:05 AM by DrKoob

[SteelCity Cruiser]

Love your photos - what glorious subjects you had today!  The starburst of the midnight sun is an instant classic!

 

[rjp50]

Curious about your stop in Bodo.   Our itinerary does not include Bodo.  We go from Tromso to Leknes in the Lofoten Islands. 

 

[millybess]

10 hours ago, DrKoob said:

Here you go!

 

Thanks very much.  We are enjoying reading about your voyage and your wonderful photography.  It looks like you're having a fabulous time. 

[bvm49]

6 hours ago, rjp50 said:

Curious about your stop in Bodo.   Our itinerary does not include Bodo.  We go from Tromso to Leknes in the Lofoten Islands. 

 

This cruise was also supposed to go to Leknes but was changed to Bodo for "operational reasons".

Brian

[FoggyEthan]

2 hours ago, bvm49 said:

This cruise was also supposed to go to Leknes but was changed to Bodo for "operational reasons".

How much notice did they give you of the diversion?

[SJD117]

2 hours ago, bvm49 said:

This cruise was also supposed to go to Leknes but was changed to Bodo for "operational reasons".

Brian

That’s a big loss. The Leknes islands were the highlight of our trip to Norway last year.

[bvm49]

2 hours ago, FoggyEthan said:

How much notice did they give you of the diversion?

It was in February - so about 4 months notice.

Brian

[DrKoob]

Bodø is (kind of) Boring

Monday, we woke up sailing into Bodø. The day before, during his daily announcements, the captain warned us that on his last four attempts at mooring at Bodø, they had not been able to dock due to either high winds or waves. The channel that leads into the protective harbor is just about big enough to fit Venus. Anything bigger has to tender, which I think with high winds and waves would not be a good idea.

 

We were lucky enough to be able to get through the tiny break in the sea wall and dock. But then what? What is there to do in Bodø? The answer is...not much. There was one included excursion, and that was a three-minute ride in a "luxury motor coach" to the Bodø Aviation Museum, where you were dropped off for three hours before your bus was back to return you to the ship. Kathleen and I had already decided to skip it. In Seattle, we have a place called the Boeing Museum of Flight. While the others who went told us they had an actual U-2 spy plane and an old cargo plane you could walk through as long as someone wasn't hogging it, we countered with our Museum of Flight, where you can walk through Air Force One that LBJ was sworn in on and flew JFK's body home from Dallas, the Concorde, a Space Shuttle simulator, the first Boeing 747 ever built and a lot more. We seem to go there every couple of years with the grandkids. So we decided to stay on board so Kathleen could do laundry, nurse her cold a little, and I could get my post on Tromsø finished.

 

I do need to mention that sailing into the port was kind of cool, and I got lucky and saw it coming. Kathleen was getting dressed, and I was looking out our stateroom window when I saw some men dressed as 17th-century Norwegian soldiers firing a cannon and making a general noise to welcome us into the harbor. I have that and some other photos from the sail-in for you over on my blog at www.jimbellomoDOTcom. No ads/no selling.

 

Did I mention the weather was terrible? We had rain on and off since we sailed in, so after I worked on my Tromsø post for a while and got it online with all those photos, we had lunch. The rain had stopped for a short time, so I decided to go out and take a walk and some photos to see what I could discover about Bodø and why Viking chose to make this a port stop.

 

One of the first things I realized is that Bodø does not get many cruise ships. I could tell this from two indicators. First, as I left the ship, we were moored on a reasonably busy road. In the first five minutes, I was off the ship, I saw at least six cars pull over on this busy road so the drivers could get out and take a photo of the ship. Some took multiple photos and selfies with the ship in the background.

 

As I walked, I saw the second indicator that they don't get too many cruise ship visits—there was not a single souvenir store anywhere near the port. Not one. There were no magnets, postcards, tee shirts, troll statues or anything else. It's like they were not expecting us (not that I need a souvenir shop). No wonder the soldiers at the fort were so excited. Maybe they had never seen a cruise ship before. But if Bodø is going to attract more ships, they will have to find more things for those people to do.

 

That said, I had a nice walk and took a bunch of pics of the harbor that you will find on my blog.

 

That about covered our day in Bodø. It was relaxing for us, and those who visited the Aviation Museum said it was "just fine." They did mention that on the three-minute ride to and from the museum, they would have loved someone to tell them something about Bodø, but there was only the driver, who spoke little English—not a guide on site.

 

 

[DrKoob]

 

AAAGGGHHHH!!!!

 

This is to let you all know that I am not taking too long in putting up my next post...the internet on this ship is. As I mentioned before, the internet speeds on this ship are atrocious, but I have managed to work through that. Today is the worst. I'm trying to understand why, as we have sailed south, where Starlink is supposed to be better. But as you can see above, it is only getting worse. I have a literal TON of photos to upload for you from incredible Geiranger, but this morning, over two hours, I have been able to upload precisely three photos. And it isn't the speed that makes me want to pull my hair out; it's the inconsistency. Yesterday afternoon, when finishing my Bodø post, I was able to upload all the photos in less than five minutes.

 

Today...three in two hours. Yesterday, in the late afternoon, everyone returned from shore and was online. It's 5:00 a.m. this morning, and no one is up and online, so what's the problem?

I want to make it perfectly clear that this is NOT Viking's fault. They are providing me with a solid connection on their end. It's the connection from their end to the internet that is horrid. And for that, I blame Starlink (Viking's internet provider) and, ultimately, Elon Musk 😜. I like blaming him for everything 🤣.

 

So, I will ask your indulgence for a couple of days. I haven't come this far to quit on you now. Here's the plan. We arrive in Bergen later this morning (Thursday, June 27). We have all of today to tour Bergen and then we are back on the ship for tonight and will disembark tomorrow.

At that point, Kathleen and I will move to the Moxy Hotel in Bergen tomorrow night (Friday, June 28). Then, I should have great WiFi as I will be connected to an actual hard line connection and not Starlink's ssssllllooooowwww satellite. So, I should be able to upload my Geiranger post, followed by Bergen. The next day (Saturday, June 29), we fly to London from Bergen. We are spending the night at London Heathrow and flying home around noon the next day (Sunday, June 30). Sometime before we fly home, I hope to get Bergen and disembarkation online. Then. my goal is to write one final wrap-up to the cruise during our nine-hour flight back to Seattle and post it on Sunday night or Monday morning, and that should be it.

 

So please stick with me and know that I want to write and post, but all I can do is text-only stuff. Nothing else will upload. Have a great day. Time for us to go enjoy Bergen and our last full day onboard the wonderful Viking Venus.

[OneSixtyToOne]

10 minutes ago, DrKoob said:

 

32% signal loss 😬

[DrKoob]

1 minute ago, OneSixtyToOne said:

32% signal loss 😬

I'm not sure what that means, but I do know that it sucks! I keep timing out on everything that isn't just text. Uploading a photo is excruciating.

[OneSixtyToOne]

9 minutes ago, DrKoob said:

I'm not sure what that means, but I do know that it sucks! I keep timing out on everything that isn't just text. Uploading a photo is excruciating.

It means you are losing a third of your packets and they need to be resent. Jitter is bad too. It should be less than 30ms. Jitter is the time delay in sending data packets. They are taking 10x longer to send then normal. My jitter at home right now is 2ms. It’s taking you 1/3 of a second to send a packet.

Edited Thursday at 04:24 AM by OneSixtyToOne

[WanderingBrit]

8 hours ago, DrKoob said:

 

AAAGGGHHHH!!!!

 

 

 

Last year when sailing to The Faroe Islands, Jitter dropped from 60ms to 10ms, and Ping from 128ms to 60ms just by enabling my Internet VPN. I couldn't upload photos to Cruise Critic AT ALL unless my Internet VPN was engaged - timeouts, failed to post, etc.

 

The issue isn't bandwidth so much as it's poor traffic management within Starlink's infrastructure before it gets to the Internet - at least that's my hypothesis!

[saratojo]

Hey!

Loved your blog of "into the midnight sun".

Great pics.

We just finished the same trip in June on Saturn but in the opposite direction.

Have a look at our blog of the trip with lots of pics.

It's here.

 

Btw, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to upload so many pictures so easily.   A couple of times the upload was slow, but generally the internet connection was pretty good.

[DrKoob]

WARNING! This is a LOOOONNNNGGGG post. Feel free to read it in two or three parts. But there are a lot of beautiful pictures of Norway. And there are more than 100 photos. You can see them on my blog (no ads/no sales) at www.jimbellomoDOTcom. 

Gorgeous Geiranger

As we were ending our day last night, I told Kathleen that while I still thought Scotland was the most naturally beautiful place in the world, Norway had to be a close second. This has been an amazing trip so far because we have been able to visit both these places and see their incredible beauty. We had been impressed with Norway so far, but when we sailed into Geiranger that went over the top—this place is incredible.

 

If you have never sailed into or out of Geiranger on the Geiranger fjord, you need to do it. The night before we arrived, our wonderful cruise director André had told us that the sail-in would begin up the fjord at 4:30 a.m. But he reminded everyone that we would also sail out in the afternoon, and it would be much better weather then. Of course, the photographer and writer in me wanted both. So there I was at 4:30 a.m., standing outside the Explorer's Lounge in the rain, taking pictures.

 

As any good photographer will tell you if you have a chance to shoot something twice—in a different light—do it! So I did. And I was glad I did because natural beauty comes in many forms, both wet and dry, dark and light and getting to shoot Geiranger fjord was worth getting up early.

 

One other photo I want you to see so I can reference it later is this one of the village of Geiranger. Pay special note to the waterfall that flows down to the town. If you look closely (you can click the photo to enlarge it), just to the right of the waterfall is a staircase. We were told it has anywhere from 321 to 384 steps. My brother Steve and I climbed it a few hours later—more about that, with photos below.

 

 

Our morning was planned for us as we had signed up for the included shore excursion, "Panoramic Geiranger." So at 9:10 a.m., we piled onto our "luxury motor coach" and were off up the mountain to see the incredible views. Sadly, some of the folks who had the early excursions saw nothing but clouds. Clouds from the bottom, the middle and the top. Which means they basically saw nothing. Those of us with the later excursion had better luck.

 

Our first stop was a gorgeous alpine lake at the very top of a long set of hairpin-turn switchbacks (which I kept my eyes shut for—pretended to be asleep—don't tell anyone, but I am afraid of heights). There we were, above the clouds. The photo at the very top of this post is of that lake. There is not a lot else to take photos of at the top—a little gift shop, pay toilets and a restaurant.

 

Then, it was back down the hill to a spot that overlooked Geiranger. When the "luxury motor coach" first pulled over, we were still socked in with clouds, but by the time we had been there about 10 minutes, it cleared up. YAHOO!

 

After this, we went down the switchbacks (I kept my eyes closed again) to the bottom. I breathed a sigh of relief when we got there because I thought we were going back to the ship...but no...we were going up another set of switchbacks that were even worse. And when we got to the top to take pictures, we were in a cloud/fog and couldn't see a thing. So much for that. Once off the second hill, we were off the "luxury motor coach" and back on Venus for lunch. After lunch, Jamie and Kathleen went back to their respective staterooms to nap, and Steve and I climbed the staircase next to the waterfall. It was an amazing walk, as you can see from my photos over on my blog at www.jimbellomoDOTcom.

 

After we were back down from the waterfall staircase, Steve and I  did a little shopping (or tried to) and went back to the ship (Geiranger has a cool floating dock that extends into the fjord, and you get to walk off the ship and in to dry land in about five minutes—there's a picture of it in the slides below.) About an hour later, as we headed up to dinner at the World Cafe, the captain announced we were leaving Geiranger and that the sail-out would be much different than the sail-in early that morning. If you don't believe him, here are the photos I got as we sailed up the fjord.

 

That's about it for Geiranger. As you can tell, it was quite the day. We had every kind of weather you can have (except snow—thankfully), and we got to see the best of the fjords in the best of ways. The next day we would be in Bergen. We had heard amazing things about Bergen but our first day there would turn out to be the worst day (for me) of the entire trip. More soon.

 

[DrKoob]

On 6/27/2024 at 7:29 AM, saratojo said:

Hey!

Loved your blog of "into the midnight sun".

Great pics.

We just finished the same trip in June on Saturn but in the opposite direction.

Have a look at our blog of the trip with lots of pics.

It's here.

 

Btw, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to upload so many pictures so easily.   A couple of times the upload was slow, but generally the internet connection was pretty good.

Loved your blog. Kind of winter version of our trip. Today we are in a hotel in Bergen and I feel like I have the fastest connection in the world. 

[tarhoosier]

Viewing your blog and the Geiranger farms and landscape it makes clear why the Vikings went to Scotland, Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, France, Russia, Byzantium, ANYWHERE but Norway.

[DrKoob]

Beautiful But Dangerous Bergen

 

For this post, I am going to tell you about our visit to Bergen right up until it became the worst day of the trip for me. It could have been much worse, but thankfully it wasn't. We did like the city; I am just not that impressed with some of the populace.

We arrived early on Thursday. Of course, I was awake and took photos out on the deck in front of the Explorer's Lounge.

 

Please excuse this editorial interruption, but I want to mention something while I am writing about the beautiful deck in front of the Explorer's Lounge on deck seven.  About 90% of the photos I have taken while sailing into and out of someplace have been taken from that deck. It is easily accessible to every person on the ship. Anyone can go to the Explorer's Lounge, open one of two doors and step out onto that deck for a beautiful view ahead of the ship. I point this out because on our former favorite cruise line, Celebrity, in their new E-Class ships, you can't look forward to where the ship is going UNLESS YOU ARE IN A SUITE.

 

Our friends who still cruise Celebrity tell us that Viking is so much more expensive. But if I have to choose between a suite on a Celebrity ship in order to have access to the entire ship or our Penthouse verandah on Viking at just about the same price, I choose Viking. Besides treating me like I am in steerage unless I get a suite, Celebrity also gives me a "suite only" restaurant (where I can't eat with my friends who are not in a suite) and they have all the things about cruise ships that Viking doesn't (like kids, a casino, art auctions and more).

 

Viking gives every single person on the ship the exact same thing. Yes, if you get a Viking suite, you can purchase shore excursions and make dining reservations earlier than others. Still, once you are onboard, everyone is like everyone else except for the size of their stateroom. And that's why we switched. So I could look forward as we sailed into someplace and not be treated like a second-class passenger.

 

Back to our sail-in. It was a gorgeous day weather-wise, and I had lots of photo opportunities. To see these and all the rest of my photos from our two days in Bergen, please go to by blog (no ads/no selling) at www.jimbellomoDOTcom.  Don't worry; there are nowhere near as many photos today as yesterday in my post on Gearanger.

 

I just remembered that I should mention that, like many Viking cruises, we were getting an overnight in Bergen before we disembarked on Friday. So today was a touring day. And we were booked on our usual, included "panoramic tour" of Bergen. We met our guide Nikolay on the pier, and we were off on our "luxury motor coach". Even though Nikolay was from Germany and had only been in Bergen for a year, he did a very competent job. The first stop was downtown, where we could look back on the old port, then a visit to the basement of a church, which had been an old crypt but was now open to everyone for contemplation. Then, it was off to downtown, where we walked about six blocks through some old town area. All the way, Nikolay gave us a very informative talk.

 

After the tour, just like usual, Kathleen and I were back on the ship for lunch while Steve and Jamie did an E-Bike tour with Viking. They really enjoyed it, so if you have a chance to do it, they endorse it.

 

After lunch, Kathleen went back to the stateroom to start packing for disembarkation the following day, and I headed back into town for an unexpectedly warm walk in the sunshine. I took lots of photos, so here's another gallery (over on the blog).

 

And right after I took that last photo, it happened. My walk through beautiful Bergen took a bad turn when I was assaulted. It started with a young teen riding an electric scooter, passing me very closely while I was walking. He came so close I could feel him before I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I said Roy Kent’s favorite word. For those of you who have no idea who Roy Kent is, he is my favorite character on my favorite television show, Ted Lasso. His favorite word has four letters and starts with F. The kid (who was with another kid) turned and sneered at me, and then they went off down the road and turned a corner.

 

About five minutes later, I was still walking on the same residential street (looking for cool houses to photograph) when the same kid snuck up behind me again and passed me pretty quickly, but this time, he leaned toward me and pushed me out into the street. Luckily, no cars were coming, but I did take a pretty hard fall. Enough that my watch went off, asking me if I had fallen. Luckily for me, a very nice driver turned the corner just after the teens took off, and he stopped to check if I was OK. I debated calling the police but couldn’t identify the teens; there were no other witnesses, so why bother? Who knows what a pain that would have been to deal with?

 

I got up with a bruised knee and two bruised hands to go along with some road rash. I saved my camera—no damage, but I will be sore for a few days.

I was about two miles from the ship (on a total five-mile walk), so I got up, wiped off the blood and walked the rest of the way back to the ship. Got some ice on all of the bruises and bumps, left blood stains all over the stateroom (I felt bad about that) and limped around for the next day.

 

Of all the places I have walked around at crazy times taking pictures over the last 25 years, the last place I would have expected this to happen was Bergen, Norway.  I will be fine (everything except one thumb and the road rash feels a lot better two days later). And it could have been a whole lot worse. I could have broken my camera 😜...or something else.

 

I didn't want to spoil the cruise's last night, so I made it up to the World Cafe for a final dinner (and a photo) with Steve, Jamie, Julie, Jamie and Kathleen. Not to mention the head waiter who managed to photo-bomb us. One of his staff members was taking the photo, so he couldn't tell us what his boss was doing. But his boss was one of the nicest crew members we met all week, so we were OK with that. You can see the funny photo over on the blog.

 

Thanks to ice and Aleve, the next morning, I felt well enough to disembark (they wouldn't give us a free cruise for something that happened in Bergen 😆) so we grabbed an Uber and headed to our home for the night, the Moxy Hotel. It was a nice enough hotel, but when I booked it, the website said they were at the top of the port area. Well, Bergen has two (or maybe three) port areas. We wanted to be near where the ship docked in the interesting part of town. Instead we wound up a 2000 Kroner (for those who want to know, that's about $20—transport is expensive in Bergen) Uber ride away from there (it was only 1.9 miles to walk from the ship to the hotel, but 6.4 miles to drive there due to one-way and pedestrian streets). Better planning next time. Bergen looks small on a map.

 

The hotel was very nice, but obviously, we were not their demographic. They are looking for 30-50-something tech professionals. Not 70+ retired people. But it was still OK. After we were off the ship (easiest disembarkation ever), at 9:00 a.m., we were at the hotel by 10:00. Of course, we didn't expect our room to be ready. Check-in was at 3:00 p.m., but the nice person at the front desk said it should be ready by 1:00 or so. Since we knew this was going to happen, we had planned a couple of things to do in the meantime.

 

First up was the Bergen funicular. We decided to go there first because we had heard that by 10:30 a.m., it was a madhouse. We arrived just before 10:00 and made it up to the top in no time. We didn't have to wait in line at all. We bought our tickets and jumped on. By the time we came back down around 11:00, the line was halfway down the street. If you go, go early! We took some great pictures while we were up there. You can see them on my blog at www.jimbellomoDOTcom...of course.

 

That about covers our day. We did a little shopping, dodged a terrific rainstorm by having lunch in a nice restaurant, and then returned to the hotel. By that time, we were both just wiped out. We didn't even go out to dinner. I canceled our reservations, and we just went down to the hotel bar and had a drink and a flatbread. If you ever stay there, know that their flatbread is really flat...it's a flour tortilla 😁. That's OK, after the last month of eating out everywhere we went, we didn't need any more food. It was good to skip a meal.

 

This morning (Saturday, June 29), we headed to the airport early and caught our first flight from Bergen to Copenhagen. It went just fine, but when we got to Copenhagen, we ran into problems. We only had about 70 minutes to change planes for our flight to London, and we figured since we were on the same airline, we would be close. First, our flight was about 15 minutes late getting in, then when we left our arrival gate, the board above the door said it was a 12-minute walk to our gate. They didn't mention Passport Control (why do you have to go through that just to pass through a country and never leave an airport???) or the fact that the woman directing traffic at Passport Control told us we couldn't use the ones for our D gate but had to walk past our gate to the E gates and go through Passport Control there...and then come back to our D-Gate inside security. This was not a 12-minute walk. This was about a 25-minute walk.

 

As we walked towards the E-gate Passport Control, we walked by our gate D-103 and we talked to someone at the gate, but he told us he could not let us in there and that we had to go to Passport Control and return on the upper level. I told them I wasn't sure Kathleen's knee could make it that far and back before the flight left. He said he would order us a wheelchair, which would be there in 15 minutes, and that would get us cleared right through. We waited 20 minutes until we could see them boarding our flight at the gate right above us, and we decided to walk it. We finally found the E gates Passport Control, and another couple headed for our flight was there. They helped us get through, and the folks in line were nice enough to let us go to the front of the line. Once through there, we had to hike back to our gate. I went ahead and told Kathleen I would make that plane wait if I had to hijack it 😜. Luckily, I didn't have to go that far, but we were supposed to be in the first group to board, and I think we were about the last people on board. Maybe five got on after us. I chastised the gate agent who had promised us a wheelchair and told him he had almost made us miss the flight.

 

When we boarded our SAS flight, one of the attendants noticed Kathleen was wearing a knee brace and limping (pretty badly by then), and she immediately got ice for her knee. She was awesome. I mean REALLY AWESOME because while we were in the air, she radioed ahead to Heathrow and had a wheelchair waiting for us. The man who they sent to push the wheelchair was AWESOME as well. He not only got us through Passport Control at Heathrow in about three minutes (the lines looked to be about a 30-minute wait), he helped us with our bags and took us all the way to the Hilton Garden Inn at Terminal 2, where we are spending the night tonight before flying home to Seattle in the morning. That's where I am sitting, finishing up this post. Part of the day was a bust, but it turned out OK in the end.

 

That about covers Bergen and the day after. My plan is to sum this all up (the cruise) while we fly home tomorrow. At least, that's my plan now. It depends on how tired I am. But we don't fly until noon, and we will be home by 2:45 p.m., so we shall see how much I can get done in two hours and 45 minutes 😂. Stick with me; we are almost done. It's hard to believe we left our house a month ago, on May 30th and will get home tomorrow, June 30th. Home sweet home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Clay Clayton]

So sorry to hear of the incident in Bergen. Hope you won’t let one wayward teen ruin your view of the whole city….we encountered nothing but great folks when we were there last summer.  Safe travels tomorrow!

[janetcbl]

I am so sorry you were assaulted in Bergen. We noticed Bergen seemed “darker” when we were there in May. I used to be able to walk around by myself in the middle of the night; now it seems not as safe, even with my husband with me. I know the world changes; sometimes I really long for the good old days, Hopefully you are fully healed by now and, before I forget, thank you for your blog and CC posts—they were exceptional!

[OneSixtyToOne]

3 hours ago, DrKoob said:

why do you have to go through that just to pass through a country and never leave an airport???)

You were leaving the EU and going to the UK, another country. Norway to Denmark is within the EU (Schengen area) so it’s like domestic travel in the U.S. Once you left the EU they needed to record that you exited.