Odds and Ends - September 19th

Its around 10:00 in the morning onboard the MS Trollfjord. We had a short stop of one hour in Harstad this morning but I aim afraid we slept through it. Our big stop of the day today will be at 2:30 in Tromso. Barbara and I are signed up for our first Hurtengruten tour there, the Mountain Hike. Hopefully we will survive. In the mean time I thought I would talk some about the cruise so far. This is certainly a different type of cruise in many ways. The most obvious is the makeup of the passengers. I don't have any official statistics but just based on observations I would guess the passengers are around 60% German, 25% Norwegian, 10% UK and 5% the rest. I think we have only heard 3-4 passengers that might be US like us. There are several large German groups that have their own tour guides. Everyone gets along but it is different then a traditional cruise. Announcements are very frequent, they have calmed down as initially they seemed to be all the time. They are given in Norwegian, English and German so they can fill up some time. Hurtengruten spends some efforts pushing their excursions. In fact, many of the announcements are about that which over time can become a little irritating (I know Kathy, 1st world problems). The food is very good. Breakfast and lunch are somewhat chaotic as they are buffet style. As with most ships, they can't seat everyone at once so it can be hectic getting a table. We have learned to either go early or late. The food is heavy in cheeses, sauces, breads, fish, meats and soups. You can't hardly make a salad at lunch, only lettuce is available with minimal add ons (onions, cucumber). The one comment I would make is I wish they would change things up a little. There is quite a bit of variety on the buffets but its always the same. For example, if you want eggs for breakfast, you options are fried or hard boiled. It would be nice to see an occasional scrambled egg, just an example. Don't worry, we are not starving and I suspect the food is more traditional for those that make up 85% of the passengers. Dinner is fixed seating (i.e. assigned tables) with an assigned time. Our time is 8:30 most nights (one time it was 8:00), we are at a four top with a couple, Andrew and Jane from Exeter, UK. They are semi-retired farmers that raised milk cows. They are fun and nice, we have a lively time at dinner. I would think some might struggle with the menu a little. There is no ordering, it is a fixed menu with an appetizer, a main and a dessert. We have enjoyed every meal but I would think some might struggle with some of the dishes. So far our mains have included cod, duck and lamb. We know we have some interesting ones still to come like reindeer and whale steaks. I should mention yesterday on the lunch buffet they had a giant piece of halibut that was fantastic. Halibut is super expensive in the US but here it is locally caught. Enough on food.

For the main part the passengers filter into and off of the decks during the day looking at the scenery. It has gotten cooler and that is made even more so by the fact the ship is moving at 20 mph. This means people go out on the deck, take some pictures, come back in, warm up and repeat. It is very reminiscent of our Antarctic cruise in that regard. As we expected, there is not a lot of ship board activities. They do a daily presentation on the ports we are stoping at the next day (they do three of these, one in Norwegian, one in English and one in German) but we have learned these are really just about their excursions and try to convince you to go on them (which I believe most people do). We spend most of our down time reading, I watch my recorded Star Trek's (the original series), and around 5:00 we usually show up in the bar for our pre dinner cocktails.

So hopefully that brings everyone up to life on a Norwegian coastal ferry. I will post pictures and thoughts from our mountain hike later.

One more thing, here is a map showing our progress.  We are the blue triangle.  We are about halfway up the coast.  We will be stoping at all the red pins, some on the way up, some on the way back.