Wednesday Aug 9, 2023
Hi Gang! We had another beautiful weather day in Norway! Sunny and 70 with no humidity. Perfect! It was sort of a two part day. The first day was like a sea day and the second half we were in the port of Honningsvag for an excursion.
In the morning, we listened to one of the Expedition team members describe her life in Longyearbyen. That is an interesting place! There are more polar bears than people! There are like 2,700 residents but there are 8,000 dogs! Cats are not allowed there for fear that they’d disturb all the ground nesting birds. People usually only live there for 4 years since it’s so intense in the winter and total darkness for 6 months! You can’t have a baby there since there isn’t a major hospital so you have to go down to mainland Norway to have it. And you can’t be buried there due to the permafrost in the ground so you’d also be transported down to the mainland to a cemetery there. Crazy!
After that we went up to this cool part of the ship that’s just right down the hall from our room called the “Water’s Edge”. They have this heated bench all along the front of the ship where you can sit on chilly days and take in the scenery. That’s where we stayed for about an hour as we passed by the North Cape of Norway. It was so beautiful and serene. We then went up to take a tour of the bridge and talk to the Captain. Atlas allows you to venture into the bridge anytime you want. They even let me drive the ship (or rather pretend to!).
We then grabbed lunch and got ready for our afternoon excursion. It started out questionable since there was no guide and all they did was put us on a bus and send us up to the North Cape. But it ended up being a fun excursion.
The North Cape is the northern most town in mainland Europe. It is only 1,300 miles from the North Pole. The English ship the “Edward Bonaventure” sailed past it in August of 1553 in search of the North East passage to China. They named it the North Cape and its cliff is 1,000 feet above sea level.
On both the drive to the North Cape and back, we saw many reindeer just walking along the side of the road or in the fields. They were huge with very big fuzzy antlers. We also stopped at a Sami Village (the native people of Norway) to see how they lived in tents with pelts to keep them warm and we talked to one of the Sami tribe. At the end of the tour, the general manager on the cruise ship came on to our bus and apologized that we had no guide and said he would refund our full price of that excursion. So we got to do all that for free!
We got back to port, did a little shopping, grabbed a quick dinner, listened to the Cruise Director sing a few tunes and called it a night. Hope everyone had a nice Hump Day!
The Wandering Italian 