Day Four, 14^th July – Alesund

Before continuing with this post, I thought I’d post a pic of Aurora as we found her on our first few days; that is, we were certain we were wandering around a ghost ship, in the manner of the Flying Dutchman (apart from the busy buffet day.)  Such was this weird impression that the husband asked reception if the cruise was fully booked. The answer was yes, it definitely was.  Where are all the people? we would regularly ask ourselves.  

Aurora the ghost ship

Yesterday’s sea swells had caused the swimming pools to also vomit their contents. The crew had drained the pools, as there was more pool water on the decks than in the pools, and then covered them with mesh netting. They’d also cordoned off the heavy doors leading out to deck 7 (the promenade deck) to prevent passengers opening them and getting a heavy door in the face when the wind blew it right back at them. I should have known something was going on, round about teatime the previous day, a few hours before the swells hit. I’d been sitting in one of the deck chairs when I’d noticed crew members asking passengers to get up, then lashing lengths of rope along the backs of chairs and tying them to railings. Wind must be really picking up; I remember thinking in a vague sort of way.

We arrived at Alesund around 6 am. The sky was heavy with cloud and there was a continual drizzle of rain. The friend had prepared me for the weather, having informed me, prior to our cruise, that her cousin had ‘done’ our cruise the year before and hadn’t seen the sun at all the entire trip, including a miserable emoji. This was information I could have done without, but at least I’d come well prepared for rain.

We went for breakfast in the buffet at 8 am. The husband came back to our table with a pile of mushrooms, two fried breaded cake things from the vegetarian section, an egg and some bacon. I then fled to the buffet with unseemly haste and spotted iced buns in the pastry section. Iced buns! My cruise gluttony cup ranneth over. I shoved two buns on my plate; two croissants and then espied mini pancakes next to a giant bottle of maple syrup. It was like being in the Great Hall at Hogwarts – things were just magically appearing before my very eyes. I returned to our table, and we stuffed our faces, mostly in silence as I people watched, an activity I seem to do almost unconsciously.

The husband decided to get some kroner onboard before heading into Alesund, as advised in our ship newsletter the day before, and asked reception for £100’s worth of kroner just in case his card was refused; unlikely but better safe than sorry.  We exited the ship via security and the husband espied a land train about a hundred yards away.  ‘Let’s hop on that,’ he said, and we rushed along to a ticket booth, to its right, displaying the fact that the train offered 70- minute sightseeing tours. The woman in the booth spoke perfect English, with a pleasing Norwegian accent (yet again putting us non-multilingual Brits to shame.)  The husband asked for two tickets please. She said we were fortunate as they had just two seats left and asked him for 600 kroner.  The husband happily handed over the two notes he’d been given onboard – which turned out to be two 50 kroner notes.  ‘This is not enough Sir,’ the woman said almost apologetically. ‘What,’ the husband said in utter confusion.  ‘You have about £7 there,’ she replied, ‘the tickets are £23 each.’  The husband pulled out the receipt he’d got from the bloke on reception to find he’d given him 100 kroner, not £100 in kroner.  The husband rapidly paid with his card with no problems.  We ended up paying for a fridge magnet with the 100 kroner, one of many I bought along the way.  It was certainly something you had to get your head around, that a poxy little fridge magnet could cost a 100 in any monetary unit.

We boarded the train. The driver started the engine then announced that we’d be ‘going up a mountain to a scenic spot at the top.’  Words cannot describe (as usual) the fear and the tension that ensued.  ‘Mountain!’ I screeched at the husband, ‘what mountain? How’s a land train getting up a mountain. Why didn’t they put that on the poster? I need to get off right now.’ Only I couldn’t, without having to squeeze past other people in a cramped carriage and the ticket woman had already locked the doors. The train set off, with me clutching the husband’s hand in terror and looking out the window, with the exact facial expression Mel Brooks wore when looking out of a plane in High Anxiety.

Turned out the ride up the mountain was such a pleasantly winding route that I barely noticed the occasional steep incline. We were dropped off at the scenic spot at the very top and informed (by the driver) that we had 15 minutes to look around and he’d leave us stranded if we weren’t back on time. This was followed by much Nordic laughter, on his part, and an admission that he wouldn’t leave us – not really – but be back on time anyway.  This time-stress was to be a prominent feature of our booked excursions too, as if I needed more stress.  The 15 minutes gave us just enough time to walk up a little hill on top of the mountain and take a photo of a statue. I have no idea who this statue represented but my photographic modus operandi, throughout the cruise, was to home in on a statue, or a house, or an interesting tree, or a mountain; stand in front of them and say cheese, looking like a clueless tourist.

That evening we decided to book dinner at The Beach House, one of the speciality restaurants on board, via the My Holiday app (which was useful indeed.)  There was a surcharge, but it was worth it as the food was very good. I finished with carrot cake and ice cream as a further insult to my endocrine system.

Day Five, 15^th July – Andalsnes

We woke to our 7 am alarm and there followed the usual banter as to who’d had the least kip, each determined to outdo the other. ‘What time is it,’ the husband groaned. ‘7, as usual, I said, ‘although I suppose it’s really 5 am. I’m knackered.’ ‘Was it still light at 11 pm?’ the husband asked. ‘I think it was,’ I replied.  ‘It’s weird,’ the husband said, ‘it doesn’t seem to be getting dark, could have sworn I saw the sun at 11 last night.’ ‘Really?’ I said.  ‘Ha Ha!’ the husband cried. ‘You must have been asleep, clearly didn’t see me opening the curtain, did you?  I think it’s why I can’t sleep. All that daylight at night’. The reason we kept arguing as to who had the best night’s sleep was that we were both intent on nabbing the good bed on a permanent basis.  Managing to get at least 2 hours kip on the ‘bad’ bed meant you could probably make do with that bed for the rest of the trip, so you had to regularly deny any sleep at all.

It was at Andalsnes that the weather turned, and I thanked Odin and Thor and every other Nordic God out there.  For, unbelievably, the further we got to the Arctic Circle, the more the sea and sky took on the attributes of the Mediterranean.

We exited the ship and spent a couple of hours pottering around, marred slightly by the fact that we were both suffering with a vertigo sensation and felt as though we were still on the ship, despite being on dry land.  To digress, I find that in the very brief (and sparse on detail) diary I kept on board, I’d written ‘NB don’t cruise again, detrimental to health’.  That sentiment was about to change.

In Andalsnes we were surrounded by mountains on all sides. Absolutely stunning scenery.  There were a couple of huge cable cars just outside the ship and our fellow passengers were falling over themselves to get on it. The giant cables looped up to a mountain just to the left of the ship, then rose almost vertically to the top, to a lookout spot. ‘Let’s go on that,’ the husband said, all excited and definitely serious; then split his sides laughing at my expected response.  Not wishing to deprive the husband of an opportunity to risk death whilst swaying about in a tin can on a wobbling bit of cable, I said, ‘you can go though, I’ll wait here ‘till you get back.’  ‘Nah, I’ll leave it, he said, and we sauntered off into Andalsnes town.

We’d set foot on Andalsnes at around 9.30 am. By the time we got to the town it was about 10 and the place was nearly deserted. The only other people were a few of our fellow cruisers, aimlessly wandering around, like us. There were several shops in a sort of small precinct area, but they were all shut.  The silence was quite profound.  I’d experienced nothing like it within our crowded isle.

We carried on walking, passing pretty houses, all directly overlooked by huge mountains at startlingly close proximity. The only sound was birdsong and our own voices which seemed to echo strangely. The sun beat down from a sky so perfectly blue it seemed like someone had painted it onto a giant cosmic canvas. I felt we’d landed on an alien planet.  ‘Oh, isn’t it amazing,’ I said to the husband. ‘Let’s move here,’ he replied, ‘get one of those wooden houses half- way up a mountain. I bet there’s loads of UFOs here too.  The husband’s obsession with UFOs is a whole other story. 

We ended up at a railway station. Just a couple of seats outside a small station office, with a line of train tracks winding off into the distance and a mountain behind them. We sat down.  ‘It’s quite eerie thought isn’t it, all this silence and no locals’ I said.  ‘Reminds me a bit of The Shining, the bits where they’re wandering around that massive hotel alone, out in the mountains, and the only other people are ghosts.’

Back on board a couple of hours later the captain made his announcement, apologising for the weather forecast cock up the previous day and admitting that the swells had been quite severe and that he hoped tomorrow’s forecast would turn out to be correct; that forecast being a fresh breeze, generally calm seas and sun (almost exactly the same as the previous one.)  The husband said he’d worked out the weather forecasts. Light winds meant throwing up and having to shut everything down; fresh breeze probably meant strap yourself to your bed and pray and, if he ever said ‘strong winds’ (which strangely he would in a few days, only his version would be ‘stiff winds’) then we were in for a hurricane and the release of the lifeboats.

That evening at 9.30 pm we set sail for Iceland, which would take one sea day. I was in relatively high spirits because the captain himself, who sounded a very dependable and honest chap, had assured us of a reasonable journey and thus did not prepare us for what was to come at all, not in the slightest.

That night the clocks went backwards an hour.