Arrival this morning gave us to think that we were in for more of the same weather as the last two weeks, cold and cloudy, But it turned into an exceptional day with sunshine and a real warmth that allowed us to take a few layers off.
We had a tour booked to take us to North Cape, the further most land in Europe, just over 1000 kms to the North Pole.
If you enlarge the below photo you will see a lone walker 🚶, giving you the chance to put into perspective the hugeness of this place.
We watched a great 15 minute movie and walked the cliff edge marvelling that we were here and in such high visibility as the day before was so foggy and nasty couldn’t see more than a few feet.
Of course Norway is well known for its reindeer and James and I were fortunate to see many today in the wild, and a real surprise to see this one up close unexpectedly when we climbed a little hill in the cutest fishing village.
Have to mention this group who are doing the shows on the ship tonight before we lift anchor. We called into a cafe to see if the few kroner we had left would buy one coffee we could share and were happy to find out we could actually get two if we kept it to black coffee, putting the milk in ourselves.
We got chatting with the family who own the cafe mum, dad and daughter who are all in the show and they insisted we try some of their home made cake even though we couldn’t pay for it.
The afternoon saw us off on another tour taking us to a fishing village and a visit to an artists studio which was fantastic and it was here that we came so close to our reindeer.
Back in the town we were taken to an ice bar for a few nonalcoholic drinks.
There was an igloo with deer skins inside and we did manage to get inside which I have to tell you was an effort with the heavy insulated Cape we were wearing.
The tradition is to then take your glass, made of ice and make a wish and throw it into the water.
It’s been a full three days of tours in Norway and we really feel we got a great overview of the beautiful and sometimes bleak countryside that it offers.
Stunned at how many campervan and tents we saw and pleased to hear they have a free camping policy which makes it easy for tourists to experience this country as the costs of everything else is pretty high.
So far we have been pleased to be allowed to take food and water bottles off the ship as the countries we’ve been to haven’t had the strict quarantine rules of Australia and New Zealand, I have heard it may change in South America.
The last few days we have got good seats in the Horizon court eating area with outside views to watch sail away in the warmth. Today we were able to sit out on the promenade deck as it was warmer and very peaceful as we sailed through the fiords and out into open sea heading towards our next stop Iceland.
It was all too much and we all had a little disco nap before we were asked to move for the winching up of the tenders we had had to use that day as our dock had been damaged a few days earlier by a bigger cruise ship.
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