The engines are thumping away; the sea is calm; the sun is streaming through the porthole; Jones is stretched out on her bed. We are within the zone of 24 hour daylight.The sun literally never sinks. The novelty wears off quickly. The curtains keep out the sun but not the light. We have to block off the porthole at “night” in order to get any sleep. We can hardly imagine what three months of wall to wall darkness is like.
Friday we sailed serenely up a spectacular fjord to the village of Geiranger, part of a UN World Heritage site, where we went ashore in tenders. We had an excellent guide in the excursion we’d booked to the top of Mount Dalsnibba overlooking the village, a multi-lingual Italian.
The summit was still deep under snow; in fact the road had been opened that day for the first time.
Geiranger is all but cut off from the world for much of the year. When we asked him how its 210 inhabitants earned a living, he replied: “From you”. The village is visited by more than 250 cruise ships and a million tourists each summer. To see it is to know why.
Saturday we spent at sea. The wind had dropped to Force 4, which meant gentle pitching and rolling rather than hanging on for dear life. After lunch we squeezed ourselves into the main lounge to hear two entertainers singing some of the Simon and Garfunkel hit tunes. They were very good.
Mid-afternoon brought a wine-tasting and evening a formal dinner. I had to buy a tie for the occasion. The captain, a Greek, introduced his senior officers, also mainly Greek, with a scattering of British and other nationalities. The boat, the Thompson Spirit, like virtually all the passengers, is British (part of the Tui group).
The passengers are something else, nearly all retired and a great many seriously overweight. Some are barely able to wallow along the corridors. The contrast between the slim waiters and the podgy diners in the restaurants is painful – where the first world meets the third.
Northern accents predominate. The ship is a bit like a floating Butlins. The rear decks echo with quizzes and screechy music. We avoid them except while completing circuits of the deck, heading instead for the several lounges where a tinkling piano or string trio is the norm.
Numerous bar waiters are on constant duty in all the restaurants, lounges and bars. Drinks cost typically £4 each but passengers were offered (and re-offered) special discounted booze packages entitling them to order as many drinks as they could down for just £30 a day. These we declined, joining our friends instead in a wine package at a cost of £8 per person per day.
That represents a bottle between three people, selected from a good wine list. The alternative is to buy liquor at the ship’s store and (most unusually) to consume it in your cabin. But this is hardly sociable. (Cruise lines generally ban private such consumption as bar sales are a critical source of income.)
If the weather is reasonable we breakfast on the open rear deck. On sea days, we lunch in the large (Lido) buffet restaurant leading to the rear deck and most nights we sup in the equally large waiter-service restaurant one floor below. This is a new experience for us; we have previously been buffet diners.
WITH OUR FRIENDS IN LOUNGEBut our friends prefer to be served and we certainly don’t mind; it costs nothing and it avoids the scrum in the Lido.
This morning we entered a broad seaway between a host of islands, the Lefoten group, and cruised our way up the still waters towards the small town of Sortland. It goes without saying that the scenery on either side of the boat was stunning. After a while one just takes the snowy mountains and wooded hills for granted.
SORTLAND TOWNWe’d booked a bus excursion around parts of the island. This turned out to be a bit of no-no. The villagers were either all in church or still asleep. Nothing was open, not even the loos, and our German guide (who admitted being on her virgin excursion) was both nervous and barely fluent enough to make herself understood.
The scenery was as wonderful as ever but we were popping by the time we got back to the ship. Much grousing was subsequently heard in the bars and at the excursion desk.
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