The Lonely Svalbard Islands Reveal Their Desolate Terrain

Much of our cruise up the coast of Norway has included visits to islands. Our final experience would also be on an island, a large island some distance off the coast of Norway and much farther north. We would be crossing the Barents Sea to reach the Svalbard Islands and the town of Longyearbyen The crossing of the Barents Sea was the challenging part. First we experienced more rocking of the boat during the crossing. Fortunately we had pretty good…

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From Beautiful Honningsvåg to the Famous North Cape

We arrived in Honningsvåg in early morning so by the time I was up and ready to go, the ramp was down so we could begin to explore this town. From what I had heard, I didn’t expect Honningsvåg to be very large, but it was actually larger than I anticipated. When we walked out, the first thing we saw were drying racks for the cod. That was unexpected. I wasn’t sure if it was actually fish on the racks,…

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Short on Time in Tromsø, Norway’s Surprising Island City

So far on our cruise we have been very lucky with the weather. While it hasn’t been sunny every day, it hasn’t rained until today when we stopped in Tromsø. However being a resident of the Seattle area, I wouldn’t call today’s weather rainy. It was actually more of a heavy mist. That doesn’t mean the weather was pleasant, but it wasn’t pouring rain so it really didn’t bother us that much. Tromsø is a fairly good sized town. It…

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Unique Experiences in the Lofoten Islands of Norway

Friday our ship docked in Reine in the Lofoten Islands. The islands are off the coast of Norway and are connected together by bridges and ferries. We didn’t get a chance to explore the town of Reine as we had booked a bus tour of two of the islands. After loading up on the bus, we set out for our first destination which was an old church. Along the way our guide told us a lot of information about the…

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Norway’s Unique Mountains, Treina and the Arctic Circle

As we traveled our way north up the Norwegian coast, we continued to encounter beautiful scenery at every turn. Today we passed a number of significant points of interest before we finally had an opportunity to disembark from the ship in Treina (Træna). When we arrived in Treina, we were ready to get out and move. Our day ended crossing the Arctic Circle and experiencing the midnight sun. The morning began fairly early at about 8:00 when a crowd began…

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Åndalsnes, Our First Stop on the Norwegian Coast

We woke up Wednesday morning to find that our ship was docking in the town of Åndalsnes. While we ate our breakfast, we looked out over the city. It seemed pretty small. We knew there was a gondola ride to the top of a nearby mountain, but that was about as much as we knew. The first thing we did after getting off the boat was see how much the gondola ride would cost. It turns out a round trip…

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Time to Start Our Cruise Up Norway’s Remarkable Coast

Tuesday dawned cloudy and gray as most of the days in Bergen have been. That was OK as we are used to that living in the Seattle area. However, today would be different as we were going to board the cruise ship that would take us up the coast of Norway. We were ready for the change. According to the information we had received, we were to check in around noon. The cruise company, Hurtigruten, didn’t want people to show…

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Discovering More Interesting Places in Bergen, Norway

Monday was our final full day in Bergen. it was a chance to see some of the things we had missed to this point. We wanted to take full advantage of our time so we were up and ready early in the day. Our first order of business was to figure out where we were going the next day to board our cruise ship. We mapped out the route we would take and then followed it. It turns out the…

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Hiking Up to Fløyen’s Amazing Viewpoint Over Bergen, Norway

Bergen, Norway is surrounded by beautiful nature from the nearby hills and mountains to the water and surrounding islands. Bergen’s setting is amazing. To see it better one must get up high, and there are a number of places to do that. However, the most common means of doing so is hiking up the trail right out of the city on Mt. Fløyen. It is a common hike that many people take. Of course if one doesn’t want to hike…

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Arriving in the Beautiful City of Bergen, Norway

Having experienced four days in Kenya on a safari, we were ready to move on to new adventures. For one thing we were ready to move. The safaris basically involved riding around in a Land Rover most of the day so there was little opportunity to move about. We were headed to Bergen, Norway and hoped that this would provide us with some opportunities to get out and get some exercise. We left Nairobi, Kenya at about 11:00 at night…

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