Friday, June 21

Summer is officially here in the Land of the Midnight Sun.  On this, the longest day of the year, the sun will barely set before it rises again.  Even at 3am, it will be light outside.  Luckily, the curtains in the cabin will be closed.

From our vantage point, Trondheim looked like the other ports so far.  Nothing “quaint” was visible from our window, just a commercial-looking downtown area.  We know there are museums and “highlights” somewhere because we saw Albert and Lesley walk into town today.  For us, the distance and slope were formidable especially when combined with the overcast skies and occasional showers.  As a result, we  continued our streak of sea-days-in-port.

When we left Trondheim, we traveled down the Trondheimsfjord.  We debated where to observe this and ended up in the Crow’s Nest where we were, surprisingly, able to get chairs by a window.  The fjord itself was disappointing because it was not nearly as steep and dramatic as the Sognefjord we traversed in 2010.  On the other hand, we were able to see several dolphins [or whales] cavorting around the ship.  Whatever they were, they had dorsal fins.  We returned to the room to continue watching on the closed-circuit television broadcast, but it was still more flat and less fjord-like than we expected.

 We did finally book a tour, so we will leave the ship at least once.  As much as we hate The Big Bus, we signed up for a two-hour bus tour of Bergen.  The tour will return to the ship around 11am leaving us time to go back to town if it is within walking distance and the weather isn’t too bad.

We have had such smooth seas so far that it is hard to believe that we are on a ship.  The captain warned us that our luck will finally run out tonight and tomorrow.  There will be some rocking and rolling but too much.  We are looking forward to it.

Tomorrow is a sea day at sea which means more of the same.