On Board Entertainment

Our Norwegian captain's funny. Not funny ya ya, his best joke was asking if we felt the bump as we crossed the Arctic Circle, but funny unusual. He speaks very slowly and you don't just want to finish his sentences – you want to start them as well. We've not seen much of him around the ship but maybe he's avoiding the Norovirus. He keeps telling everyone over the public address system to Vash, Vash, Vash to the extent that some of the passengers have named him Captain Pug Wash Wash Wash.

Talking about names we've struggled this time with the Gigolos. (If you've never read our blogs before these are the Dance Hosts provided by Fred Olsen) We got “Skeletor” on the first night for obvious reasons. I don't know what all his special powers are but one of them must be staying alive. From then on it was down hill. We named the second man Mr Happy because he never stopped smiling but then we got stuck on the the lady Gigolo who was a homely, jam making sort of woman. We never found a good name for the third man because he had a ubiquitous face that reminded us of several people we couldn’t quite place. For a while I was convinced that he was Stephen Hester, the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. After all that fuss about bonuses he must be down to his last string of polo ponies so I thought he might be doing some moonlighting on his holidays looking for a rich widow with a weak heart. Anyway it turned out that he was married to the homely woman so that was that.

On balance the entertainment has been very good. Comedy has moved on a lot in the last thirty years but to be fair to our comedian he's probably been out of the country on cruise ships for most of that time and missed it. I also have to admit that considering his terrible ageing disease, the singer wasn't as bad as he sounded. We've been to all of the shows by the Boudicca singers and dancers and they have to be some of the best we've ever seen. It wasn't just the singing and dancing that was good, it was the choreography, the lighting, the costumes and the Boudicca orchestra. It all made the recent P&O shows we have seen look very tired and dated. The sad thing is that the singers and dancers have just finished their 6 month contract and will be leaving the ship at Southampton. Company rules don't allow them to continue and they all will all be going their separate ways and probably won't perform together again. Oh well that's show business.

One of the lecturers, an English linguist married to a Norwegian, has been both informative and amusing as she has told us about Norway and the Norwegian culture. For example she described Vikings as sheep farmers with anger management problems. Janet's been to nearly all the card making classes which have been a cut above the usual and we went to the Crew Show last night. If you've never sailed with Fred Olsen this is the show where the entertainers are all crew members and it's always a unique occasion.

Captain Pug Wash was on the PA this afternoon telling us that the Norovirus “special measures” will be scaled down and we've just been to dinner and they gave us our salt cellars and bread baskets back. So that means that we can sail into Southampton virus free. It's not just in singing and dancing that timing is everything.

Dave

Janet Catches a Troll

This picture of Janet evicting a Norwegian Troll from our bedroom is dedicated to Alison. If you think there's something fishy about the photograph, I'm afraid you're right. If you look carefully you will see the distinctive wall panelling of P&O's Arcadia in the background. Janet actually caught a Troll on last year's trip to Norway but we didn't blog about it because we thought no one would believe us.

Seeing the Lights

OK, so the last picture was a bit digitally enhanced, but it is impossible to photograph the Northern Lights unless you've got the right equipment and we really did see them. We went to the late show which featured a married couple of very versatile musicians. Their rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody on 15 different instruments has to be seen and heard to be believed. When we got back to the cabin I went out on to the balcony and there was quite a lot of clear sky. It seemed worth a look on deck so out came the Arctic gear and up we went.

The top deck at the front of the ship had been roped off because of the driving wind and the slippery decking which was covered in hail and snow. Surprisingly no one had roped off the ladder to the golf nets which are on the highest accessible part of the ship. Up we went again to join a few other intrepid souls who had had the same idea. Conditions were the exact opposite of balmy but the golf nets offered some shelter from the wind and the imitation grass flooring gave us something not to slip on.

Before this holiday I thought that the Northern Lights were a display that lasted for a quite a while as long as they weren't obscured by clouds. Now I've learned that they are more commonly a series of events that appear on a random time scale. We hadn't been looking for long before we started to see faint green clouds come and go. As we waited and watched some some of the clouds expanded to fill the sky overhead becoming greener as they broke into streaks before they gradually faded away. Sometimes the streaks twisted and curled. There were long periods when nothing happened or when the green patches were barely visible against the black sky but then there would be another spectacular display as a larger shower of the suns plasma hit the atmosphere.

After about three quarters of an hour the cold and the wind got the better of us and we picked our way carefully down the ladder and back to our cabin. Game over, that's another one off the bucket list.

Dave

PS I've just read the bit about the musical duo again and it sounds a bit critical which wasn't intended. They were very good and very enjoyable – it's just that they're not the sort of act that you often see these days in mainstream entertainment. This highlights the serious social service that the cruise lines provide to the entertainment industry offering employment to some of its more “difficult to place” artists. Another example is our singer who suffers badly from what I believe is called Methuselah disease. His photograph was pinned up on the notice board at the start of the cruise and we saw him the other night. The rate at which he is ageing is terrifying.

Look Behind You

It was a nice night so I thought I'd take a picture of Janet on the balcony. Suddenly there they were - the elusive Northern Lights in all their glory. I shouted for her to turn round, but it was too late. They had disappeared as quickly as they arrived. It was such a shame but at least one of us has seen them.

Dave

Friday, 2nd March 2012

Yesterday was a bit of a lazy day, as we hadn't got to bed until the middle of the night. We skipped breakfast and headed to the dining room for lunch, where the first thing I noticed was that the cruet set was missing from the centre of the table and little sachets of salt and pepper had been placed on side plates. Uh-oh... you know what that means... norovirus is onboard. Any object that might be shared amongst passengers is removed from usage. We no longer have a help-yourself buffet, but have to form orderly queues to be served by a waiter. The games and jigsaws have been removed from the library, and the dish of sweets on reception has disappeared.

After lunch, we ventured out into Tromso to visit the Polaria Centre for the 'Arctic Experience'. It has an aquarium, with marine life from this part of the world, including a few bearded seals. You can also sit and watch a couple of short panoramic films. The first we saw was about Spitzbergen and the second was of course, the Northern Lights. It was interesting, but the whole experience took us less than an hour.

We sailed from Tromso late last night. We changed into the Arctic gear again (it's been worth every penny!) and stood on the balcony as the snow swirled around us.

We woke to a total white-out this morning, but as the blizzard subsided, hills and a small town appeared across the fjord. We are in Alta, our northernmost port of call. We took a trip to the Ice Hotel today, where we were really glad we'd stocked up on Mountain Warehouse's finest gear! The guide told us it was colder inside the hotel than outside, and it was pretty cold outside. But our Little Hotties kept our fingers toasty warm, as did the drink of bright blue alcohol which we were served from the Ice Bar, in glasses made from ice. Someone asked what it was, and was told 'antifreeze'!

All for now

x

Janet

x

Chasing the Lights

After seeing the Northern Lights from the ship, the official trip to find them turned out to be an anticlimax. The short explanation of the Lights is that plasma from solar flares, attracted to the poles by the earth's magnetic field, hits particles in our atmosphere causing a glow. The long explanation, which we've heard several times now, doesn't make you that much wiser. Unless there is a large amount of solar activity the Lights come and go in different parts of the sky and are often obscured by cloud. To improve your chances of seeing them you have to chase around in a coach trying to be in the right place at the right time.

We had been told that there would be a lot of waiting around and as this was Arctic, in winter, at night, we put on the full polar exploration kit including the the thermal underwear and the Salopettes. We left the ship at 6.30pm and got back just before 3.00am having chased the Northern Lights way up to the Finnish border. After spending most of that time on a heated coach the best way to describe our condition when we got back was “medium rare”.

There's obviously a good business in Tromso chasing the Northern Lights. Our guide said they had coaches out every night but I'm sure they don't often cater for the numbers provided by Fred Olsen. Estimates varied but it was between six and seven hundred in two waves that started an hour apart but got mixed up during the evening. The clues that the tour company was out of its comfort zone were a motley collection of “coaches” (ours had wide doors, a hanging rail and bells) and a lack of appreciation of that number of elderly persons' toilet requirements. A hour into the journey our guide announced that we would be stopping at a filling station for a comfort break which “would be everyone's last opportunity”.

Now please don't misunderstand this but I know quite a lot about how women go to the toilet. I've designed hundreds of them and the key word is “slowly”. Wearing thermal underwear and Salopettes does not help. I digress, but on several occasions I tried to design ladies toilets with double the required number of cubicles and I was always told by quantity surveyors that I was creating unnecessary expenditure. If ladies ever want to break through the glass cubicle what they really need is more female quantity surveyors. Anyway, filling stations throughout the world seldom have more than one toilet per gender and underpopulated Norway is no exception. Underpopulated countries also don't have many filling stations. “We'll just have a short break” our guide said innocently as the queue started to reach towards the door.

Eventually back on the coach our, now wiser, guide shouted (buses don't have PA systems) “I bet you've been wondering how we drive on ice” I didn't argue but I'll bet I wasn't the only one who, as we thundered along at 60mph on narrow ice roads with periodic sheer drops, had been trying very hard not to wonder about that subject. Apparently they use spikes in their tyres so it's really not a good place to get run over. I don't think everyone was convinced about the explanation and I felt that slowing down a bit would have been a better way to reduce the risk of another toilet break.

Between toilet breaks and hurtling towards Finland we did manage two stops to look at the Lights. In truth these were really only pale greenish clouds that faded in and out of view. They were nothing like the swirling display of green plasma that we had seen from the ship. To photograph the Lights you have to use a long exposure and, with help from the right filter, this enhances the colours way beyond what you can see with the naked eye. Our guide may have needed some toilet training but he was fortunately a keen amateur photographer. Everyone got their picture taken in front of a pale green cloud which magically appeared as a dramatic green backdrop when you looked at the screen on his camera. He's going to put his pictures on Facebook and has promised to email us any that we request in high definition. That way we'll be able to show all our friends pictures of us watching the beautiful Northern Lights and they'll never know that they weren't quite as good as they appear.

Dave

Satellite connection

Friday  2nd March
News from the intrepid travellers - they have no internet connection, hence no recent blogs.
Normal service will be resumed asap
Julie