We've made the first three of the 31 stops we make between Kirkenes and Bergen, tiny places clinging like lichen to the rocky coastline. I slept thru the 1st, the second seemed to exist to support mining of something other than coal. The third somewhat more substantial, perhaps several hundred souls.
We've had our first two meals aboard, nothing to brag on. I found the lunch buffet ok if odd. E could hardly find anything that wasn't too salty for her.
Supper was a fixed menu featuring Russian specialties, only the dessert was good and it was small. Imagine vodka-marinaded sirloin, if you can. I mean, what's the point? I guess the ethanol and water bath could tenderize the meat, it sure left it with a bland taste. I fear I'll never love most Russian cuisine.
The ship is maybe the size of the Paul Gauguin, or smaller. The public spaces are very nice. Our cabin is tiny, the beds narrower than twins. We started out in the bow, where we got two portholes with heavy steel plate covers to pivot down and lock there with huge wing bolts. I remember the M.S. Andrea had those too. Perhaps it is a Norwegian thing.
Being in the bow was extra rough as the bow pitches up and down a lot. Since they aren't full, E asked if we could move midships and that is where we are now. The room is identical in size and arrangement, except it has a window with no steel plate. At the moment we have fewer than 300 pax aboard, I'm not sure how many constitutes "we're full."
Later ... Interesting, counterintuitive fact: the northernmost fjords don't have the characteristic look of steep walls plunging down into the water that we associate with scenic photos of fjords. Farthest north the mountains are more rounded, smoother, older-looking. You get a clear sense of the ice age scraping and smoothing the shield.
As I write this the next morning we slept well, ate an ok breakfast, and heard a lecture on Norway in World War II, our next port is Hammerfest. This fjord has the "look" of a classic fjord, not unlike Milford Sound in South Island New Zealand. This is bleak, forbidding looking country, snow still in evidence in patches, essentially zero trees. It looks like tundra/taiga on the hillsides, low-growing shrub, mosses and grasses.
The tannoy or ship's announcer says Hammerfest is the world's farthest north city, emphasis on the word "city." The population is about 11 ,000. Clearly some of our earlier stops were farther north but didn't qualify as cities. Oddly, it feels a good deal like Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city. The same sort of bleak "outpost at the end of the world" feeling.
There is a factory of sorts here that liquified natural gas for shipment in odd-looking ships with huge orange domes to overseas customers. The gas comes from Norway's North Sea petroleum production, along with oil.
