January 6 – Quiet day in Bergen and Boarding the Nordkapp

The weather was rather rainy today so we stayed in and worked on photos most of the morning.  We were able to get a late checkout which helped a lot.  After checking out we hung around the lounge until midafternoon doing more work on photos.  We then got a taxi to take us to the ship. 

A bit of info on Norway: 

* Only 3% of Norway's land is farmed
* Norway has the 2nd longest coastline in the world (after Canada)
* Norway's coastline is about 1500 miles long
* If you include the shores of the fjords it is 18,000 miles
* If you include the shores of both the fjords and the islands it is 63,380 miles

We are cruising with Hurtigruten on their ship the Nordkapp (North Cape).  This is one of their ships that runs the Coastal Route.  This route runs from Bergen to Kirkenes at the very top of Norway (69⁰43”37”N).

Hurtigruten started out in 1893 running a postal and supply route up and down the coast of Norway, serving the isolated coastal communities.  This is basically a postal route/ferry service for cars and people.  It stops at many ports up and down the coast…many of them for only 15 minutes and in the middle of the night.  They now also run this route as cruise/postal/ferry run.  The ship has a capacity of about 690 passengers with 460 as cruise passengers…the others are passengers are just traveling between ports.   We are cruise passengers. 

Our cabin is tight with a view of a lifeboat.  But we have everything we need and food at the dinner buffet was good.

The down side of taking the trip this time of year is that it is cold and there are very few hours of sunlight so we can’t really see much of the beautiful fjord scenery.  The upside is that what we can see is beautiful and we are really taking the trip to hopefully see the Northern Lights.  Hurtigruten has a guarantee that we will see the Northern Lights or we will get another one way (6 night) cruise.