The Purple Penguin

So the talk last night was to introduce the senior officers and to go over the excursion for today. Then we headed up to the top deck to have champagne and watch Bergen disappear off the stern. So we’ve now had champagne on board a ship in the sub-Antarctic and sub-Arctic. But we’ll actually be going into the Arctic this time. Then to sleep.

Up earlyish, sort of, finally roused ourselves and to breakfast as we hit ‘open water’ – I put that in quotes because we never really leave the shore! But it was rougher and at one point things went flying in the dining room. We hit quieter waters by just before our early lunch (11.30!) I’ll have to put a schedule at some point – we had a few stops last night and this morning before reaching Ålesund, which was our first excursion. But we spent time on deck looking at the villages and one stop (Tuvik?). The title comes from the fact that going past a lighthouse (Joe has photos) I thought it was bouy sized – about as tall as me – as it was just a concrete looking structure with a light, but as we went around it, it became clear it was a decent sized two storey house. Everything looks small from the ship, with the tall mountains around!

We had a walking tour of Ålesund, our excursion for the day, looking at the Art Nouveau and got a quick tour of the museum. The city was, like most Norwegian places, all wood, but in 1904 it burned down – completely. About 5 buildings survived. So they set out to rebuild, but said no wood. It’s the only Norwegian town/city with almost no wooden buildings (we only saw a couple!) And it was build to modern design, which is why it’s all Art Nouveau. Reminded us of Napier in New Zealand – only nouveau not deco! The excursion was about 2 hours then we were back onboard and off about half an hour later.

We had another talk – this one about the excursions and we’re now trying to decide if we’re adding one and changing one. Probably change to whale watching, but will we be able to see anything in the dark? Then Joe took a few photos from deck as it was getting dark and we now wait for dinner.