Snow Hotel<\/a>, so we had a look inside (but didn’t get to the bar unfortunately) and then went over to see the reindeer (lovely white one), then to see the dogs and finally onto the sleds for a ride around. Very bumpy! But fun. We then had to hurry back onto the bus and back to the ship – so no time to stroll around for a look around. Maybe if we go again!<\/p>\nSo Kirkenes is right at the Russian border. So close to the border that Joe got a ‘welcome to Russia’ text on his phone as it picked up a Russian cell tower.<\/p>\n
Back onboard with loads of new people doing the southern journey. We’ll have a walk around\u00a0Vard\u00f8 around 4pm then do laundry. So an exciting end to Christmas day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Up earlyish this morning and definitely a white Christmas. Trying to remember if I’ve ever had a white Christmas and I don’t remember any. Bound to have been somewhere with snow before though. Of course it wouldn’t be Christmas without Slade and Merry Christmas Everybody. So I’m getting dressed and sure enough there’s a loud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[14,4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-Ud","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3345,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/23\/famous-last-words\/","url_meta":{"origin":3485,"position":0},"title":"Famous last words","date":"Friday, 23 December 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So, remember in the last post I said we'd probably not see any more northern lights. Yeah. Remember that. So after crossing the arctic circle the ship offered special stamps - the first we knew of this was the announcement tone and then Postman Pat theme song playing. In Norwegian.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3445,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/24\/christmas-eve\/","url_meta":{"origin":3485,"position":1},"title":"Christmas Eve","date":"Saturday, 24 December 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Christmas eve is the big celebration in Norway, so that's what we did tonight! But last night, after dinner, we gathered in the bar on deck 7 and decorated a Christmas tree and sang carols in several different languages. Norwegian carols are fun and bouncy, English and German less so.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3585,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/26\/boxing-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":3485,"position":2},"title":"Boxing Day","date":"Monday, 26 December 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So we got off atVard\u00f8 last night and watched the mad people who went ice dipping. There is a little wooden box thing with steps down and you'd go down into that and then dip yourself up to your neck to get the certificate. Not for us! But I did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":305,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/21\/snow-reprise\/","url_meta":{"origin":3485,"position":3},"title":"Snow Reprise","date":"Monday, 21 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Got to Lexington and more snow. Waited at the airport until midnight for Allison to come in, then drove through the snow to the hotel. Then sleep. When we got up the snow had stopped but we had a good bit on the car to brush off. Visted for most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":138,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/25\/happy-christmas-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3485,"position":4},"title":"Happy Christmas!","date":"Tuesday, 25 December 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Ok, what sort of sad person blogs on Christmas day? Joe, that's who. So here I am, wanting to play with my brand new, just opened this morning DS and instead I'm updating the blog. Up early, breakfast (why?), open presents (yea!), then start lunch. Lots and lots and lots\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3705,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/heading-south\/","url_meta":{"origin":3485,"position":5},"title":"Heading south","date":"Tuesday, 27 December 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"And we're actually getting a bit brighter. Almost had daylight today. We cross back over the arctic circle tomorrow morning. We went up to the deck 7 bar and had a drink before dinner, had the really good seats at the bow, but couldn't really see anything in the dark.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3485"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3545,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485\/revisions\/3545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}