2026 Scandinavian Tour - October - Day 09 - Sea Day

 September 11, 2026

A sea day for us today.  Obviously it has been a lazy day.  Denise and Ilene chose to sleep in.  Kim and I met at 8:30 AM to put the feed bag on.   After eating, I decided to do some laps around the deck and then I brought Denise some breakfast.  They make some amazing sticky buns which Denise is in love with.  So with that and some eggs and croissants, she had Tim delivery service for breakfast.  But I wasn’t even offered a tip.  Eventually, all of us met in a diner and played Five Crowns.  It is such a luck of the draw, but I never have the luck.  I really enjoy just chillin and playing such games.  It is fun.  

At lunch time, none of us felt overly hungry.  But Kim has to eat to keep his system balanced due to his diabetes.  So he and Ilene went up to get some food.  Denise and I went to a Waltz dancing class.  I have such lousy footwork.  But in the end, we kind of did it.  It was fun.  I was actually sweating a bit when I was done.  After dancing, we headed up to the buffet to find Kim and Ilene.  We told ourselves that we would walk the buffet and just choose one thing.  Yea…right.  We got more than one thing…but we did just get sample portions.  So I think we did pretty good.

After lunch, we separated again.  Due to Ilene’s bad experience at the Spa and her saying something, they have bent over backwards to make sure they fix that bad experience.  So they invited her to come back today and enjoy some part of the spa.  Ilene asked if she could bring her friend.  They kind of him’d and haw’d and didn’t really answer.  Nonetheless, Denise went with Ilene and they allowed Denise to go with her.  I think the value of this part of the spa would normally be around $90.  So thank you Ilene!  Kim and I put on our swimsuits and went to the indoor hot tubs (with everyone else on the ship).  It was pretty crowded.  But we did a cannon ball into the middle of the hot tub and they all cleared out for us!  Naw, we just squeezed ourselves in.  While in there, I had a lovely visit with an Italian family.  The father said that I seemed to have an English accent.  That made me smile.  They spoke very broken english.  So we were able to chat a little.  Later, I got out and went for a swim in the pool.  They keep the pools around 90 degrees.  It was pleasant and nice to swim.

After returning to my room, I checked on our wash…yes…we washed clothes in our room today.   So we have things hanging all over the room.  Outside on the balcony and looking into the sea, it is very low foggy, a bit wet and quite windy.  The boat has actually been moving quite a bit.  But after being in the hot tub it felt nice to sit on the balcony a while and cool off.

We’ve had a nice trip.  It has been fun being with Kim and Ilene.  I hope they feel the same about us.  I do get a little tired and then talk a bit less.  I don’t talk much at all normally.  But I can get into a space where I talk even less.  Anyway, I hope they are ok being with us/me.

Dinner is at 6.  Show at 7:30 and 9:30 with cards in between.  Same agenda the whole trip thus far…and we love it.

Both shows were quite good.  All evening it felt like this was the last night for the cruise.  And by golly, it is for some.  Apparently this cruise can begin and end from Kiel, Germany and begin and end from Copenhagen.  Fascinating.  Anyway, the main show had lots of fun acts and good singing and dancing.  But the lounge show, with the Big Band of the Sea and a guy named Lance Ellington who is the son of the famous band leader Duke Ellington, took the night.  What an amazing performance by him and the band.  I love good instrumentals and we got great instrumentals from this band our whole cruise.  Really nice job.

Pictures to follow:

Us in the panoramic elevator that goes up and down looking out over the sea.

Ilene and Denise catching some sun rays in reserved seats in some lounge.  It’s the wine bar and some group had it reserved.  It didn’t stop them though.

You don’t see this much any more on cruises…but they did have some carved fruit in the buffet.

Us learning how to waltz…not pretty…but we got the job done.

Ilene and Denise back in the spa.  They’ve had a great time there.

Our waiter.  I don’t think he’s got our orders completely right any of the nights.  But he’s a great guy who likes to laugh with us.

This is the only night that the ‘partied’ in the dining room.  Different from Carnival Cruises whom party every night.

These 4 guys are the acrobat team on the boat.  The flip and flop and do all kinds of crazy things.  They performed tonight in our main show.

This guy and girl are so strong and flexible.  They do all kinds of crazy stuff with their bodies.

Lance Ellington…the video below will allow you to hear him sing a bit.

The ship dancing team.

It was wash day in the flat.   We’ve had things hanging all over this place drying.  It works quite well actually.

Defying Gravity from Wicked!  Love it.

2026 Scandinavian Tour - October - Day 08 - Flaam, Norway

 September 10, 2026

It has been a bit frustrating with Blogger, the tool I use to create this blog.  For some reason, pictures will not upload and be placed on the page.  Videos come up but pictures will not.  I have no idea.   Perhaps the life of this tool is running out.  Anyway….

Today was an interesting day.  We arrived at Flaam, Norway very early in the morning.  It is small…only 1000 permanent souls live in the area.  Before arriving, we had not planned an excursion.  I think we thought that we could just purchase one here.  However, the one excursion we thought would be nice you could not buy off the boat.  So we kind of punted.  We first kinda walked around this small port taking pictures (that you’ll probably never see here).  We then returned and went in and watched a movie/video about the arctic life found here in Noreway.  It showed what they called the Narvik Region of Norway.  The photography was quite stunning showing how beautiful Norway is at all times of the year.  After watchine the video, we headed to a bus that we had purchased tickets for to take us to Stegastein, a very high point overlooking the fjord here.  The drive was probably 20 minutes or so to go through Aurunland and then up a very windy, switch back full road.  Once on top, we spent 20 minutes admiring the beautiful view.  It’s so pretty here.  Our bus driver was telling us how cold it gets…30 below zero at times.  He said he had 2.5 meters of snow on his lawn last year.  I think that’s around 5 feet.  I think its pretty nasty here in the winter time.  But probably pretty too.  After arriving back, we remember that there was a free Viking show.  So we went to that.  It was kinda silly.  But we enjoyed it.  A couple of ‘Vikings’ talked about their history in very broken English and in the end fought each other.  After that, we boarded back on the ship, had a snack and then retired to our cabins to get some r&r.  We’ve been on the go.

Tonight, after dinner, we once again went to the main show which based upon Ed Sheran music.  I know little about him.  So the music was not so familiar to me.   Like last night, after the show, we went to the lounge, played cards and waited for the Big Band show.  Tonight was music from movies.  Pretty entertaining.  

Well another day has passed.  We just passed half way on our journey and since I’ve been gone, two lovely people have died in our ward back home…Frank May and Shirley Aamodt.  Both wonderful individuals who I love dearly.  I’m so sad to have this time without them in mortality.  They will do well on the other side of the veil carrying on and waiting for their loved ones.  Until we meet again Frank and Shirley!

Some videos and pictures:

You can see the cruise ship docked at the end of this fjord.  It is a pretty place, Flaam is.

Another of the dock area.

Our ship.  Look at the glassy water.  This fjord is the deepest Norway fjord…over 1500 meters deep.

This is Denise leaning on a glass thing with her life in peril dangling over the cliff at Stegastein.  I just don’t get it.

This is the roof inside the main hall.  The roof is constantly changing designs.  Today was whales swimming.  It’s a pretty cool feature.

This is the bridge that dangles you over the cliff at Stegastein.  I don’t know why humans build such things.

Trolls are everywhere.  It’s fun to get pictures with them.  

These were some acrobats tossing hats while the Big Band and singer were entertaining us with their music.

Us with our boat behind us.  We’ve had a very nice time.

Just a chair to set my lazy bones down on.  It’s been wonderful being with Denise.  She makes it fun and pushes me to be happy and have fun.

2026 Scandinavian Tour - October - Day 07 - Alesund Norway.

 September 9, 2026

Hello all!  Another day almost in the books.  We cruised the night arriving to a town of about 60k people named Alesund, Norway.  It is a picturesque spot with mountains and islands all around.    Outside our cabin we have seagulls constantly flying around.  I’m not sure why unless they have figured out that cruise passengers sometimes will feel them.  Anyway….

We started our day in the buffet loading up on way too much food.  I don’t know I do that.  I have such a weakness for food.  The food on the ship has been nice.  Since it is more European than normal, you get all kinds of different types of things.  But I have not eaten anything that I have not liked.

After eating, we left the bus around 9 AM.  It was gray, cold and drizzling rain.  Not the best conditions.   We had planned to take the city trolley that takes you up the famous hill that overlooks the city and then all around the downtown area.   In the early 1900’s, there was a fire that destroyed much of the city.  As a result, the city has been rebuilt with what they call Art Noveau.  I just see very colorful buildings.  But it is nice.  The trolley ride lasted 70 minutes in a small train that was enclosed but due to the cold and rain, the windows steamed up making it hard to see much out of them.   We did go up to the famous lookout point and tried to get pictures.  But again, it was very gray and rainy.

After completing the trolley, I decided that I’d like to go buy a beanie to keep my ears warm.  So speaking with the Wayment’s, we decided to go to an H&M, a clothing store in Europe that is reasonably priced for what you get.  So I set out with Denise.  But at about 100 yards, Denise looked back for Kim and Ilene and they were no where to be found.  We were dumbfounded as to what happened.  We tried calling and texting with little success.  So we just carried on to the H&M.  There we did find a beanie and some mittens for Denise.  Once we had that, we then needed a toilet and fortunately across the street was a mall that had public toilets.  Yay!  After draining our tanks, we decided to use locator to find the Wayments…and this worked.  We walked right to them.  They had found some nice things in a souvenir shop close to the pier.  We then decided that we would make our way to a little lighthouse that we saw.  But as we walked, we came across some scooters to rent. Denise was all over it.  I was…OK…Ilene was all for it…and Kim, he’d rather be walking it…and I get it.  My balance is so poor.  And he worried about his too.  Nonetheless, the women won out.  It took a while to get the rental process worked out.  But once we did, off we went with me doing the guiding to the lighthouse we were going to walk to.  Funny part was that after we crossed the first street and started up a hill, a police car came up behind us.  I read we’re supposed to have helmets, stay in bus lanes and so on.  I thought we were busted.  No, he just slowly passed and waved at us with a big smile on his face.  I’m sure he could tell we were nuts!  Anyway, we made it to the lighthouse, took some pictures and then slowly made our way back taking different streets to get there.  I think in the end, we all thought it was a lot of fun (even though one hill was so steep that we considered walking them down!)  

After all this, we decided to go back on the ship and get lunch…like we needed to eat again!  But we did.  After lunch, we went to a self portrait drawing class.  Yep…my artistic side really came out.  I’ll have to take a picture of our shirts and share it here.  It was a lot of fun.

After the art work, the girls went back to the spa to complete their spa night and get their money’s worth.  Kim and I put on our swimsuits and met at one of the hot tubs.   Kim and I had a lot of fun relaxing, talking and hot tubing with young couples who need to get better dressed.   I’m always amazed at what I see people where.

Lastly, at about 2 pm the sun came out and it has turned into a glorious weathered day!  Heck, as I write this, I’m sitting on our balcony deck enjoying the sunshine as the boat begins to maneuver out of the harbor.  It’s 4:30 departure time.  And guess what, it’s almost time to EAT AGAIN.  Holy smokes, I”m going to blow up.

More to come after dinner.

We probably had our best menu of the cruise so far.  It was really good.  We then went to the evening show which was a Rock Symphonic show by the Big Band at Sea and their singers.  The instrumentals in this show were amazing, especially the Sax’s.  Those guys blew some tunes.  While waiting for it to start, we played some cards which is always fun.  Great day…..

Here are some pictures:

i can’t say the name of this hill, but this is where the trolley took us.  If you wanted to walk it, it was only almost 500 steps up the mountain.  

Denise getting ready to return to the spa.  They gave her a robe and told her to come back to the cabin to change before returning.  Lovely lady she is!

Just a picturesque shot of the island looking from my cabin balcony.

This is the trolly train that we took that was sitting near the scooters we rented and where we dropped them off.  That is our ship in the background.  There was another ship (Aida Line) in harbor also.

You can see Denise and Ilene walking together as they head out the the little lighthouse near the downtown area of the city of Alesund.

This reminds me of Venise and Amsterdam.  Lovely shot of an inlet of water near city center.

This is shot looking down from the hill that I mentioned earlier.  It was quite rainy then!

Denise getting ready for a swim…no…for a tanning session.

Denise in the bathrobe given to her by the Spa folks.  She looks great.  Love her!

Our self portraits on our t-shirts.  Whose was best?  I think we all did great.

Fun times on our scooters.  We all survived the adventure.  Way to go Denise for encouraging us to do it.

Denise and I walking off to the lighthouse.

A pretty place.  Great group!

Today was the funeral for their King who passed away last week.  All the flags were lowered to half mass.

Perfect picture.

2026 Scandinavian Tour - October - Day 06 - Geiranger, Norway (Beautiful)

 September 8, 2026

This morning was a lazy morning…although I got up and opened the curtains around 7 AM to see the most beautiful valley full of waterfalls as we cruised up the fjord.  Hundreds of waterfalls cascading over and down the steep slopes of the fjord walls.  Its pretty breathtaking.

The boat first stopped for about an hour in a place call Hellesylt so some excursions could take off from there.  Such small little towns with homes on the most steep cliffs.  I always wonder how they can build such structures.  How do the get the machinery and supplies there?  After spinning the boat we headed to Geiranger.  This was our main port of call for today.  We were here from noon until 9 PM.  We left the boat around noon.  Our plan was to take the hop-on, hop-off bus through the little town and up into the mountains.  Most of the ship wanted to do this, it seemed.  A pretty long wait to buy tickets.  It turned out that our bus time was 1:30 pm, so we had some time to kill.  I just kinda walked around then went and stood in line to make sure we got a decent seat on our bus.  The girls shopped.  But while I walked around, I noticed these green looking vehicles that seated two, one in front, the other in back.  They rented for 1 hour for the same price that we paid for the hop-on, hop-off bus.  I think that would have been a lot of fun to take those around the area for an hour.  Anyway, the bus thing was fun.  We went to the top first where we had amazing views of the valley and into the fjord.  We took tons of pictures of the beauty all around us.  Later, we caught the bus and took it to the next stop where we got off and walked about .9km to a farm house/restaurant.  That was a nice scenic walk up high on the mountain.  After walking back to the bus stop, we got back on the bus to the next stop which was near a visitors center.  It had a river flowing through it that you could follow all the way down to the city center and to our ship.  That was a great walk back. Someone said that there were 480 steps one takes to do this.

After spending the afternoon walking around Geiranger, we re-boarded the bus to wait for dinner.  I have found the food to be ok…not the best that I’ve had.  It’s good…but not the best.  I have found the service to just be ok…not the best, not the worst.  And some of the processes, like getting back on the ship took too much time when compared to other ships.  Most ships have two entry points, this one only has one.  So you get queued up a bit.  It’s just time…all good.

Finally, Denise and Ilene were handed a promotional flyer for a spa night.  They seemed to think it was a good deal for the money.  So they booked it for 8 PM.  As I write this, Denise is there now.  We went to the main show but Denise and Ilene left me to get to this appointment.  Kim was not feeling well after dinner and went to his room.  So I’m on my own for a bit until the 9:30 Big Band show.  I hope we’re able to get seats to it.  We shall see.

Here are some pictures of the day:

I believe this is a shot of Hellesylt’s port. 

Cruising through this fjord.  It was gray in the morning but cleared fairly nicely in the evening.

While waiting for the time to get off the ship, the girls colored.  Yep, colored.

These were some little stories in the little main street of Geiranger.

It was cold in the morning.  Denise couldn’t get enough layers on.

At the highest stop point of our on-off bus, there was this chair looking out over the valley.  Denise and Ilene had some fun with it.

They insulate their homes with dirt and grass on their roof of their houses.  I just wonder if they mow it.

Lovely waterfalls everywhere.

This is the little town of Geiranger, Norway.  Lots of RV’s came into the green area to the right by nights end.  I think it is a popular tourist and camping place.

Cruising up the fjord. 

It was Diva’s night in the lounge.  I thought this girl sings wonderfully.  And to do this song from Whitney Houston (written by Dolly Parton) is a tough one.  She did a nice job.

Some videos that I took.  Pretty area this place is.

2026 Scandinavian Tour - October - Day 05 - Ship at sea day.

 September 7, 2026

Finally a good nights sleep!  I did take a Melatonin pill and it seemed to help.  Anyway it was fun waking up, opening the shades and having a full view of the North Sea.  Looking out from inside it looks really cold out there.  But, when opening the door, the air is not that bad.  It’s probably in the 50’s I would guess.  The sea is a bit choppy and the boat is moving more than I’ve felt in past cruises. 

I’m once again writing this in the Carousel Lounge waiting for the Big Band again.   This time it will be the swing genre.   Our day has been fun.  We started the day in the dining room for breakfast.  The food is pretty good but the service, especially at breakfast was quite bad.  It just seemed like our table sat in a place where the servers stopped just short.  After eating we went to a ‘name the price’ trivia type activity.  It challenged us as it had to be priced in euros.  So we were constantly having to adjust from dollars to euros.  It wouldn’t have mattered as our pricing was always quite high.  

After failing on pricing, we put our swim suits on and went to the hot tubs in the indoor pool area.  That felt quite good just soaking in the warm water.

But the highlight of the day activities was being taught the Cha, Cha, Cha.  Boy did Kim and I tear a rug up with our moves.  We led Denise and Ilene so gracefully that Kim’s blood sugar went real low and I could barely stay awake.   We did make it through a couple of rounds of dancing with the music.  It was kinda fun.  

After lunch,  we each went back to our room to take a rest.  We were to meet with Kim and Ilene at 3 PM for a Win it in a minute challenge.  But Denise and I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until it was way over.  I had to text them to see if they made and they had.  So embarrassing.  But once we fully woke up, we met them in the buffet and played some cards.  That was fun.

Tonight was formal dinner night followed by a couple of great shows.  The main show was a Rock and Roll show that we all loved.  You know, we grew up in an era with the best music!  It was awesome to go through a myriad  of rock and roll songs.  The even did Stairway to Heaven from Led Zepplin.  

As I said earlier, I’m writing this from the lounge where they Big Band is going through some of the old swing tunes.  That, too, takes me back to my high school days since we played many of these swing tunes in our band classes.  The talent on the ship has been really quite good.  The singers have all had amazing voices.  And this band is really good.

Lastly, we sat through an education of Norway and its history.  That was really fun since the next 3 days will be spent visiting Norway fjords.  We are excited to see the beauty of this country and experience a bit of its culture.  

Some pictures:

They have sculptures made from plastic bottles retrieved from the sea.

Hot tubbing.  Nice.

Enjoying the balcony.

Our rock and roll show with some amazing stunts.

Waiting for the show to begin.  Got great seats.

Lovely sunset from our balcony.

The big band show singers.

Playing cards while waiting for the big band show to begin.

Serious dancers we were.  It was a lot of fun.