Steve and Cathy's Blog

We are now heading south again, having rounded the northern edge of Norway. We wake up to beautiful weather. At 7:00am, it’s 56 degrees F. with nary a cloud in the sky. The water temperature, however, is 41 degrees.  That makes Maine seem like the Caribbean. 

Sherry Hutt has a lecture on Kristiansund and Flam, Norway which is not to be missed. She is a treasure, and her lectures ramp up our knowledge and enthusiasm for every port at which we stop.

We spend time on Horizons with needlepoint and photo editing (Steve is taking tons of photos, and they require considerable editing and culling). Then Sherry’s lecture. Then we return to the room where Steve, on impulse, walks out on the veranda to, as he puts it, “get a sense that we are on a vessel moving at 19 knots through the ocean and not just in a five-star hotel.” It can get that way when the weather is so cold that you never go on the pool deck, the walking track, or Waves Grill.

Then, YAY, it’s lunchtime! The weather allows us to eat our meal on the stern portion of the Terrace Café and continue our reintroduction that we are on a moving ship. Steve has muffulettas. Cathy has correctly observed that sandwiches are not usually Oceania’s best food item, the ratio of filling to bread being off (too much bread). This sandwich, however, is a great exception. 

The afternoon passes as almost all of our Sea Day afternoons do: reading, blogging, nap. At 5:30, Cathy attends a “Pre-Dinner Matinee” in Nautica lounge where pianist Panos Karan and the Darsem String Quartet perform a very well-done arrangement of Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1. She really enjoys it.

While Cathy is enjoying the concert, Steve is in the stateroom. It suddenly occurs to him that we must be close to crossing the Artic Circle. A quick check of the navigation channel on the television confirms that. So Steve takes photos of the tv screen at, as precisely as possible, the time when we do indeed cross, which is 5:49pm. He can’t be off by more than a few hundred yards or a few minutes. He shows these to Cathy when she returns, which elicits the response: “What a dork.”

Dinner is in the Grand Dining Room. In Steve’s notes, he has put “fabulous dinner, of course,” but has failed to note what has prompted him to write that. Inexplicably, Cathy, the person with an encyclopedic food memory, cannot recall at this point. It sure was good, though.

This nice day is over for us. Two more stops in Norway that we look forward to with great anticipation, especially after Sherry’s lecture. We can’t get enough of this wonderful country.