Steve and Cathy's Blog

Because Nautica would not reach the port of Helsinki until 11:00am, guest lecturer Dr. Sherry Hutt had the opportunity to make a presentation this morning, which of course we attend. As she starts her lecture, she discusses conversations she has on board. One concerned being at the Team Trivia event that is held every Sea Day. She references it this way: “Trivia – the blood sport of cruising!”  We all laugh because it is so true.

We are at 59.33 degrees north latitude, so sunrise comes at 4:16am today. As lecturer Sherry Hutt suggested, we are up at 5am for the morning sail into Stockholm. We look out over our veranda and think we are in Casco Bay, Maine. I mean, it looks identical to what we see as we cruise Casco Bay on the boat to Cliff Island. Small islands all over the place. Dozens and dozens of summer houses. Sailboats and

Our journey to Stockholm is only 395 nautical miles, which is too far to reach overnight, so today is a Sea Day, but at a leisurely pace. We wake up at 7am, and it’s 63 degrees and cloudy, but we are traveling at 11.5 knots per hour, far less than our cruising speed of 18 knots. There are plenty of activities available, but we do our usual thing and head for Horizons on Deck 10 for

Technically, our cruise is ending, but having signed on for the “next” cruise, we are considered “in transit.” We have a day on our own in Copenhagen, as we have foregone the two excursions offered by Oceania Cruises. On our way off the ship this morning, Cruise Director Shawn Carter tells us that, of the 500+ people boarding today, 358 of them are first-time Oceania Cruises passengers. That in itself is quite a change in the

The photo above is our last view of Norway, but we are pretty sure it won’t be our last visit. The next morning, we begin to look back at the previous 17 days and start to catalog what we have learned that we haven’t already mentioned in the blog posts for those days. Two quick thoughts come to mind, two about history and another one just personal: Throughout our visit to Norway and Russia, we were

Before I start this post, let me say that I finally am discovering why I’m so far behind (I am writing this on July 31stabout our July 21stactivities). First of all, we are so fascinated by everything about these places – especially the history which we were not really exposed to in school (Now I know why my father majored in European history in college!). Secondly, I am taking all too many photographs, which I then have

We will have two posts on this day, and this first one is going to be mostly photographs. We are traveling almost the entire length of the Sognefjord fjord, which runs for 127 miles from the ocean eastward. We will end up in the small town of Flam. The ship’s guest lecturer, Sherry Hutt, told us yesterday that we absolutely must be up by 6:00am, even though our arrival in Flam isn’t until 10:00am, because the

We get a surprising welcome when we arrive in Kristiansund harbor around 8:45am. A cannon on the hill of the town is fired three times to mark our arrival, an auspicious and delightful start to our day. It’s a beautiful summer day, with just a few clouds and little wind. Our ship docks right in the town next to a shopping area. Quick factoid: Kristiansund is believed to have been the first location of human habitation

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

We arrive at the Economia port, which is the container port for Arkangelsk: “Russian: Арха́нгельск, IPA: [ɐrˈxanɡʲɪlʲsk]), also known in English as Archangel and Archangelsk.” -Wikipedia. It is 60 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny. Yay! This port is neat, orderly and modern, but is about 16 kilometers from the city. So we begin our tour driving through an old, decrepit industrial area that appears to have been abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union. There certainly is no cruise terminal, per se,