Forget everything you have heard about cruise ships.  The 24×7 all you can eat fabulous food buffets, the entertainment, the free excursions on shore (making that one up, not exactly sure that happens), having enough deck chairs and seats in the dining room …  you know, things like that.  Because a Hurtigruten cruise is none of those things.  In fact, this company prides itself on being a working ferry boat.  They have a deck just for cars and they carry shipments from port to port up and down the Norwegian coast.  I would call this a no-frills cruise trip.

On the other hand, I was quite thrilled to have my own cabin (which was nicer than many places I have stayed – and believe it or not, larger) and a miniature bathroom that was larger than bathrooms I have encountered since.  This was truly the first time in 20 days that I could actually unpack!  Not that I have much to unpack – but still, much easier to peruse my meager wardrobe in drawers and shelves rather than rifling through pack-sacks.  I will describe said wardrobe another time, not sure I can go there yet, I might get weepy.

Right!  So, I’m on deck 2 which is not below water level but close.  I am eye level with the water – kind of spooky that.  And I have two porthole windows with porthole covers that require tremendous strength to open and close.  My cabin is at one end of the ship, let’s call it the bow, because I believe that is the name for the front end of a ship (if you can’t yet tell, the Minkey grew up in the Midwest, there is no boating to speak of there).  I don’t have confirmation, but I think my cabin is directly over the ship engines.  Whenever the speed or direction of the ship changes the engine sound shifts and this is noticeable to those of us who are light sleepers….    The ship holds maybe 500 people and has 7 decks (more like 9 including decks passengers don’t have access to).

The place where all the action is would be deck 7 – which is the traditional sun deck at the stern of the ship (see how quick I am with the nautical terms?!).  This means that when I leave my cabin and head for deck 7, it is a small journey that includes 10 sets of stairs and walking all the way to the other end of the ship.  As Grandma C. used to say, ‘Phew!’.

My fitbit was on fire people!  The number of stairs that I went up and down over those 7 days was ridiculous.  I think that one day my stair numbers were at 76!  Since I know there will be a question about elevators, yes, they had those.  I think they had one elevator and it was fairly busy shuttling the old and decrepit up and down the decks.

That brings me to another interesting point.  I was in the 2% minority of people under the age of 50.  Yesssss….  All the rest of the peoples were 75 and older.  Really.  And of that group, 80% of them were German.  The Germans that don’t speak English and that don’t want to speak or even hear English!  More on that later.  There was one tiny, shrunken old man who I would swear was in his upper nineties – and I must say he was quite spry!

The good news is that the Minkey made some new friends on this boat.  Yea!  New Friends!  Dinner companions!  I’m excited about this because I have been dining with only myself as company – and as entertaining as I am, it does get old.

I encountered these two gentleman on the first night aboard ship in the ‘ala cart’ restaurant.  Not to be confused with the dining room where the vast majority of passengers had their meals.  I had paid ‘full board’ but just could not bring myself to enter the dining room, having the sneaking suspicion that the food would be so-so.  Plus, after my day with the backpack struggles, I was ready for a decent meal.  Oddly enough we struck up a conversation while waiting to be seated, about the lack of decent service at Norwegian restaurants.  There was maybe two other occupied tables in this restaurant, so not incredibly busy.  When our waiter did appear he thought we were together and these two blokes kindly invited me to join them.

I call them blokes because they do hail from the UK and they were embarking on a holiday that began with the cruise.  What a treat to have such scintillating conversation at dinner!  These two regaled me with stories from their worlds and I shared my crazy plans to traverse the globe.  And we made friends with the waiter.  And later you will hear of how the waiter turned into a HOT Norwegian dude – because in his waiter get-up, it was hard to notice much…

For the rest of the trip my new friends and I explored the little towns at each stop and enjoyed a couple more dinners in the fabulous ala cart restaurant.  They ended up leaving the boat earlier than I did – and were curious as to why I had booked it for 7 days…(it’s all about the arctic baby!).  One of the blokes spoke German and he had overheard one group of Germans on the ship exclaiming about how all the announcements were in English and wondering why they were using English for so many of their presentations.  This is how we knew that some of our German comrades were not overly pleased with constantly hearing the English language… I can confirm that the announcements were in three languages:  Norwegian, German and English …  though they did occasionally have a presentation that was only in English.  Like the one on the Vikings … which still makes me chuckle some.

This ship was an ‘expedition’ ship and when I booked this trip I thought that meant there would be more free activities because we had an expedition team on board.  Well, not exactly the case.  Any and all excursions cost money and could run over $200 extra.  Bah.  Some of us are on a budget – so I only signed up for two excursions – but they were pretty darn cool, so money well spent!

I’ll share more about the two excursions in a separate post, one was to Geirangerfjord and Trollstigen and the other was to the Nordkapp.  It’s time for me to hit the hay – because tomorrow is moving day – headed to Tallinn (already!).