We are now on our 4th day of travel down the coast of Norway on the Hurtigruten. If it is your first trip to Norway It is a great introductory as you are seeing spectacular scenery, rugged cliffs, and spectacular fjords on the remote west coast.
The Hurtigruten boat operates daily and is a passenger and car ferry holding approximately 500 to 600 passengers. We stop at several small towns along with the coast loading and unloading freight, car passengers.
The trip is relaxing and very casual and with only 500 passengers to feed you are not being hassled by fellow passengers in the dining room, it is all very civilized.
We have attended many lectures on different interesting topics, experienced a magical midnight concert at Tromso church and joined a couple of excursions which I must warn you are very expensive, especially as our dollar is low against the Norwegian Krone, if you are thinking of visiting Norway be prepared to double everything, for example we would normally pay $4 for a coffee in Australia here you pay $7 to $8 etc etc. Fortunately during our 3 weeks in Norway 90% of our meals have been included.
Today we once again crossed the Arctic Circle the first by plane and today by boat, we celebrated with a glass of champagne and a spoonful of cod liver oil which the Norwegians drink daily because they only get a few months of sunshine a year so the cod liver oil is a good source of vitamin D. Tomorrow at Kristiansund which lies right at the ocean’s edge out on the coast of Nordmøre we leave the boat. Kristiansund city has Norway’s best and finest natural harbour right in the city centre. The area has been populated for more than 10,000 years, and one believes that the first Norwegians settled here. We will leave the boat for 4 hours to take a bus trip on the most famous road trip in the world. The Atlantic Road was given “the construction of the century” in 2005. We will again board the boat in Molde for our final destination of Bergen. On the food side we have tasted moose and reindeer meat, cod tongue and copious amounts of delicious salmon, shrimp and crab. Normally the food I miss most when away is salmon, but after this trip I think it will be a nice piece of barbecue chicken.