CECILIA CLARK P HOTOGRAPHY

We woke to another beautiful day with glassy water and beautiful reflections. The view on the other side of the ship was of an active...

The next morning, August 10, the plan for the day had changed. A passenger was having a medical emergency and needed to get back to a...

Sea Ice looking east to Greenland We're deep into the sea ice. Last night it sounded like the ship was having quite a fight plowing,...

Brother John's Glacier at the head of Foulke Fjord Still heading north, the ship stopped in Foulke Fjord. When we arrived it was very...

Qaanaaq, Greenland Continuing north along Greenland's west coast, we stopped for several hours at Qaanaaq. We were looking forward to...

Savissivik About 10,000 years ago a portion of a 100 tonne (220,500 pound) iron-rich meteorite (estimated weight before it exploded)...

Perlerfiup Sermia (glacier) Morning brought clouds, fog, and thunder. We were in Perlerfiup Fjord near the glacier of the same name. The...

Uummannaq Mountain and Island Uummannaq means "heart-shaped mountain" in Greenlandic. The island was named after its split-topped...

View of the Icefjord from Ilulissat, Greenland We had a bit of a late start for our West Greenland cruise after fog in Nuuk prevented our...

Clothesline with a View I am pleased to announce that one of my photographs from Newfoundland was selected for the "The Coastal...

Western Flycatcher (Female) We were faced with a dilemma. We had a tiny Western Flycatcher who insisted on building her nest on top of...

Spiral Staircase at Oodi Our two days in Helsinki were rather gray with morning snow flurries and gray skies outside. Inside Oodi , the...

On February 9 we took the train back to Oslo. The train stopped at every small ski area and town to pick up and drop off passengers many...

We left Hurtigruten's Trollfjord and walked less than a mile to the Clarion Hotel Admiral where we stayed for one night before catching a train back to Oslo. Before arriving, we booked a private walking tour of Bergen through Tours by Locals . The tour began at 9:00 am. Our guide did a good job pointing out things we probably wouldn't have noticed on our own. Several hundred years ago, German-speaking traders (Hansa) would arrive in Bryggen with boatloads of grain, cloth, and

Molde has been a city since 1742 but because of its history of unfortunate town fires followed by German bombings in 1940, most buildings are post-war, mid-century architecture. The city of Molde gradually rises up from the waterfront allowing spectacular views of the 222 partially snow-capped mountain peaks from every elevation. Ferries are so frequent that they pass each other on the way in or out of Molde's ferry harbor. The first Molde Church was a wooden church errected

As the ship headed toward Lødingen for the noon arrival, the skies were very gray and it was soon snowing. Once docked, conveniently, the snow lessened and stopped. Lødingen is on the southeastern corner of the island of Hinnoya. Its climate is classified as "continental subarctic climate." It was cold. We were in port just 3 hours--just enough time to walk almost to the town center and back. We had hoped to walk to the lighthouse (last photo above), but didn't get there. We

Today, we visited a beautiful hotel that I will never/would never check into. We went to the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel. The hotel representative told us that normally it takes about six weeks to build the igloo hotel but this year, winter temperatures were warm. Once temperatures came down there were only about two weeks remaining to build the hotel before the ice igloo season began. Every year the designers have a different theme. This year it was Greek Gods. The construction

Honningsvåg is Norway's northernmost city in the county of Finnmark. Finnmark is Norway's northernmost and easternmost county bordering Troms county to the west, Finland's Lapland region to the south, and Russia's Murmansk Oblast to the east, and by water, the Norwegian Sea (Atlantic Ocean) to the northwest, and the Barents Sea (Arctic Ocean) to the north and northeast (Wikipedia). The ship arrived in port at 8:00 am. Due to an excursion to the North Cape to see the monument

Today we are in port all day (8:00 am to 6:00 pm) which allows for longer excursions and time away from the ship. We went dogsledding in the nearby town of Ramfjordbotn. The sled dog company has two types of dogs: Siberian Huskies shown above, and Alaskan Huskies. Siberians are a registered breed. They are stocky, strong, and have thick coats. The dog team that took Dan and me for a ride is on the right side of the first photo. As they ran they looked to be having a great tim

Svolvær Port at 9:01 am Beautiful pre-dawn light at about 8:00 am as the ship approached Svolvær. The ship eased toward port and our 9:00 am. arrival. The Svolvær name is a "blend of svalr meaning ‘chilly’ and vær meaning ‘fishing village’." According to Hurtigruten information, During World War II, Germany seized several fisheries in Svolvær to steal stocks of fish oil to produce highly explosive nitroglycerin for bombs and shells. During Operation Claymore, a successful Nor