Live from the NCL Star July 23-August 15, 2023. Will I survive 23 days without the beverage package?

[YVRteacher]

6 minutes ago, ceilidh1 said:

You can't come home until we have a polar bear sighting. That's the rule. Everyone knows it...

One of the people I met through cruise critic saw a polar bear on her 9 hour tour in Longyearbyen. She said it was so far away she can’t see it in her photo but she sent the photo to her mom anyway.

 

What this cruise has lacked in polar bears it has made up in reindeer and cake!

 

Maybe there will be puffins next cruise. Last time I was in Lerwick there were puffins.

 

I have chocolate for you!

[YVRteacher]

Our guide is a big guy. A wind picks up and he says now we know why he looks the way he does: well anchored to the ground. I used some hair glue to hold my hair down today. If you have long hair and you come to Norway, you need a hair plan for the wind.  Woollen headbands are popular, as are scarves. Not only are the flags blowing and swaying, so are the flagpoles.

 

Our guide, Tyygve, says you can’t travel digitally and that you need to see, smell, hear, taste and touch. Fully agree as I have certainly enjoyed tasting my way through Iceland and Norway’s cakes. Sadly, my “cake in every port in Norway streak” came to an end today.

 

Before we left the dock our bus driver had to do a breathalyzer test before starting the bus.

 

When we were in Longyearbyen, they said they had the most northerly everything.

 

When we were in Honningsvåg they said they had the most northerly everything: most northerly gas station, most northerly grocery store, most northerly cheese section, most northerly traffic jams.

 

Today we’re in Hammerfest and they too say they are the most northerly everything: most northerly gas station. Most northerly flower gardens. Most northerly saunas.

 

 

Tyygve calls reindeer “biological lawnmowers!” He also says they are a bit daft. I freaking love reindeer!!!!

 

On Fridays in the summer people here drop their keyboards or pencils at noon and head to their cabins. In the winter they head to the lakes and ponds for ice fishing. Tyygve’s favourite part of ice fishing is drinking cognac in the tent on the ice with 5 buddies.

 

We drove beside a lake with a little dock in the middle and a little outhouse-size building on the dock. Tyygve told us this lake is where the children swim in summer and that the building is a sauna. Since there are 24 hours of daylight in the summer the sauna is used at all hours. In the winter people break the ice on the lake and swim out to the sauna. There is always one unfortunate person who has to go first and turn on the sauna to warm it up for others!

 

Hammerfest exports 5000 tonnes of cod a year. The heads, the tongues, the liver are considered delicacies. The cod drying racks are right behind the main elementary school. I could not work there and smell cod all day every day.

 

Our bus had to stop a few times for “traffic” on the road.

[QuattroRomeo]

What?? No cake??

 

At least there are lots of reindeer..

[laudergayle]

17 hours ago, JoeTec said:

I really don't understand why you are buying pictures to hang in your house. You have taken such beautiful pictures there is at least 10 that I would frame for my walls

Like this one.  I thought it was a painting.

 

[LauraAnneC]

28 minutes ago, laudergayle said:

Like this one.  I thought it was a painting.

 

Stunning!

[Turtles06]

55 minutes ago, LauraAnneC said:

Stunning!

 

1 hour ago, laudergayle said:

Like this one.  I thought it was a painting.

 

Quite stunning. It’s perfectly composed, the angle of the boat draws your eyes from the boat all the way down the water.  It’s a still life, but very much alive. 

[YVRteacher]

Thank you!

[YVRteacher]

Our first stop on the Hammerfest Panoramic NCL Shore excursion is the beach.

 

First we walk the path 

Then Yvonne walks away from the group to get as much beach time as possible.
 

Thank goodness, because imagine if people walked all over these sand rivulets before the photos happened??

 

 

Also, jellyfish!

 

 

Then the reindeer came and our group would not get on the bus! First the sow and calf, then the buck.

 

 

 

This male reindeer is all tangled up in something. Rope? Long grass?

[YVRteacher]

Stop #2

Scenic viewpoint stop Mount Salen.

 

 

 

 

 

[YVRteacher]

Stop #3

 Very tiny and very crowded Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society.

 

This is where we could leave the tour and make our way back to the ship without the bus. 

The walk is supposed to take about 20 minutes but I took about 90 minutes because there were 3 big distractions:

1. 1. The grocery store
2. 2. Reindeer on the sidewalk and in the fountain
3. 3. The beach 

I went into a cafe next to the polar bear place but it did not look yummy at all. I hadn’t had breakfast and was hungry, but not hungry enough to eat non-yummy food.

 

The grocery store was beautiful. Lovely fresh produce.

 

Look what I found!

I don’t know NCL’s stance on bringing whole frozen cakes on board and I didn’t have a fork!

[YVRteacher]

Reindeer in town. Where there’s reindeer, there’s reindeer poop. Everywhere.  On the beach, on the path, on the streets, on the sidewalks.

 

 

It’s hot (21 degrees Celsius) today and reindeer don’t like heat. A great way to cool down is to take a dip in the town fountain!

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by YVRteacher

[ceilidh1]

So is a reindeer the Norway equivalent to a Canada Goose?

[YVRteacher]

I’ll write about the beach stop tomorrow. It was special for me.

 

Hammerfest was my least favourite port. I wish we had had two days in either Longyearbyen or Alta instead of stopping in Hammerfest. Everybody I chatted with today felt the same.

 

Here is the B2B letter I received.
 

 

 Note that I also received all the disembarkation/how to get off the ship paperwork. Perhaps they are trying to get rid of me?🤔 I took that document down to the front desk. Clearly someone just plunked the paperwork on the door signs of every cabin. There are 160 people doing B2B (quite a few have done B2B2B or more. Some said the food was better this cruise. I think a lot of the improvements have to do with Garry.)

 

Dinnertime view

 

 

We arrived in Tromsø at 9:30 for an overnight stop. Some people have an 8:00am flight and need to disembark at 4:00am.

 

Views of Tromsø at 11:00pm. I am pretty sure @TrumpyNor gets credit for this gorgeous sky!

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were really great people on this cruise. I’m sad to say farewell to many new friends. At the same time I look forward to meeting people from the Cruise Critic roll call for the August 4-15 cruise. 

 

[YVRteacher]

3 minutes ago, ceilidh1 said:

So is a reindeer the Norway equivalent to a Canada Goose?

 

😂
Cuter, but the same in terms of poop quotient.

[YVRteacher]

[YVRteacher]

Phew! I am all caught up! Just one beach story to share then we begin the second leg of this B2B cruise which goes from Tromsø to Reykjavik.

[www3traveler]

Question for you: In reading the Freestyle Daily, there is listed activity everyday for the Splash Academy.  I guess that I am surprised that people would bring small children on a cruise like this one.  Do you know how many Little Ones were on board?

 

I pray that this next cruise goes much better for you.

 

BIG BIG BIG BIG HUG

 

Love and prayers always

[odie1024]

Your pictures are stunning and I am jealous I am not there. Enjoy the second leg of your trip.

[Sugar Magnolia]

I have been sailing on the Dawn since early July so I missed the start of your thread. Though it is always a little sad at the end of a cruise, I am overjoyed at the thought of following along on another one of your adventures! I have 19 pages to catch up so need to start cracking now.

[TrumpyNor]

@YVRteacher 

Welcome to Tromsø!!!

Yes, I did what I could about the weather and managed to improve it quite a bit from the originally overcast and rainy weather forecast. 🤩

[YVRteacher]

6 hours ago, www3traveler said:

Question for you: In reading the Freestyle Daily, there is listed activity everyday for the Splash Academy.  I guess that I am surprised that people would bring small children on a cruise like this one.  Do you know how many Little Ones were on board?

 

I pray that this next cruise goes much better for you.

 

BIG BIG BIG BIG HUG

 

Love and prayers always

I don’t know the number of kids but there were way too many. Screaming babies in Le Bistro. Screaming babies on the tour bus. Toddlers running through the adult game shows. Toddlers running through the drink area in the Garden Cafe. Herds of teens running everywhere, thundering through the hallways at night. Babies in the hot tubs in diapers. Kids barging in front of seniors trying to walk down the gangway. The lifeguard kept coming to the pool and telling the kids their parents had to come to supervise them. The kids wouldn’t get out of the pool and the parents were not on the pool deck.

[YVRteacher]

And so the second cruise begins. This is the omelette they made in the Garden Cafe.

 

The food on this ship is so unappealing.

 

Last night I ate at Le Bistro. This was dessert.

It tasted like gelatinous rhinoceros skin and should not have been served to humans. I had an awful waiter who kept saying “so you don’t eat gluten. No bread. You can’t have eggs. You don’t eat butter.” (At no time have I said I don’t eat gluten, he has taken my order for eggs most days in O’Sheehan’s.  It was ridiculous and unpleasant and I wanted him to go away. I didn’t get the wine I ordered (same bottle) until after I had finished eating.

 

 

 

 

[TrumpyNor]

25 minutes ago, YVRteacher said:

 

 I had an awful waiter who kept saying “so you don’t eat gluten. No bread. You can’t have eggs. You don’t eat butter.” (At no time have I said I don’t eat gluten, he has taken my order for eggs most days in O’Sheehan’s.  It was ridiculous and unpleasant and I wanted him to go away. I didn’t get the wine I ordered (same bottle) until after I had finished eating.

 

 

 

 

Thankfully we have not come across very many awful waiters, but whenever we did, we have on occations asked the Matre D' to please change the waiter, especially if the constant bad service has occured in one of the speciality restaurants. 

[www3traveler]

29 minutes ago, YVRteacher said:

And so the second cruise begins. This is the omelette they made in the Garden Cafe.

 

The food on this ship is so unappealing.

 

Last night I ate at Le Bistro. This was dessert.

It tasted like gelatinous rhinoceros skin and should not have been served to humans. I had an awful waiter who kept saying “so you don’t eat gluten. No bread. You can’t have eggs. You don’t eat butter.” (At no time have I said I don’t eat gluten, he has taken my order for eggs most days in O’Sheehan’s.  It was ridiculous and unpleasant and I wanted him to go away. I didn’t get the wine I ordered (same bottle) until after I had finished eating.

 

 

 

 

WOW!!!  I was hoping that things had improved for you.

BIG BIG BIG BIG HUG

Love and prayers

[RosieCanberra]

I board today, after reading your thread on and off the past two weeks I'm dreading it.