Trondheim

Had a reasonable overnight sleep, but continue to wake early. SB is reading her emails first thing and Princess V has enquired as to whether my headaches have subsided. As it is a well proven fact that the amount of headaches and eye twitching I experience are proportionate to the amount of time I spend in the company of Shiny Bright and the situations she foists upon me, I was happy to reply that all was good with me, however it could also be that the cold weather has frozen my right eyebrow into a permanent twitch! And just at that moment when I am reading a message from my little sis, who enquires in her email as to whether there was any entertainment on board the ship last night, SB responds, “No, tell her I went to bed early!” It took me a moment to realize that SB considers herself the onboard entertainment. Ye gods, there goes that right eyebrow again...
Anyhow, there is no entertainment provided on the ship as it is not a cruise ship as such, but an actual working ship. Will endeavour to take try and take some photos of the ship later today. It is very comfortable and the guests area is really well set up, and does resemble other cruise ships I’ve been on, just on a smaller scale.
Time for breakfast and we then join Kelli off the he ship at 8.45 to walk with her into Trondheim city centre. This was Norways’s first capital. Did I previously tell you that Bergen was the 2nd and Oslo is the current capital? Trondheim was founded in 997AD. A gorgeous layer of fresh snow has settled over the city. Thankfully we are all well rugged up although my nose keeps running and accessing tissues from under my multiple layers of clothing, plus the necessity to remove my gloves is proving problematic. The alternative is to let my nose drip onto my scarf wrapped around my neck and face but if that then freezes I will be worse off!

Such pretty scenery and buildings everywhere we look. My little camera is doing it’s best, but not able to do the scenery justice.

Kelli stops near that beautiful draw bridge for jaw dropping photo opportunities.the bridge dates back to 1861 and has become a gateway to the ‘hipster’ part of the city. At Nidaros cathedral we go into the onsite cafe. SB offers to buy us all hot chocolate drinks as she says that it is her turn to buy. When she comes back with lattes she advises us that they didn’t sell hot chocolate. Moments later a las and her grandmother who are on the same tour as us, come to sit with us, bringing their hot chocolate covered in creak and chocolate drops with them! I look at SB and as her did she even ask if they sold hot chocolate and her reply was that she couldn’t see it on the menu board so just asked for lattes! So much for her fluent in Norwegian claims!!!
It was nice to sit in the warm and be able to remove a few layers of clothing for a while. SB had a look through the cathedral and all too soon it was time to meet up with Kelli again and head back to the ship.
As I know some of you have also been following our ship’s journey via the webcam link, before we boarded, we four musketeers walked towards the front of the wharf where we waved wildly to whoever may have been viewing the webcam in real time. Clearly we must have looked like total numpties as a lady came over to us to check if we needed help and Kelli waited by the gangplank shaking her head, making sure we actually got on board without inciden. (As a funny aside, my mini iPad has an annoying habit of spell checking and inserting words it thinks I mean. I have just put in the word ‘numpties’ and when I read that sentence it had converted ‘numpties’ to ‘bum ties’. ) I will leave it to you to decide whether you think we all looked like numpties or bum ties! The cathedral is lovely and is built over the burial site of St Olav Tryggvason, the patron saint of Norway. Construction of this enormous Gothis structure began in about 1070. Many consider it as the most beautiful religious building in Norway.
But enough silliness... back on board, layers and layers of clothing removed and off to lunch which was again a buffet. As we have had a full on morning (and according to Kelli we walked 11,500 steps on our walk) we are all having a restful afternoon doing nothing much at all. So, I’ve got time to work on the blog, SB is busy applying supa glue to her shoes, or at least she has commissioned the onboard handyman to do some running repairs for her and she is contemplating having a short nana nap.
During the afternoon they have a ‘treat’ which today was blue mussels to try. They were delicious! They are offered up on the 9th deck which also happens to be the top deck. While eating my mussels we passed a lonely little light house which was a really pretty sight in such a vast blue sea. Mind you, it was jolly cold up in the open air.

We have been told that there is a possibility of seeing the lights tonight so we have our cabin phone programmed to get the call if the lights appear. It took me so long this morning to put all my layers of clothes on, plus my boots, that I’m worried that the lights will have appeared and gone by the time I’m up on the top deck! We ended up playing Uno for a while and then went to see a video presentation on the lights. That top deck is going to be a free for all if everyone wants to be seeing the lights st the same time! Back to our cabin again for some Kindle reading time.
For those of you familiar with the stolen belt from Canada story, the following will make sense to you. Beltie has accompanied SB and me on this trip. We had been waiting for an opportune time to secrete Beltie in D & G’s cabin, and our chance came this evening. Dinner is at 6 but there is such a rush from all the oldies to get in even though it is assigned seating, so I made sure D & G had left their cabin to go to dinner and I went to reception to tell the Beltie saga, asking if they could accompany us to D & G’s cabin so that we could hide a Beltie. The delightful lass at reception was working on her own but thought it sounded such a good story that she wanted to be part of the fun so promptly help us set Beltie up on Captn D’s bed. She said that she loved our story and this made her job fun. So off SB and I head to dinner to find D & G already seated at our table. We had a very pleasant dinner, headed back to our respective cabins and a very short time later had a knock on our door from a gob smacked Foggy! What an absolute hoot.
But enough of this frivolity. It has been a long day and we are all turning in for an early night. Here’s hoping those Northetn alights don’t let us down...