I have many pics of this trip day, so I may overdo them, but the views were spectacular even though the day was dreary. I hope the pics will depict what we experienced.
Early on, we cruised through a 1.2mile dredged channel that was 325 ft. wide and only 21 ft. deep. The channel, given that it provided access to towns by the shipping company, was considered very important. The town we stopped at had 200 inhabitants.
Next stop was Stokmarknes, the town where the Coastal Express was founded, which became Hurtigruten, the line we are on. A museum for the line is there to include a ship built in 1956, that was only removed from service 10 years ago.
Probably one of the most exciting parts of our sailing voyage was the sailing to the end of the Troll Fjord-a very narrow passage with a small widening at the end just big enough for the ship to spin around in. Glaciers are on top of the mountains, creating water falls even in September. We were told that even chunks of ice exist in the water in early summer.
The Lofoten Islands that include the Troll Fjord and the town of Svolvaer are a very mountainous chain that stretches for miles along the Western coast of northern Norway. Again many glaciers are present in the mountains. We observed some spectacular cloud formations around the mountains.
Svolvaer is a sizable town in the islands, where cod fishing and sea eagle tours are a big contributor to the economy. As has been the ships custom at dinner, we are served food from the area we are in, so tonight we had cod for dinner and dessert was the cake of Norway.
So here are a series of pics. The software isn't friendly enough to allow me to title each one, so I'll try to place them in order of the text, leading off with pic of the ship. The third is the opening of the Fjord, the fourth and fifth, the view of the opening from the end and the seventh the view looking towards the end as we left the fjord. The waterfall pic was from inside the fjord.
The last pic is for Darrell. This inflatable has TWO 300 horsepower engines and carrys several people.
It is used for excursions to watch sea eagles.
Actually, I forgot some of the cloud formations, so they are the end.
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