Too much excitement.

Thursday 4^th October.

Quiet day today after the excitement of last night. The North Cape excursion people head off and I wonder how many of them will come back. It’s so windy if they’re not careful they’ll get blown away!!

Wild and wooly outside today

We hear later that an elderly lady stumbles in the wind, does a face plant and her nose is broken. Poor thing. I venture up on deck to take some photos and spot some workmen up on a roof, apparently the wind is not too bad by local standards. I strike up a conversation with some random bloke up on deck and it turns out he's one of the organisers of the astronomy tour. He tells me they run these tours twice a year and have done so for several years and last night was the first time he's ever heard people clap and cheer at the lights. Go us! (Sidenote: With at least 2 people running these Astronomy tours, you'd think they'd be better organised!!)

We are convinced that there is some sort of sleeping potion in the food. Between the tiredness and the wind, we can’t be bothered going ashore and instead sit and watch workers on the breakwater. They are making a substantial extension to it and trucks laden with massive rocks trundle along the foreshore road, disappear over the small hill and reappear on the breakwater to drop off their load. The smaller trucks reverse out on the breakwater and drop, the biggest truck drops his load of rocks only a little way along and a front-end loader comes and carries them the rest of the way to the trackscavator who was placing them in position. The rocks look so tiny by the time they get out there. Seems we all love work and could sit and watch it all day.The wind was blowing so hard, it was taking the surface off the water!

work on the breakwater

Dinner is earlier tonight and we can’t figure out why until we get into the restaurant and see we are having a seafood buffet. Trevor is in his element, he loves the challenge of getting the meat out of shellfish. Bit disappointingly though, it’s all been frozen and while the prawns have thawed out well, the same can’t be said for the various crabs, and other yabby-like critters. I guess we’re a bit spoiled coming from a place that has such great fresh seafood. We saw a lot down south but maybe not so much is caught up here?
It’s been lovely having Doug and Ruth’s company at dinner and we’ll miss them tomorrow night. They fly back to Oslo from Kirkenes for a couple of days, then back to Minnesota.  

After dinner, Trevor goes missing and he turns up in the company of some of his laundry groupies. Apparently, the majority of passengers don’t realise that the laundry is the hub of social life on the ship. One couple of the groupies is also staying the night tomorrow at the same hotel as us in Kirkenes.