As promised my photos of my recent trip to the Arctic Circle onboard P&O Cruises Oriana
Bergen
Tromso
Alta
Stavanger
Showing posts with label oriana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oriana. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Sunday, 23 March 2014
Oriana in search of the Northern Lights Part V
And so today we reach our final port of Stavanger. The Captain must have put his foot down last night, as we arrived 2 hours early, the downside, it was bucketing it down.
We have been to this port a few times before, so our plan was to just take a walk ashore. It's been sunshine and showers all morning, so it's been brollies at the ready
Oriana had a drill whilst we were ashore, hence the life boats out, but soon a rainbow joined in.
Now here is a tip for all you regular travellers out there.
If like me you tend not to change you foreign currency back to £'s but keep it until the next visit ?
Then please make sure you have the correct "krona" and not walk into a shop in Norway, and try to pay with Danish Krona.
Doh !!!
My last blog will be a cruise review which I will post next week.
Thursday, 20 March 2014
Oriana in search of the Northern Lights Part IV
You saw from yesterday's blog, that we had been treated to a snow fall overnight, and we were due to dock at noon. About 5 miles out, it started to snow again so the Captain decided to slowdown and put one of the fast RIB's into the water with one of the ships photographers for shot of Oriana in the snow.
Well as you can see it turned into a bit of a blizzard
And we even had some small ice flows
So the Captain also added a tender
We then had to wait a while as the berth in is next to the runway of Alta airport, and there was a plane inbound. This must be one of the few berths in the world, where the Captain of a cruise ship has to get permission from air traffic control to dock :-)
But dock we finally did, and the snow cleared and the skies were cloud less with wall to wall beautiful sunshine. Great I thought, thinking towards this evening when we leave the ship at 2230 for our excursion to go in search for the lights.
But first, it was a quick lunch, then off to see the Ice Hotel
This is the 15th year that an ice hotel has been built in Alta, every year with a different theme, this years being The Vikings. If you watched the Joanna Lumley documentary, she stayed there.
As I said in a previous blog, this was a last minute decision to book the tour, but we were glad we did
Well, it would have been rude not to have a drink while we were there.
The Wedding Chapel
And so it was time to board the coach and make our way back to Oriana in this glorious sunshine, but as we made our way back, it got darker and darker, and yes another snow blizzard. Now I have had to stand in line many a time on the dockside waiting to board after coming back from a shore excursion but never in a snow blizzard, so another "first" for the list.
So just before the main event of the day, we had a presentation by Trygve Nygard, the guy that runs the tour company Gord Explorer who would take us for our search of the lights.
They have three sites that they use, one quite local to Alta, and 1, 50km north and 1, 50km south.
He then outlined the scientist forecast for the evening on the chance of a light show, and on a score of 1 to 10, it was 2.
You could feel the air of disappointment from the audience, but this was raised when he showed us all a photo he took when the forecast was 2, so there was hope.
He then showed us the weather forecast for the three sites, the close by one, and the northern one was cloudy with snow showers, more groans from the audience.
The southern site, was cloudy at times but with no snow, the downside was the temperature -26C.
So, at our allotted time of 2230, wearing as much clothing as we could, we boarded the coach, and we were off on our 60 minute ride to the site.
Looking out of the coach window, I was pleased to see the weather forecast was slightly out, as there was not a cloud in the sky and the stars twinkled and shone to guide us on our way.
It a bit of a shock to the system getting out of a warm coach into -26C and setting up the camera and tripod, but was it worth it ?
I will let you decide, below are, some of the photos I took before both my batteries expired.
None have had any post production
I will post all of my photos when we get home, as there are far too many to post now.
I will also post a review of the cruise.
Tuesday, 18 March 2014
Oriana in search of the Northern Lights Part II
Well, here we are in Tromso, it's clear blue skies, a recent snow fall and currently -3C.
The temperature is forecast to drop to -17C this evening, just in time for our Husky Dog sledge ride, can't wait !!!!
I'm currently sitting in the Crows Nest, and I have to say the view is just about perfect, we could have not asked for more.
Since my last blog,the weather picked up again and we experienced 5 metre swells and strong winds, but by mid day yesterday, things had started to calm down.
Yesterday was also our Peninsular Lunch ( regular P&O readers will know what I mean) our table was hosted by Jo, the food and beverage manager, and an excellent host she was too.
We even had a snow flurry whilst at lunch, which added to the ambience of a winter cruise. We were the last to leave the restaurant and so missed the start of the "Captains ( Richard Camby) interview" with the CD. It was standing room only in the theatre, and the Captain had his audience eating out of his hand. He is an excellent Captain, and very sociable.
The show last night by the headliners was "Killer Queen" a show we had seen many times before, but well worth seeing again.
I had said to Sue, that I wanted to get up earlier than my normal 0730 today, which for me is late anyway, as I wanted to get up on deck for the sail in.
But as always, the best laid plans of mice and men meant that I awoke at 0845, so it was a quick Danish pastry and a cup of coffee in Tiffany's for breakfast.
We had already booked a couple of shore excursions before we left, but having watched the port presentation, and seen the photos of "Cruise Miss", of the Ice Hotel, we went to the excursions desk, and booked a tour for tomorrow.
Then, after a quick return to the cabin to add quite a few layers of clothing and get the camera, it was up to the prom deck to watch the sail in.
There is only one word to describe the sail in, and that is "stunning", it is a real "must do", so if this cruise is not on your bucket list, you really should add it now.
For all the sail inxs, on all of our cruises, I have never seen the deck so crowded.
I will add a few photos below, but they really do not do it justice.
All being well , I will have some photos to share with you in the next blog
Friday, 7 March 2014
P&O Oriana in search of the Northern Lights
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