2014 - Day 44 (Vadso to Kirkness)

Another day of new adventures!!!

Sadly, today was our last "Hurtigruten" day - as you've already gathered, we LOVED the Hurtigruten trip. We were on the Vesteralen, one of their smallest and oldest ferries (built 1983 but upgraded/refurbished twice since then) and only had 50 cruising passengers this trip plus the "day trippers" just hopping on and off as we went from port to port. It made for a terrific trip - seemed we had areas of the ship to ourselves quite often and eating times (cooked breakfasts, 3-course lunces and dinners) were very relaxed and friendly and we got to know lovely people from all over the world.

Interestingly our early morning port of call was Vadso which was the departure point for Amundsen's 1926 exploration of the North pole - the tower to which they tied the airship which took them up to the Arctic is still there - on the wharf just behind our mooring point (one for the history buffs!!)

A special treat at breakfast - we were entertained by a Sami woman "joiking" - a strange type of singing that imitates sounds of nature or emotions - quite strange but beautiful at the same time. She accompanied herself on a deer-skin drum (Elizabeth will have a picture on facebook)

We arrived at our terminus - Kirkeness - at 9.00 and it was freezing cold (literally -4) and snowing slightly with snow and ice all over the decks and the wharf which made for a fairly dangerous disembarkation! Took a bus to the airport for our flight to Oslo. Visibility at the airport was about 10 metres at best but that didn't seem to deter the incoming flights (thank goodness) - and we boarded our plane on time but had to skate across the tarmac to do so! Had our first experience of de-icing. As the aircraft lined up at the end of the runway, out came the de-icing unit which was a large tanker with an articulated platform with a fire-hose like nozzle which sprayed a yellow sticky fluid over the wings and tail. Pleased to see it happen as I'd been watching the ice build up on the wing as we sat at the terminal and by the time we started taxiing it was really quite thick!

Arrived to a much warmer Oslo (10) and that's where my tablet went missing (I presume) as I didn't actually miss it until I went to do the blog in London that night and found it was not in my backpack where I always kept it. Not certain what happened, but either someone pinched it from the security tray or they shifted it to another tray - not sure, but I remember the security people taking my tray from the scanner presumably for re-scanning it and then I had to wait quite a while for it to come to the end by which time I was trying to retrieve my stuff amongst lots of people who had been behind me in the line. However.......

Got to Heathrow, took the Heathrow express into Paddington and found our Hotel one block away which was very convenient. We tried a local pub which was unfortunately overflowing so then went to a greek restaurant where we enjoyed another beautiful meal (lamb cutlets for me and calamari for Elizabeth) before returning to the hotel to do the blog......................................!!!!!! Not such a good sleep that night, but had to have a 5.00 alarm the next morning as we had to be back at Heathrow terminal 5 for the 8.30 flight to Frankfurt.

Trivia: Kirkeness (pronounced soft "C" Cirkness by the locals) is about 5km from the Russian border. The locals used to trade quite happily with their neighbours  (and vice versa) throughout the cold war, generally unknown by their respective authorities.

cap report: should have done a tablet report!