Leaving LAX at 4:00 PM Sunday, we discovered that most American airlines could learn some lessons from their European counterparts. Like courtesy and service. Ten hours is a long time to be crammed into a coach seat, but two free cocktails, a really great lasagna dinner with complimentary wine (you’re getting the picture here), tons of movies on demand (I chose “I love you, Philip Morris”), and one sleeping pill made it an almost enjoyable flight. From one day, through one night, and into the next morning, the British Airways 747 sped eastward. I can’t say we arrived at Heathrow fresh as newly picked lotus blossom, but, hey, we were there. A two hour bus ride culminated at the docks below white cliffs of Dover. By 5:00 PM Monday, we set sail, maneuvering between the countless ferries and cargo ships that ply the waters from the shores of the UK to those of France and Belgium (which being a rare clear day, we could see from Dover).
The funny thing about jet lag is that you never really know when exhaustion will strike. One minute you’ll feel like vigorous exercise to snap out of the eight hour time difference funk. The next minute, just when you slip on your gym shorts to get that exercise, you collapse. But at 9:00, the evening unceremoniously ended as we came back to the room after dinner and barely undressed before seriously crashing. This far north and being this is the start of summer, the sun didn’t even set until close to 10:30 PM. Didn’t matter. We had checked out. And, we didn’t check back into the world until 9:00 AM (five hours after the sun rose).
I did mention, it is summer? T-shirts, shorts, sandals, right? Ummm, how about sweatshirts, jeans, and shoes. Day #1 was at sea, where the sun barely made an appearance and the high barely reached 50. But we’re on a summer cruise, and the weather be damned. We defied the weather gods and sat outside during breakfast (us, and one other crazy couple). With a jacket along with a hot cup of coffee, we did just f-f-f-f-f-f-fine. It wasn’t that bad, but as Dorothy once said, “T-T-T-T-T-Toto, we’re not in P-P-P-P-Puerto Vallarta anymore.”
After a very smooth day of sailing the North Sea, the first stop is the town of Alesund, Norway. It’s a small fishing village that is quaint, yet, unlike most other European cities, it is modern. That’s because the entire town burned to the ground a century ago, and was totally rebuilt. Today, we walked nearly 10 km … the destination being Atlanterhavsparken, also known as the Alesund Aquarium. Aside from the Monterey Aquarium, this is the coolest one I’ve been to. Sure, there are tons of fish, but also they have an outdoor
penguin park. The penguins seemed a bit horned up today, and attempted to perform an erotic penguin show. In the end, all the poor things could do was squawk at each other and jump into the lagoon. Yes, we traveled half way around the world to see frustrated penguins.Everything is extremely expensive here. We slipped into a grocery store, where prices are about three times what they are in the U.S. And a gallon of gas is pushing $7.00. No wonder the penquins are yelping.
At least it was mostly sunny and a bit warmer today. Thursday, it’s Geiranger and Hellesylt, Norway, where we’ll probably hike some fjords. And perhaps encounter some penguins that are a bit more satisfied.
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