Scandinavia- 17th Oct (Tues)

I had to get up at 3:30am to call Singapore for the CNCC. It was engaged and I went directly into voice mail. I took the opportunity to call up my parents to check whether my cheque from the wedding dress deposit was in. I was not surprised to hear that my mail was left unchecked. But it was good catching up with the latest news at home.

After which, I managed to get through to Singapore Police and was frustrated to know that she had not received the fax that I paid to send through yesterday. I went back to sleep soon after with all these outstanding tasks on my mind.

We managed to wake up early in the morning in time to try the Norwegian breakfast provided in the hotel. We loved the breakfast and got to try the Norwegian brown cheese. Ross liked the fresh toast and cheese they had.

After which, it was a hassle of administrative tasks we still needed to tie up. Besides the free fast internet service we enjoyed, we could also scan and print documents at the Steens Hotel. It was indeed true what the guy first told us when we checked in, after we step through the door, everything is free. The people at the hotel didn't mind us using the printer, scanners or printing papers at all. We thought they were very decent indeed.

The good news I had from the morning's email was that Oracle had finally concluded on my tax issue and was ready to release my pay check. The only problem though is that there is still an uncertainty on the sum that HK IRD would be refunding me since I had overpaid in my provisional tax. PWC was supposed to follow-up but after the whole issue, I had very little faith in Oracle finance and PWC. And to think that the problem started because of Oracle requiring me to spend time working in China, therefore having a secondment arrangement. The bad news was that the package was still being held up at Australian Customs and the package had failed to get there in time for Nanny's birthday. Since it was already post working hours in Australian time, there wasn't much we could do about it anyway.

We finally managed to check out of the hotel slightly after midday, checking out of the room and depositing our bags in the hotel. Since Ross had a fax to be sent, we went to the nearby library. We found the staff extremely helpful and were very relieved to find out that though it was self-service, we managed to send a fax out to UK with no fuss at all. It cost only 5 Kroner for one page when my 5 pages the other day had cost 106 Kroner. And it was totally ironical that Ross's fax got through while my expensive fax didn't seem to reach its destination.

We headed promptly for a tram ride to bring us to the Floyen top station for a walk at Mount Floyen.
The restaurant on top was closed (we assume for lunch) so we had a hot dog snack at the souvenoir shop. We started on a fast hike, mindful of the time we needed to board the ship today.

It was an excellent hike. The nature was beautiful and almost magical. Taking the walk in the forests made me understand where Hans Christian Anderson got his inspiration from. The beauty of the forest was almost fairytale like.

Even though the tracks were quite well marked, we still managed to lose our way. At one point, Ross even admitted he was lost. We asked a passerby and found out that we were at Blamansveien, past the top point that we targeted for. We were tempted to go further, seeing how beautiful the scenery is but keeping mindful of time constraints, we decided to head down.

At the bottom, near the tram station, I took a photo, hugging the troll that Judith kissed back in year 2004. That would be an interesting photo to compare.

We enjoyed the walk thoroughly. Heading back to the hotel, we checked emails and the latest status of our ongoing tasks. We then ordered a cab to take us to the Hurtigruteterminalen, which turned out to cost us 110 Kroner which is equivalent to US$15 for a 10 minutes journey.

We reached the terminal at around 5pm and found out that we couldn't enter our rooms, though we could get onto the ship. We checked in our luggage and the staff helped to bring our luggage into the room.

The ship company we are traveling with is Hurtigruten. Hurtigruten provides journeys that start from Bergen and travels north across the Arctic Circle and beyond as it meanders through the dramatic splendours of the coast. Each Hurtigruten ship has a different style and character and we are going on the Finnamarken ship, taking the Classic Voyage North to Kirkenes. Norway was voted "The World's most unspoilt destination" in 2004 by the National Geographic Traveller Magazine.

Norway is so often described as a land of sublime natural beauty. On the Hurtigruten north voyage, we will get to explore the long coast and the towns on it. Norway has an unspoilt, unimaginably captivating wilderness, but in its myriad of coves and bays, in brightly coloured hamlets and in strikingly modern towns, there are several settlements.

Hurtigruten was started in the late 19th century with the delivery of mail being the initial reason for the establishment of what was known as the Coastal Express. For ninety years, the Coastal Express was the most important link between the south and the north. It was from this that the name originated from.

Hurtigruten came up, translated as "fast route", this was quite literally the quickest route to North Norway then. It was only in 1993 that mail delivery was transferred to planes and vehicles.

We were also hoping to see the Northern Lights on this Scandinavian trip. The Northern Lights or aurora borealis, which means 'dawn of the north', are a natural phenomenon caused by electrically charged solar particles passing into the earth's atmosphere. Great arcs are formed across the sky as ghostly wisps of green, yellow, red and violet dance above the horizon. I was first told of the Northern Lights by ChongLee who witnessed it himself on board a friend's boat.

Taking this cruise is also one of the best ways to explore the fjords. Fjords are carved by a massive sheet of ice up to 3km thick that covered Northern Europe in a succession of ice ages.

The ship we are on, MS Finnmarken, is one of the newest, having been constructed in 2002. It has an overall length of 138.5m, gross tonnage of 15,530 and has a service speed of 15 knots. It is able to carry 1000 passengers and has 283 cabins, 639 berths.

We explored the ship and found it very spacious. We had booked for a "best-available outside room" and were a bit apprehensive to know what kind of room we got. We were given our room keys but couldn't get in until 6pm. So we walked everywhere else on the ship and loved it. We could look into our room from the window outside and was worried that it looked small. We realised too, as Tor said, meals on the ship were not cheap. Thankfully, our rate included half board, so we only had to pay for lunch, which we would often eat onshore.

We got out of the ship, walked around in town and did some grocery shopping.

Heading back to the ship, we managed to get into our rooms. We found that we had made the right decision. The ship had slightly more 300 guests while full capacity was 1000. The room was much more spacious than the Trans-Siberian trains. In the room, there were lots of built-in storage, safe, fridge, a working table, vanity table, two beds, a TV, and an en-suite bathroom.

There is also a TV channel that tells us the current route of the ship, speed, longitude and latitude of our current location.

As we unpacked for the next 7 days, the room felt delightfully spacious and comfortable, much better than what we expected.

On the fourth floor, there is a "Tour Guide" desk. This is where we can check on the information on the entire trip (time schedule of all the stops through the 12 days, the excursions we can do) and everyday there will be new detailed information for the next day, given out at around 6pm. There were so much information to pick up, timetable of stops, the duration, brochures on the stops, maps and a detailed program of what we would be experiencing the next day. At the reception on the third floor, which is where we would usually alight and board at each stop, we could also add a charge facility to our hotel card so that besides opening our room door, it doubles as a charge card. We also managed to reserve the dinner table we will use for the rest of the trip after today. The guy who helped us with the booking said we would be sitting with English speakers.

Dinner starts at 7pm to 9pm, that's the daily dinner time too. We headed for dinner next and found a delightful selection of seafood as well as ice-cream for desert. Food was good.

We had an English briefing at 9pm that we were updated on everything including safety procedures and excursions. We soon realised that there were lots of Americans onboard since they liked to talk pretty loudly and simply share everything that they know. I noticed that there was a Chinese family traveling on board. The parents spoke to their children (a young lady and two young men, all around late teens or early twenties) in mandarin. The kids though seem to have an American twang when speaking English. From their mandarin accent, I suspect they are from Malaysia originally.

After learning that the Sea Safari is already half-booked, we headed straight for the bookings after the briefing. At the tourist desk, we booked 3 trips including Sea Safari, North Cape and Russia border. These are trips towards the end of the 7 day journey. There are 6 trips in total that we can do, and two available trips on the return journey, which we won’t be on.

At 10:30pm, we headed outdoors on the ship to watch the ship depart from its dock. The ship was initially very smooth but got slightly rocky as we got ready for bed.

It had been a busy and tiring day today and we were happy to go to bed.