Monday, September 7, 2009

Sailing Past Bear Island

It's a long way from the mainland of Norway to the Svalbard Archipelago. It took us two full days to reach 80° North. On the first of those two days, Cruise Gran, GirlCousinAndi and moi met in the Palm Court as we passed by Bear Island.



As you can see, it's pretty inhospitable.







A few months ago, this Russian ship ran aground....



But some do fish these waters despite the danger.






As we were all going to eat sushi that evening, we chose to have the annual " Mema's Summer Cruise-the Legend Continues" photo made before, basically taking over Palm Court while waiting for the Crystal Photographer.























We eventually got the whole gang together and arranged properly (pic to come at a later post!!) and we can't decide whether we look like a convention of insurance agents or a group of mental health workers (or inmates!) We did get the whole Maison Cou Rouge clan-



before the the Captain announced that whales had been spotted to port and we all broke ranks and ran for a look.



We then headed down to take over dine at Silk Road.



We had several tables....



We had quite a good laugh remembering past cruises and dinners... and cousin Merrill Bob was game to reprise his "vodka-inspired napkin-samurai headdress" look from St. Petersburg in 2006.



Amy couldn't stop laughing.



GirlCousinAndi demonstrated her vodka-inspired Russian Dance from that dinner in St. Petersburg 2006 as well (but not on a table this time)...



We then headed off to "Liar's Club"- a wonderful evening's entertainment emceed by Cruise Director Paul McFarland



The gist of it is, four panelists- in this case, comedian Mike Goddard. destination lecturer Dr. Jay Wolff, Rabbi Morris Hershmann, and Monsignor Liam Kidney- are quizzed about the meaning of different incredibly unusual words. Only one of them tells the truth, the other four have made up stories. It is the audience-divided into teams- who must guess who is lying, and thereby score points. Hilarious doesn't begin to cover it...



Our team didn't win, but we got close..





And before you knew it, another day at sea was upon us.

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