Saturday, October 26, 2019

Last Night to have a chance....

When I last left you, we were looking forward to a Northern Lights Safari tour. To make a long story short, it turned out to be a five hour mini-bus ride in a snowstorm! Naturally, we were pretty bummed out that we didn’t get to see the lights on Friday night. Especially since we paid something like $150 each for the privilege of driving 90 miles in said snowstorm.

However, Saturday night was another story. During the day the sky was finally clear. We even had several hours of mild sunshine, even though the outside temperature was around 30°. The sun never got more than a little bit above the horizon all day, but at least it was real sunshine. Hopes were high.

Having checked the weather, checked the forecast app, checked the Aurora app, and every other app and predictive item we could think of, we made plans to skip dinner in the dining room and put on all of our cold-weather gear to go outside as soon as it was dark. Even before it was dark, the captain came on the intercom throughout the ship and made an announcement that the Aurora was a little bit visible during the twilight. So, we rushed out of cocktail hour, grabbed our cameras and hats and went outside to take a look. Other than a few moments to warm up inside and grab a quick bite for dinner in the buffet, we’ve been out for the last three hours and are so happy we can say finally we have seen the Aurora. We saw green, red, dancing curtains, and even managed a few pictures.

Tonight we are happy campers. I imagine so is Princess Cruises after all the delays and weather related troubles we have encountered.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Alta, Norway

We are 70 degrees north of the equator, about 800 miles from the North Pole. Sunrise is at 8:30 am. Sunset is at 3:30 pm. High today is 29, low is 27. Winter is Coming.

Last year thus time was still fall; warmer by 10 degrees and no snow. We haven’t seen the sun in over a week; after 3-4 days a depression starts to set in without full spectrum light. I’m starting to feel as if I’m stuck in a George R R Martin novel; there’s gotta be an ice wall out here somewhere.

Weather forecast for tonight is the same as last night and the 3 nights before: Kp index of 6 or 7, north of the arctic circle, cloud cover 100%. We’re still going to head out and hope for the best.

On the plus side:
-We finished a couple of books each.
-The onboard entertainment has been enjoyable.
-Food and staff have been good as always.
-I have pictures of snow on the deck of a cruise ship.
-There is always Alaska.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Fingers crossed...

Aurora Forecast: In the middle of the night we received an alert from SpaceWeatherLive.com

It informed us that a large solar coronal mass has occurred—meaning there will be large auroras formed in two days time. We have the solar energy (Kp is 5), we have the new moon, all we need is clear skies. That’s not looking too good at the moment. This aurora chasing is keeping everyone on pins and needles and the topic at every table is the weather.

Here in Alesund, Norway at 10 am the weather was 48° and windy (32 mph) with steady rain. We sat at breakfast earlier and watched the wind blow clouds of rain across the harbor. Outdoors it came with sound effects. The rain is supposed to decrease, but the wind is supposed to increase over the course of the day.

Later....
It is 6 pm, we are enjoying cocktail hour. The captain came over the loudspeaker and let us know the overnight winds were 105 knots, and while they have decreased since the morning, they are still too brisk to safely depart. Maybe around midnight seems to be our best shot...he has to aim between two low pressure systems. We’ve been advised to remove breakables from the shelves and put them in drawers or on the floor. We’ll be late arriving into Tromso on Thursday, but we hope for some sort of clearing weather.

We have not yet decided whether we want to go back into town or whether we will just stay on board.

Monday, October 21, 2019

Searching for the Northern Lights

It’s a dark and stormy night. Temperature 28 degrees , plus a windchill from a 30 to 40 mile an hour wind. Snow is due anytime now. We are docked early in Alesund, Norway. We weren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow morning, but the captain put the pedal to the metal so to speak because there’s a storm coming in from Iceland and Greenland heading down the North Sea. He didn’t think we could manage to dock in the kind of conditions that are expected with this storm.

Some of you have noticed that I haven’t really been doing a blog this trip, but enough have made a comment that I figure I need to come on here a time or two and let you know what’s up.

We flew from Albuquerque to Houston and then on to London on a week ago. The weather in London was pretty nice, we had a few showers here and there but for the most part we had a little bit of blue sky and sunshine at least once or twice a day.

We hit a few museums that we hadn’t given enough justice to the first time, plus it gave us a nice cozy place to be when the winds and the rain did arrive. We stayed in a nice little bed-and-breakfast near Victoria station, which gave us easy access to restaurants and groceries, as well as a lot of public transportation options. Third floor walk up, but go new knees!

Plus, we had tickets to HAMILTON on Thursday and very much enjoyed the production. Especially when the English audience laughed at the right parts at the portrayal of King George.

Saturday we took a coach down to Southampton, and boarded the cruise ship. In the next two days we have met up with the folks from the Cruise Critic Roll Call, held a meet and greet with the Captain and his staff, a group luncheon today and then a slot tournament where we won all our money back. We even ran into a lady we hung with on the Singapore to Rome trip last March.

It’s safe to say our time onboard has been loads of fun and quite full. The weather forecast: not so much. This is the first time Princess has done this itinerary at this time of year, so it’s a bit of a gamble as to how successful we will be. This time last year the weather was clear and there had been no snow. This year, same timeframe, snow is in the forecast for every day. It just is going to depend on when the snow shows.

Anyway, we docked in rain, ate dinner and ventured out into town. Things close up pretty early around here, 8 pm, and that’s the 7-11 and Burger King. The rain stopped, but the wind has really picked up, so we did not go far into town this evening. Keep your fingers crossed for better weather in the morning.