The Planets

This morning we docked at Bodo. It was a spectacular approach to the small town at the end of a bay. Snow covered mountains and isolated hamlets and homes built on rock reaching down to the sea. Someone said they saw whales but they'd dived before their camera focused.

The sky cleared and the sun shone as we docked after we'd been visited by a strangely dressed crew member who thought he was a Norse sea god. This took place on deck 9 where I discovered a couple of warm pools - some brave soul had been seen up to their neck in one of them reading a book. I don't know about you but I think reading in the bath is so working class!

People fell in with this Nordic prank, drank champagne - well I suppose the Normans were of Viking stock and Normandy is in France etc, etc so there's a connection. They also allowed ice to be shoved down the back of their necks as part of the "Crossing the Arctic Circle" ceremony. And buying postcards authentically stamped with an "Arctic Circle" date mark. Aren't people fun.

It started to snow, well hail actually, and when the fun and games were over I went to my cabin to prepare myself for Bodo. I overdressed. Natives wore bugger all while I wouldn't have been out of place in an Apollo 13 astronaut line up.

Bodo is strange, it appears to be in the middle of a building boom and stinks of fish. The housing in the town owes more to a Stalinist 5 year plan than cool Scandinavian design. There's a modern high street - seemingly transplanted from Norwich or some equally nondescript provincial town. For the first time I saw a group of black people chatting over coffee. Since I wasn't with the pigeon lady (see previous blog) I had to find my own way back to the ship. I reckoned if I went downhill until I couldn't go down any further I be at sea level and then simply had to follow the smell of fish. It worked.

Breaking news we're docking somewhere and it's covered in snow. So I'm off to make snowballs and dress up like Matt Damon. Oh, I forgot; our shouty astronomer did a tour of the planets. I'm afraid at dinner I discovered I fell asleep during his talk having missed what he said about Venus, her retrograde motion and extremely long day. Well what do you expect? It had been an extremely long day.