Day 13 - Monday June 23rd – Day at Sea and Robert’s Birthday

Usually we sail out of port early evening but tonight we spent the night at the pier in Honningsvag, so there was no ship’s movement.   This morning, we left the port about 6 am so that we could get another view of the North Cape which we sailed around about 8am.

 

 



The clouds had lifted sufficiently for us to see the Cape more clearly than yesterday.  It looks like a mesa we would see in the west but surrounded by water.

 




As we sailed around the North Cape we got an even better view.

After breakfast, we watched the polar bear plunge of 6 brave people jumping into the swimming pool at the rear of the ship, the aft.

The water was probably not too cold, but they appeared to be freezing when just standing around in the cold probably less than 40 degrees F.  

Michael Porter and Robert DeNyke watching polar plunge from upper deck.

 

Next up was the kitchen tour which was amazing and  the detail on preparation was amazing!

Here is a link to vid of the kitchen tour:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI9DOxG4pvI&feature=youtu.be

 The kitchen was all stainless steel and extremely clean, a good thing!

After lunch, Chuck and Michael played cribbage while Robert and Mike read.  The interior pool area was covered and very warm.  It was a great place to relax.

We had dinner in the Rotterdam Dining Room, celebrating Robert’s 57th birthday with chocolate cream pie and Happy Birthday written on the top in chocolate.  The stewards sang the Indonesian birthday song.






After dinner, we found a note in our cabin inviting the 4 of us to a free dinner in the Pinnacle Grill which was a gift from the cruise ship.  We had previously had to call on 3 separate occasions in 3 days for a plumber to fix our non-functioning toilet so the cruise ship awarded us the free dinner at the Grill which is in a special dining room which charges extra, normally $29 each.   So we called to schedule our special “steak” dinner for tomorrow night which is a night at sea.
  

After dinner, we went to the theater for performance by Kyle Kennedy in the theater, doing “Souled Out.”  He has a good voice, but is white, so he did not come across very well as a soul singer.  After the show we saw the sun barely as this is our last night above the Arctic Circle.  The sky was completely overcast most of the day, with a few minutes of sun through holes in the clouds and a little more after dinner.

 
At 11:55 PM, Chuck and Michael went out on the deck to look west but only saw a bright orange/yellow, very thin line between the horizon and dark clouds.  Robert stayed in so I went out on my own.   

It was sunlight at midnight and still cloudy on the horizon so not really much of a sunset.  Through the thick clouds and fog, you could barely see the midnight sun. The concept of the midnight sun is that it does not set for four days as it only touches the horizon.  It was still very amazing even if the night was so overcast!
Here is a link to a video of the Midnight Sun above the Arctic circle:
 http://youtu.be/z_XbsBlrEyc