July 2- On the way to Honningsvag

Last evening as we were dressing for dinner, the Captain announced that we were sailing beside a large ice flow- chunks of ice floating along the shore and out into the water. I think we missed the most impressive part since we thought we should get completely dressed before we went to deck 11. So far most all of the exciting things have been off the starboard side so we could see them easily from our balcony and window. This was on the port side. It was beautiful. He assured us we would sail near enough to see and not enough to be in danger.

We sailed slowly all night through thick fog. This morning the fog horn is sounding about every 45 seconds. We are to be to the town of Honningsvag by 5:00 PM for a stop of 5 hours. Since it is daylight all the time I guess it really won't matter when we are where. Still is hard to get used to that. When it is clear, you can tell front the Observation Lounge that the sun doesn't rise in the east and set in the west, but rather you can tell that the sun just moves in a circle. Amazing!

We learned earlier that the Norwegian alphabet has fewer letters than ours and also has three letters that are unique. There is the letter "a" that has a little circle on the top, the letter "o" that has a line through it, and the letter"ae" very close together and almost on top of each other. You can hear the sound when the Captain talks about the different ports.

We plan for a calm day. BUT the Captain just announced that because of technical difficulties, the drift ice, and the thick fog we would be 1 1/2 hours late arriving into port. We are to do a trip for a bird safari so we'll see what happens to all of that.

The Captain and the ship's officers and staff are so friendly and helpful. Never had a cruise line that told the truth about "technical difficulties."