The Gift That is Friendship

So I’m visiting my friend who is finally home after months of battling first one illness, then another. And while I’m staying to help out for awhile, her other friends are coming by the apartment in a steady stream, just as they came to the hospitals for all those months. I’m renewing acquaintances with her circle of friends, meeting new people, observing the connections and marveling at this woman and this experience of friendship.

My friend Dale personifies those attributes that make us cherish a relationship with someone else. She is loving and generous, warm and funny. She demonstrates how much she values friendship by being honest, as well as kind. Beyond those traits that draw us inexorably to her, she embraces life with such a vibrant spirit that being with her infuses her friends with its power. Simply put, she has a knack for making each of us feel not just special in her eyes, but so uniquely meaningful that anyone should be able to see and appreciate our merits.

I listen as she greets friends whose calls keep the telephone ringing all day. Her signature opening, “Hey, Darling,” comes up out of her heart with a deep Southern accent (despite many decades of living in the heart of Manhattan). She remembers the names of each caller’s family members and asks about them with genuine concern. She answers their queries about her health concerns with humor and conveys her confidence in a positive outcome then quickly turns the conversation to their lives, their concerns.

I watch as one friend, then another rings the bell and comes into the easy welcome of her home. There are hugs and kisses, laughs and an occasional tear as fond memories are called to mind, and talk turns to friends no longer able to visit in person. Gifts are brought for a birthday to be celebrated yet this month—a book she’s sure to enjoy, a special scented candle, fresh eggs proudly brought from a farm on the island, flowers from a well-tended garden.

And even as they come and bring their gifts, they come to receive the gift that is Dale. It is her spirit that flows in the telling of stories with the dramatic flair and the vocabulary of exaggeration that is her style. It is her laughing self-deprecation, without any hint of lack of self-esteem. She allows us to relax and forget our fears and our flaws. We who have come to comfort are comforted. Her voluminous vocabulary spills through the conversation, a combination of the erudite and the profane that provokes our imaginations, entertaining us lavishly.

The mementos of a rich and full life are all around us as we gather at her bedside to encourage her and be encouraged by her indomitable will to live fully and completely. There are the artworks given her by friends whose talents adorn the walls and shelves. There are the photographs of family and friends, hundreds of images of loved ones related by blood and by shared experience.

In this woman, reveling in the resumption of her home place, is the essence of friendship. One of my father’s wisdoms has come back to me this week as I have watched her. Daddy said one should seek the company of those who allow us to be ourselves and feel good about it. He would approve of this woman who nurtures friends already in her life and makes a new friend of almost everyone who enters her sphere. She banters with friends she’s known for decades. She captivates a visiting health aide who, meeting her for the first time, is so charmed that he “must come back soon.”

One and all, we respond to her authenticity. She is honest and forthright, leaving no question about what she believes and likes, but always open to something new. In the process of being completely herself, she has a gift for reflecting us back to ourselves in our best light much as a brilliant photographer captures her subject’s best side. She opens her true being to us and looks into us to find us as we truly are. This is a friend to be held close to the heart and a friendship to be shared with gratitude and the purest of joys.

And once again this time with this very special friend reminds me of the great fortune I’ve found in friends.  Like others, I have come to comfort and been comforted, graced with the blessing that is knowing Dale.

I Love (Heart Goes Here) NY

I love the incessant, often strident noises all around. Really, I do love the city noises here as much as I love the deep of night quiet at our lake in the mountains. One feels life all around in the frequent sirens of all sorts, the banging of trucks being loaded and unloaded, the voices spiraling up from the sidewalks and the echoes of children laughing as they run through the halls to their apartments.

I love that many of the windows have no window treatment other than pots of plants on the sills or an air-conditioning unit or maybe curtains or blinds seldom closed. And I love that we think neither of looking into their windows nor of them looking into ours. It’s enough to see the life they choose to expose at the edges of their space with no need to delve beyond the glass, invading their privacy.

I also love the windows that are closed and covered tightly because those make me wonder about the people who live there, keeping even the slightest light from filtering in from outside. I like to imagine them as mad scientists or great writers, closing themselves off from the world so that their fertile brains are left without distraction, perhaps to change the world they don’t let in through those windows.

I love watching the tiny lady attempting to manage the giant black dog on a leash while he climbs into a sidewalk planter to do his business. Final score: Dog 2, Lady 2 (in a baggie, a big baggie.)

I love having an entire folder of menus for nearby takeout that will be delivered to the door of the apartment in less time than it would take to heat up a frozen pizza. And I like that the food is hot and tasty when it arrives. Yum!

I love the excitement on the street in the theatre district in the early evening as the lucky ones with tickets stride purposefully into the restaurants with just enough time to enjoy a quick meal before curtain time. Their anticipation of the performance ahead is almost palpable.

I love the buzz on the street when the theatres let out. Under the marquees and spilling down the sidewalks are people reviewing their experience loudly with all the energy pent up from sitting mostly mute in a dark theatre, afterwards propelled home by the emotion built up via words and/or music.

I love the neighbors’ habit of leaving fruits and vegetables on the fire escape just outside their kitchen window. I check at our kitchen window, peeping across and below each morning to see what’s new—yesterday bananas, today a loaf of bread. Is it a space issue? Is it a refrigeration technique? (It’s soon reaching into the 70’s here, so I must question that plan.) I love my compatriots, the pigeons, who also check out the fire escape stash.

I love the creativity in the attire of my fellow pedestrians. A fellow in a really expensive suit also wears a grubby watch cap on his head. A young woman wears leopard leggings with a tiny red skirt and an oversize man’s football jacket, a lavender scarf wrapped around her head, Cochise-style. An older gentleman is dapper in a camel suede vest with a houndstooth beret on his beautiful silver head of hair.

I love it all and know that tomorrow I’ll find as many more things to observe and enjoy. It’s New York City. What’s not to love?

Getting My City Self On in Manhattan

So here I am in New York City, staying with a dear friend in Midtown as she recuperates from a long hospital stay. It’s been awhile since I’ve spent time in the city, so I’ve regressed in my street smarts, reverting to my persona as “country mouse in the city.”

Fortunately, I have a sense of humor or I would be humiliated by my ignorance of some things Manhattan. The first night here, I heard the reception buzzer and my friend said: “ Just say hello and they’ll tell you why they are buzzing.” So I said, loudly, “hello” in the direction of the apartment’s front door, forgetting that there is phone on the wall where one answers calls from the doorman. We all got a good laugh and have since told the story to visitors who’ve enjoyed the recounting of my ignorance.

Then there was my visit to the nearby Gristedes market. I thought I was quite city-savvy when I remembered to take my friend’s rolling shopping cart to bring back the goods.

At the store, my ignorance of local custom reasserted itself and I dragged the shopping cart behind me up and down the narrow aisles as I pushed the store’s grocery cart in front of me. I hope none of my fellow shoppers had their phones in video mode as I tried awkwardly to hold on to both carts. I suspect there were movements that mimicked scenes from the Three Stooges movies. At one point I had to quickly prop one cart against the shelves so I could chase the other as it escaped my grasp and rolled down a sloped aisle. New York markets don’t have those broad, flat aisles we have in the suburbs.

Only at the end of my grocery store visit did I ask the woman at the register if I could park my personal shopping cart at the front of the store during future shopping visits. My Mama would be so proud that I was too polite to assume I could stick my cart anywhere I wanted as the clerk suggested. Mama’s attempts to raise a nice girl in the South were so often thwarted by my tomboy behavior in childhood and here I am now being such a courteous adult.

Despite my foibles, I have managed to find both the grocery store as well as the neighborhood Duane Reed location for pharmacy items. While I seem to require instruction at both places, I am getting the hang of it, however humbling the process. A clerk in the drug store was actually reasonably calm when she said, “Ma’am, you don’t put the basket on the counter, just the products you are purchasing.” The fact that a line of locals was behind me in the queue, rolling their eyes and sighing as my lesson in basket management took up their precious time, was only mildly humiliating.

Growing up in the South, we were taught that Yankees, particularly those in New York City, were neither polite nor well-mannered. I must say that I don’t find that true. Despite the fact that I move too slowly for most pedestrians on the sidewalk and make cabbies wait as I walk across the street, I have found that questions asked, however naïve, are answered. Advice is given, usually kindly enough, prefaced by a “Hey, lady” rather than something less flattering.

And, when each little adventure out onto the streets ends, the doorman is quick to open the door of our building with a smile and a word of greeting. That’s something to which I look forward every time.

Rest in Retirement? Not So Much!

I’ve had any number of conversations with folks about the five years (in June) of our retirement. Some wonder what we are “doing with ourselves.” Others who have followed these years more closely wonder “how the heck we manage our schedules.” Some envy us our freedom; others aren’t sure what they would do with themselves if they retired. I distinctly remember someone saying: “How can you walk away from the excitement you’ve known? Retirement will surely be dull.”

Truth is, we didn’t know in advance quite what to expect. What we’ve found is more joy than we might have anticipated. None of our pleasure is about not working, really. It’s actually about pursuing a myriad of activities that we simply didn’t have much time for when we were primarily engaged in our careers. As much as anything, it’s about freedom of choice.

Learning is a key to life these days. Now a day might include long stretches of reading, including real books with pages, as well as internet resources. We got smart phones because it seemed that every conversation in motion made us want to look something up, so now we are forever checking names and dates, history and geography as we’re driving through the countryside.

We’ve wandered around the world, too. In five years we’ve been to China, Australia and New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Canada and roamed these United States widely. We were lucky enough to travel a lot even while we were working, but these more recent trips have been longer and farther afield to places we had dreamed about, but weren’t sure we would ever see. What once seemed impossible did, in fact, become possible with more time to plan and enjoy. In the process, we’ve met terrific people from all over, good people who have enriched our knowledge of the world and reassured us about the wonders of humankind.

We have volunteered, spending time on birds and conservation, education and job connection and even a flowering bridge!  We've knocked on doors to get people to go the polls and vote on election day.  We’ve each reconnected with our universities in different ways and I’ve been really proud to discover and participate in the amazing growth of Georgia State as an internationally-respected research institution.

We vowed to spend more time with family and friends and we’ve done that, happily spending weeks in Florida with my sister and traveling to enjoy time in Tennessee and Canada with other family members. We’ve been able to reach out to those who needed us in times of illness and sorrow and appreciated the opportunity to support them in ways that would not have been possible when time was so limited. We’ve deepened friendships and made new ones, having time to strengthen Lake Lure friendships as we spend more time there.

Most of all, and perhaps best, has been how we’ve learned so much about the world and about ourselves. We’ve had challenges to face and found that we could meet them and move through them, grateful again for the benefits accrued from association with a world-class employer and a wise financial counselor.

Now we are anticipating the next five years, breaking ground for a new home and an exciting collaboration with our children who are building next door. We look forward to what’s ahead, knowing no more about what will happen than we knew when we retired in 2007, but sure that it will be anything but dull.

What We Owe Our Veterans

Old Glory on Chimney Rock

As is too often the case, my cursory scan of the front page of the morning paper today caused me to groan with frustration. The story that caught my eye, at this time of year we honor our veterans, was one that reported Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s need to “cut and reshape the military to fit a smaller budget.”

I understand and endorse the need to adjust our spending to the realities of our ever-straining national budget. The report indicates that Panetta is looking at cutting back our nuclear arsenal and some of our troop strength in Europe. I’m okay with those ideas. I’m not surprised to hear that cutting may include some base closings, nor am I unaware that such closings will face political challenges from the districts in which those bases provide economic boost to the local economy.

My frustration occurred when I read that an area of potential cutting and adjustment would be in the military’s health program and retirement pay. Here we are, just days before Veterans Day, talking about taking care and sustenance from those who have served their country, and those yet serving.

I can only hope that Panetta and those who are analyzing the cuts will remain loyal to promises made to our serving forces when they accepted their duties, many laying their lives on the line faithfully, even when they might disagree with the politics that got us into battle. I might call into question decisions that have been made to enter into foreign entanglements, but I stand with those who have served honorably wherever they were sent.

As we approach Veterans Day, I remember with pride those in our family who have served. They took the risks, did their duty to the best of their abilities and went where they were sent, often into enemy fire. Some survived their service, others did not. Nonetheless, they put on the uniform and took their posts. They will be in my thoughts on November 11, as they are always: my father-in-law, my brother, my nephew, among others.  They can no longer speak for themselves and their comrades in uniform, but I will speak for them and thank them for serving our country.

As we draw down our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, more and more veterans will return home into a down economy, facing high unemployment and, for some, the struggle to overcome the wounds of war, both physical and psychological. I worry that we are already ill-prepared to give them the assistance they will need and hard-put to help their families, as well, with the support they have earned and deserve. I’m all for good management of all our tax dollars with real efficiency. However, cutting the budgets that are needed to give those who serve in our armed forces their due hardly seems the approach to take.

So, Mr. Panetta, I urge you to find your cuts somewhere other than the budget lines that provide for the repatriation, health care and retirement of our serving military. While we have remained safe at home, they have been on the front lines at our bidding. Let’s be sure they can count on us as we have counted on them.

The Charms of Oslo (July 6, 2011)



Askerhus Fortress 

 As we woke, we were still in the North Sea, approaching today's stop in Oslo. I chose to walk on the upper deck today and enjoyed our smooth sail up the Oslofjord through the suburbs and into the city itself. Cruise ships here dock within an easy walk of the city center. Immediately across the dock from our balcony is the Askerhus Slott (Castle), described in the guidebook as a "medieval castle from the 13th century remodeled in the late 17th century to Renaissance style." There is an entire complex of wonderful buildings set on a rise surrounded by a stone wall.

After breakfast, Mike opted to rest while I walked into the city. I followed the paths through the Askerhus grounds with its big trees and lush grass lawns. Positioned as a fortress at the head of the fjord to guard Oslo, building began in 1299. Today it serves as an administrative center for Norway's armed forces. Several buildings are used as museums, some are still defense department installations and some halls are used for state functions. There is renovation work going on now, soldiers in battle gear come and go, and palace guards drill and man (or woman) their posts at key spots. Overall it has the feel of a park, a kind of peaceful public space, adorned with sculpture and flowers like other such shady spots throughout the city.

I came across an odd situation in a small park centered around a beautiful fountain at the edge of the Askerhus grounds. Three police officers on horseback had surrounded two people with packs who appeared to have been sleeping there. The people were pulling everything out of their packs for examination by two of the officers while the third held the horses. Two young officers on bicycles joined the scene. I'm not sure what it was all about, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be the two fellows who were being scrutinized.

Wandering through the city for a couple of hours, I found myself taking pictures everywhere. Attempting to find a good place to buy gifts, I stopped in a department store where a young woman at the information desk pointed me to the main thoroughfare, Karl Johans Gate (Street). She actually printed me a Google map to show me where I could find shops selling souvenirs. Her directions were good and I found just what I needed at a little shop below the cathedral. The street is a wide pedestrian walkway crossed by motor traffic on the side streets. All up and down the street, mimes painted gold or silver, costumed as Elvis Presley or a knight in armor competed for tourist's coins with someone dressed as Mickey Mouse. A second "Mickey" with his head off, was having a rest and chat on one of the side streets.

I fell in love with Oslo just walking and shooting photos. Its buildings are really interesting, in every style. I've come to understand there is a Norwegian appreciation for architectural embellishment. Flowers hang from lampposts and rise in great mounds from planters. Oslo is also the ideal destination for a museum lover. There are many museums here, including one we passed that has the world's largest collection of mini-bottles. Most are more traditional, showcasing art (like Edvard Munch's work), history (the Norwegian Resistance Museum) and culture (Eidsvoll Manor where the Norwegian constitution was written). The city streets are themselves a sort of museum, with an obvious love of sculpture visible on almost every block. All this was shown off against a perfect backdrop, today's sunny blue skies filled with puffy white clouds.

I came back to the ship to join Mike for lunch on the pool deck so that we'd be ready for our afternoon tour. We sat next to a lovely couple from Colorado, veteran travelers who shared some of their experiences with us. He is retired from the army and she had worked on military bases, so Mike traded army talk with them when we weren't quizzing them about other cruises they've enjoyed and what they like about the various ships they've sailed on, like the Queen Mary. As we've found each day, these were people we had not even seen before during the cruise. While this isn't a big ship, it's big enough that we're continuously meeting someone new. Last night our next door neighbor greeted us as we came out of the restaurant and invited us to come to his large suite for a glass of wine and conversation with another couple. While we had not seen him before, he had seen us and wanted to have us over. We enjoyed the visit and loved having a chance to see what the really big suites are like, too.

Oslo Opera House

After our lunch, we headed off on the coach for our tour. Our tour guide, Heinz, was a delight right from the start with his droll delivery and caustic sense of humor. Our first quick stop was on another part of the harbor to snap a few shots of Oslo's Opera House, opened in 2008. I had read that it is the only opera house in the world which allows people to walk on its roof and I had wondered about that distinction. It is truly an unusual and very beautiful building, almost a plaza itself, as its white marble design has wide graceful ramps that surround the building and lead, in fact, up to its roof. Like the Sydney Opera House, it sits right on the waterfront, in this case overlooking the fjord and a sculpture of glass panes that resembles a sailboat. The entire scene is breathtaking and the entire area around it is being developed into what is intended to be the entertainment center of the city.

We drove through beautiful neighborhoods, going past the Parliament Building, the spot where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, the embassies of other countries, including the U.S. embassy which looks, unfortunately, like a grim prison. Our first official destination was the Viking Ships Museum across the fjord in an area called Bygdoy which our guide said is known as the museum peninsula. We passed an unusual exhibit near our destination, the Norsk Folkemuseum, an open air museum set in a park in which more than 150 buildings from all over Norway are on display.

Viking Ships Museum

The Viking Ships Museum, a part of the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History, is a fascinating place, one which we had far too little time to fully appreciate.. In a building laid out like a cross are three thousand-year-old Viking ships, two of which are whole and in great shape because they were buried in clay that preserved them. The third ship is less well-preserved, but displayed so that it's easier to see how these ships were made. One nugget of information was learning that Vikings began the tradition of calling the two sides of a ship port and starboard. These early sailors always landed the boat so that the rudder, or "steering board" was on the side away from the dock (port) so that the bottom of the board would be in deeper water. Our visit whetted an appetite to learn more about the Vikings and their history.

Our next stop was at the Holmenkollen Ski Jump, an amazing structure high above the city. The current jump was opened in 2010, but there has been something of the sort in this spot since the late 19th century. We had a quick photo stop and a brief glance at the nearby stave church before heading back down the mountain.

Vigeland Park

Our final destination for the afternoon was the amazing Vigeland Park. This huge park is home to the sculpture of Gustav Vigeland. His 212 sculptures are placed around the grounds, depicting humanity in all its forms. The artist began work on the park in 1924 and most of the pieces were installed by 1950, seven years after Vigeland died. The latest installation was made in 1988. From the main entrance to the final sculpture, called "Wheel of Life" at the top end, the park gently rolls uphill. Pieces are placed strategically throughout, interspersed with walking paths, trees and rose gardens. The sculptures are placed in many ways, including in a huge fountain, and a 56-foot tall monolith, along a bridge and on a series of terraces. There are alleys of trees criss-crossing the entire huge park area. There is a small lake with resident ducks, as well as a public swimming pool on a hill overlooking it all. It is truly an astonishing display of sculpture in bronze and stone, one that rivals those seen in Athens and Rome. Vigeland's vision as an artist was obviously complex and not always comprehensible to visitors. I heard more than one person say "I don't get it," but I found the work very interesting and wished for more time to take it all in.

Vigeland Fountain

Our drive back solidified my desire to come back to Oslo. One could spend an entire week in just this one Norwegian city and still not explore all that is worth seeing and doing here. I feel once again as if I've had a sort of traveler's smorgasbord of scenic appetizers and must come back later to savor the full flavor of all that is available to enjoy.

We are back aboard the ship for now, too satiated with today's experiences to take advantage of the minutes left with another trip into the city. Thus I'm resting my tired feet writing this entry before going to dinner and relaxing for the evening. We sail tonight and will be on the water all day tomorrow, heading for Copenhagen and the end of our memorable trip to Norway. Some of the passengers are staying aboard for an additional week, sailing up through the Baltic to St. Petersburg. I envy them that trip as it is one we enjoyed years ago on a Windstar ship, but I'm also ready to go home, taking so many great memories with us.

Oslo Domkirke

                                          Photos by Mike Lumpkin and Lee Armstrong

Tuesday Morning on the Lysefjord near Stavanger (July 5, 2011)

Sleep (or the lack thereof) has certainly been one of the themes of this trip, thus I was disappointed to find that my sense of having finally arrived with my biorhythms into this time zone was quite wrong. Having gone to bed around 11:00PM, I woke again at about 2:45AM and read until it was time to get up around 6:00. So much for overcoming jet lag as the trip ends in a couple of days.

Amazingly, I felt pretty good and we went for our walk on Deck 5 after a cup of tea. I had more energy than one would think and the cool, foggy morning on a ship moving through the sea kept me awake and moving for warmth, if nothing else. Whatever motivation keeps me moving is a good thing.

Our first sight of nearby land revealed farms, then clusters of homes on the slight rise up from the water. There are lots of homes built in the A-frame style once popular in the States. Here the sharply-pitched roofs are designed, perhaps, to let snowfall slide off to the ground, though the Gulf Stream coming into this area somewhat mitigates snow along the coast.

When the ship pulled into the dock at Stavanger, we were delighted to find that the city's colorful buildings began just outside our window. Mike could step onto our balcony and photograph buildings dated 1900 and 1905. The Victoria Hotel faced our position with its ornately-trimmed doorway beckoning travelers who come here by ship.

Our stop in Stavanger is only a half-day, so we disembarked by 9:00AM for a short walk along the pier to board a big catamaran that would take us through the harbor and under very tall bridges, motoring smoothly miles up into the Lysefjord. As we left the harbor, our guide told us some of the history of the area. It has transitioned from a fishing village with its livelihood first dependent on herring, and then later on sardines. Now it is dependence on oil from the North Sea that has had such an impact on Norway's economic development.

This area is a seaside haven with million-dollar homes dotting the shoreline. Those close to town are condos with marinas at their front doors. The masts of sailboats create little forests of their own along water's edge throughout the harbor and its islands and up into the Lysefjord. The area immediately adjacent to the town is reminiscent of the landscape around Aalesund with shoreline and islands rising above the water into low hills rather than mountains.

The mouth of Lysefjord is relatively shallow, as compared to other fjords where huge cruise ships sail into their depths easily. Once inside the fjord, we saw its singular island and began to see the high, rocky cliffs for which it is known, some of these rising 3000 feet. There have been many industrial attempts here, including copper mining and salmon hatcheries.

We passed a salmon farm and could see the fish jumping inside the enclosures where they spend the first three years of their lives. Also visible in this area, in those places where the rock walls are farther from the water and land is available along the shore, farms and holiday homes create idyllic scenes. Sheep graze along the shore and fishermen can be seen either wading in shallow waters or kayaking. One kayaker I saw was chatting animatedly on a cell phone—modern life is never far away, even here where people have lived for millennia.

The captain of the catamaran was quite adept at taking us very close to the rock faces to appreciate specific formations, such as a sort of bowl at water’s edge, hollowed out of the rock over centuries. There were colonies of mussels, clinging to the rock just atop the water. Then there’s the Vagabond Cave, a spot with a cleft in the rock where early tax evaders escaped the sheriff, climbing up through this opening and throwing rocks down on their pursuers. Someone had hung a sort of scarecrow midway up the cleft.

The boat also pulled in where the guide called down resident goats to come to the shore for the entertainment of the passengers. Two smaller goats, referred to as Gorbachev and Brezhnev, seemed to appear out of the rock itself, followed by a larger one, called Clinton. They obviously expected some sort of reward, got bread thrown from the boat crew, then noshed on the bits of grass available. The guide later confessed that these goats are brought here in summer to amuse the tourists, then taken to a farm elsewhere for wintering. Disney couldn't have designed the show any better.

Pulpit Rock

The biggest draw in this fjord for visitors is Priekestolen or Pulpit Rock, a formation that juts out over the water high above. Its shape, with imagination, is somewhat like a church pulpit. We could see people, as tiny from our perspective as insects, walking at the edge of the flat top overhead. Despite our perspective from water level, the top of Pulpit Rock is about 82’ x 82’—enough room for quite a crowd to gather for the view. More than 100, 000 people make the two-mile hike to stand on the rock each year, we’re told. There is no railing at the edges, but local lore says no one has ever fallen from Pulpit Rock. The legend is that it will fall down when seven sisters marry seven brothers from the same district. So far so good.

On our return along the fjord, we stopped at a shoreline restaurant (and petting zoo) for our morning coffee and tea, this time accompanied by lacy waffles served with cream and strawberry jam. Light and tasty, the waffles are both smaller and thinner than the classic American waffles sold at fairs, slightly sweet but not covered in powdered sugar. The cream and jam provided enough calories without sugar. Our only disappointment was that they weren't served with cloudberry jam as we are curious about it now that we've seen it referenced often in Norway. Perhaps we'll find some to bring home.

We made it back to the ship in time for boarding at 12:30, followed by sailing at one o'clock. We have left Stavanger in time to arrive in Oslo tomorrow morning for our day there. When we came on board, both the patio grill and the outside tables in the Colonnade dining room were crowded as people rushed to enjoy the bright sunshine. This has been a rare opportunity on this trip and, even before some finished their meals, the ship sailed into a fog bank.

Mike and I shamelessly spent our afternoon cruising at sea with a combination of reading and napping, lulled by gentle waters and the movement of the ship beneath us. Our accommodations are comfortably designed to enjoy such time. And, if one tires of privacy, there are many common areas with comfortable seating and great views of the ocean around us. It's obvious that careful planning has gone into this ship, creating so many options. Many times this week, one crew member or another has said, "whatever you like" and proceeded to help us enjoy the voyage. There is enough competition in the cruise business these days to provide inspiration and Seabourn has trained their people well in the art of encouraging happy vacationers.

                                                                     Photos by Mike Lumpkin