On Board for Norway

 

Seattle to Europe sail past Mount Rainier

Mt. Rainier

I've never visited Mt Rainier National Park but I have flown past it many times. On Saturday I met up with my travel buddy Ila - the brains of the outfit - and we headed to Bergen, Norway with a short layover in Amsterdam. 

The MIRACLE of the tram ride 

The flight to Amsterdam was a breezy 9 hours 15 minutes. The Amsterdam International Airport is HUMONGOUS. Its gates are miles apart, I swear, and navigating that airport feels like one is on a death march. Just taxiing  to our gate took the jet almost 20 minutes. 

Once in the terminal I was instantly in panic mode because we couldn't find the gate number for our next flight on the monitor. Waving my boarding pass, I threw myself in the path of an oncoming tram. Instead of running me over the lady tram driver pulled up. 

I bombarded the tram driver with queries on the gate for the jet to Bergan. I looked - a bit -  as if about to burst into tears. Then a miracle occured, the lady tram driver invited Ila and myself on board. And... get this... she drove us to our gate! I was soooo grateful, having been  seriously worried that we wouldn't be able to hobble over to our gate in time to make our flight.

Whomever that lady was, to me she is an airport angel. 

Flight into Bergen - stripes are
stripes are shipping lane markers

The flight from Amsterdam to Bergen was just short of 2 hours. 

At Bergen Airport,  Reindeer (stuffies) & a media big screen, greeted us 

Bergen Airport walkway

Ila had wisely booked us a bus ride to the Hurtigruten dock, a 40 minute or so ride. There, we got ourselves checked in, our luggage was hauled to our cabin, and we were ushered to the passenger lounge to await ship boarding.

While waiting, passengers helped themselves to fresh, hot fish soup (much tastier than it sounds) and many different beverages. Then everyone had to watch a safety movie and once we all were deemed trained, we boarded the Richard With, our home for a dozen days. 

  

The Richard With, docked in Hammerfest, Norway

My little bed on the right was pretty comfy. 

Our cabin was... uh.. snug! As it turns out, it didn't matter how small the room was as neither Ila or I only used the room for the 3 Eses: sleeping showering and stowing stuff. The rest of the time we were out and about either in ship lounges or on off ship excursions but I'll get to that in future posts. 

The bathroom, as teensy, but serviceable. Every time I took a shower I flooded the bathroom floor. That didn't happen when Ila showered. I have zero explanation for that!

I signed up for 5 excursions on this cruise, with my primary goal to see... hope, hope, hope, the Northern Lights. So there were days when I didn't even leave the boat. What did I do when I was to be on board all day? I journaled, read, and spent a lot of time staring at the scenery the ship sailed past. 

Below is a view of the 4th floor lounge where I spent a lot of time in a comfy booth, writing or staring at the bypassing scenery. The art at the center of the photo is actually a large TV screen that mostly showed a Hurtigruten movie on the Aurora Borealis 24/7. 

The scene below is on the deck 7, the topmost floor of the ship. To right there is another lounge with a bar where you could get free coffee or tea or pay for alcoholic beverages (I bought a hot rum drink there one chilly night). 

And the scenery we sailed past? Awesome!
 

Typical scenery we sailed past daily

A little fishing village on one of Norway's umpteen islands

The ship moseyed along the Norwegian coast waterways headed north. There were many stops at various cities along the way. Most of the stops were short, perhaps 30 to 45 minutes, picking up or dropping off passengers. I had thought Hurtigruten was a cruise ship company. Wrong - it is a ferry system that services the coastal cities of Norway. People get on and off at the stops and the ship picks up its fresh food supply daily as it sails along. Didn't take much time to feel at home on the ship, and settle in. 

[UPDATE: Although Hurtigruten ferries along the coast of Norway, it also is a cruise ship company. There are Hurtigruten cruises to be had in Europe and all of the Americas. I hope to someday take their cruise that starts off in Colon, Panama (where my father was born) and then heads east along the northern coast of South America, ending at Bridgetown, Barbados, where my mother's family originated]

Apples Take a Turn

Oddly sweet crab apple tree on left,
sweet pink & yellow apples on the right

Flown Piggies Farm has zero pigs, with or without wings, but what it does have is apples - and lots of them. 

There are uh.... like maybe ten apple trees and the size and taste of each apple type varies wildly. There are ensy red 'crab' apples that actually taste pretty good. There are humongous yellow and pink apples in the rear of the cottage. This year, that particular tree only put out about half the number of apples it normally does. In a good year it produces hundreds of apples, but this year it yielded just short of 100 apples. No surprise, each tree's yield depends when the fruit trees bloom in the spring, and how many honey bees, bumblebees and other insects are available then to fertilize the tree's flowers. Spring weather and number of flower fertilizing insects can vary wildly from year to year.

The entire crop of one of the apple trees

There is one tree that the past 2 years didn't produce a single fruit. Didn't think it was an apple tree.  Now this year, it managed to produce - a single fruit. Not sure what the tree's problem is, but its lone apple was  pretty, sweet and crunchy. Yum! Hope I get a second apple next year...

Now what happened with this year's apple crop of  Flown Piggies Farmj apples? Some apples were eaten as is. Not a single apple made it into the many pies, tarts, Danishes, puff pastry, or apple sauce that I dreamed of making last year when the entire crop of apples fell from the trees virtually overnight. That was due to a storm and not a single apple was gathered by a human, although the local deer made out like the bandits they are. 

Yeah buddy... Got my eye on you, sneaking over to the apple orchard
 trying to look all innocent like you don't have apple scented breath

Not to brag, but this year many apples this year made it into the dehydrator so SCORE for that! 

Pear Harvest Time

One of the red pears

It's that time of year again, the orchard fruit are fat and ripe or nearly so. The apples outnumber the pears, the latter being favorites. The pears do not store well, but I'm not going to can any. Yes, my 'country gal' persona ends where the real work begins. 

My first year on Flown Piggies Farm lots of pear desserts were made, and yes, many lbs were gained. (Oh shut up, you'd have gone nuts with a glut of fresh fruit too!). Last year, 2021 the pears and apples fell from the trees so fast - literally overnight - that not a single piece of fruit was enjoyed, except by my neighborhood's population of chubby deer. 

Flown Piggies Farm boasts 3 pear trees. The closest tree to my house has  Bartlett type pears. They might be Anjou pears but would not a pear by any other name still taste like one or the other? 

The second pear tree is itsy bitsy at perhaps 10 feet tall, and it bears small red pears - which are my favorite. This year the dinky tree yielded a whopping seven pears!  To be fair to the tree, it being so small, it is possible that many of its fruit were taken early on by deer, who stand on their hind legs like trained poodles, and pluck fruit. Stupid deer. 

The massive Bosc Pear Tree, sans Partridge

The third pear tree is around 20 feet high and has what I am 99 44/100% sure are Bosc pears. The fruit are brownish gold, large, fat and they have skinny necks. The Bosc are a week or two, if not three

weeks from ripening. There's no clue what to do with them when they do ripen. The tree has hundreds and hundreds of fruit on it. I do know they are the preferred pear for fancy desserts like pears poached in wine. I can feel my jeans tightening just thinking about it. 

And more Bosc...

                                                                                                                                                            I'm bummed that pears can not be stored in the manner of apples. Apples you buy in grocery stores may be as old a year. And pioneers used to be able to store fresh apples in cold cellars, but pears are not so obliging. My neighbor Nita decided that the crop of 2022 was not going to go to waste. She has her own pear tree but it is a couple of weeks behind my trees in fruit ripening. 

Nita picking the bartlett pears

Nita brought over her orchard ladder and and we (OK, mostly she) picked a nice load of pears. 

I picked all the red pears off the little tree and soon we were hauling a big box of bartlett pears into my kitchen. 

The pears are lined up for ripening, one precious globe at a time. 

Ready for drying

A number of pears were ready to go and Nita again came to the rescue. She loaned me one of her dehydrators as well as a slicer (a mandolin) and we set to work, slicing up the ripest pears and settling them on the dehydrator trays. Thanks to the mandolin, we also each in our own kitchens, sliced up our thumbs. Ouch!

Below is a bowl of the resulting dried pears. They look ghastly in the picture, but they are sweet and tasty. I currently have a zillion or so bags of dried pears. I've practically handed them out to whomever comes within a quarter mile of my home. Gotta get that fruit eaten before next year!

Dried pears which resemble dried ears (I know... EEEW!)