Dover, Bergen, and I have no voice…

Saying goodbye to Allen and June on the dock at Dover

It has been a long few days. Dover it was raining, the next sea day I was OK at 1430 for the Meet and Greet, and then by 1600 I had lost my voice. Completely. And now Bergen; it’s not raining but I haven’t regained my voice, it’s just a squeaky wheeze.

Dover is our third debarkation/embarkation port (after Sydney—OK, OK, Sydney was just an embarkation port—and Dubai) so many, many folks were leaving and joining the cruise there. We had to say goodbye to our good friends Mal, Marie, Allen, and June. We’ve done a lot with Marie and Mal, starting with the lunch in Sydney the day before our cruise started. We immediately hit it off and subsequently spent a bit of time together. Allen and June joined our dinner table right after Dubai and we felt as if we were soulmates right away. They are from New Zealand and we’d like to see them again, maybe in New Zealand but it’s so hard for us to get there! United doesn’t fly there and doesn’t have a partnership with Air New Zealand. We’ll figure something out! Mal and Marie we might see on our way back from Canberra to Sydney at Fred and Kathy’s house.

Randy has had (and recovered, mostly) a cold. I thought I’d get away without catching it. I didn’t. Get away with it, that is. I don’t have a stuffy or runny nose, I have a bit of a cough and a sore throat. But mostly I don’t have a voice! I don’t feel like I don’t have a voice; I clear my throat and expect to be able to say a normal-voiced sentence. What comes out is a squeak! I can whisper but that is totally unsatisfactory, especially on the phone. Randy just laughs and says his ears welcome the rest. He’ll pay for that comment!

I have organized a tour tomorrow in Lerwick (where?) so I am staying in the cabin trying to conserve what voice I have. But we did go out for a bit in Bergen to try and find a piece of jewelry and/or a Norwegian sweater (“jumper” in Aussie). I found neither.

There is a silversmith store in Bergen, Juhl’s Silversmiths, where Randy bought me the most beautiful necklace in 2006,. They still have stunningly modern silver jewelry but the jewelry all seemed too similar to the necklace I have. And I couldn’t find a sweater, either. I kept thinking of the beautiful black and red sweater I still have from our first overseas trip, to Copenhagen. OMG, that was almost 50 years ago! And I still have it?! So all we bought was a cheese planer with a beautiful handle. I am such a cheap date!

Bergen was gray and I really wish the sun had been out because the sail-in and -out would have been spectacularly beautiful. Fjords and colorful houses and green trees and blue water. Instead most everything just looked almost uniformly gray.

Tomorrow is Lerwick (you didn’t really think I’d leave you hanging about Lerwick, did you? The Shetlands Islands, most northerly part of Scotland, they are perhaps most famous for their Shetland ponies. I am hoping to find something horsey for our daughter the horsey person in our lives, since we didn’t manage to find anything horsey in Arabian horse country. She is right now at a week-long horse show that her young Arab/Quarterhorse mix just qualified for. I’m crossing my fingers that she and Blu (her horse is Red White ‘n Blu) will have fun, first of all, and doing well will be a bonus. So maybe the ponies will be good luck for her!

Even though I can’t talk, I expect to have a great time tomorrow on the tour with some of the people I like best on the cruise: Steve and Donna, Fred and Kathy, and Chris and Phil. Hope the weather is at least OK.

Someplace in Dover

Can't resist animals!

Duck close-up. Speaking of birds, don't feed the gulls that follow ships, they have VERY large beaks!