Molde, Norway
You remember all those big-ass yachts in the harbour from the last post?
Some of them were car ferries. Molde seems to be the epicentre of fjord ferrying, as was evidenced by all the cars waiting in the lineups today.
Another thing I found out: it gets dark here!
That’s because the sun dips low enough in the sky to hide behind the mountains, so it gets a lot darker here than other places we’ve been.
Early this morning, after some room service brekkie, we headed down to the bus for our shore excursion.
Remember, this was a hastily-put-together stop that wasn’t on the original itinerary, but got added when Faroe Islands became inaccessible due to a storm.
I suppose we should be really impressed they got anything up and running at all, but we’ve been a bit spoiled till now, so the offering felt like a letdown.
“Highlights of Molde” turned out to be “we’re going to drop you off at the outdoor museum.” It’s a bit like Heritage Park (a ‘living museum’ in Calgary) but much, much smaller. They’ve moved some historic structures here so you can see how early settlers lived. I gotta tell ya, I’m enjoying looking at the pics now more than I enjoyed actually going to the place at the time.
Reminder that you can click any pic to see it complete on your screen without scrolling
A lot of that, of course, had to do with having to wake up early, going out in a drizzling rain, and dealing with the cornucopia.
I should explain that.
This ship is full of dawdlers. You know the type.
The sort of folks who walk two steps thru the front door of a place, then stop right inside the doorway to look around, blocking anyone else from entering.
The sort of folks who wait for the cashier to scan every single item and announce the total and THEN they start looking thru their purse for the chequebook or credit card.
The sort of folks who make it a point to be in the front of the group going down the gangway from the ship, then spend five minutes on each step on the way down.
The sort of folks who take the front seat on the bus, then take the longest to get down the stairs.
Aaaaaaanyway, after we got back to the ship from the “excursion” and hopped the shuttle bus into town, we found a coffee shop and got a couple of lattes and griped about our shipmates. We wondered what you’d call a group of dawdlers… so I looked it up. There’s not an official term - but good news, an “official” term comes about from whatever term is most often used over time.
So a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a pod of whales, a snuggle of sloths (really!), and….
A cornucopia of dawdlers. I picked this word because I wanted it to be the same as an official word for some other slow creature. Sloths turned up ’snuggle’ which wasn’t going to work. Nor did a ‘bale’ of turtles nor a ‘rout’ of snails.
But a group of slugs is a cornucopia and that fit just fine! Now, I want to make clear that I’m not begrudging the folks who have a little more trouble getting around. It’s great that they’re out and about and doing things when it would clearly be easier to be a couch potato. Good for them! The issue is that they’re either unaware that putting themselves in the front of every group clogs up the system, or they just don’t care. I suspect the latter. There have been a few slowpokes who hang out near the end of the groups so as not to slow down everyone else and that’s the best way to do that. We’ve all got headsets on, so we can hear the guide. If they take a few extra moments to catch up to where the group has stopped, they haven’t missed anything.
But others…. hoo boy. One woman in particular seemed to end up on every tour we went on and she took forever to climb/descend the stairs on the bus. Naturally, she took the seat in the front of the bus, as you’d expect. But when the bus stopped someplace, she wouldn’t wait for others to get off the bus first, but she’d stand immediately and then take a loooooooong time to climb down the stairs, clogging up everyone behind her. It was inconsiderate and annoying to everyone else on the bus. I heard another passenger mumble under his breath, “f*cking Americans.” I don’t know if the woman was from the USA or not, but it seems the non-Americans on the bus just assumed that she was. That says a lot, actually.
Later, we poked around the town centre a bit. Molde is the “city of roses” as was evidenced by the plethora of rose beds.
There was a nice old building with lighthouse-shaped corners that I’m pretty sure will light up at night.
Just before dinner, we were treated to a rainbow stretching across the fjord
Dinner was at the buffet tonight, for a change. It was “Tastes of Norway” night and after looking the restaurant menu, we opted for the buffet. It was mostly the same stuff, but the buffet has more selections.
I’ve been wanting to hit the sushi bar, anyway.
I ended up doing a sampler with a bunch of sushi, some sashimi, Norwegian meatballs, and reindeer steak.
Before long, we were heading back out of the fjord and were treated to some spectacular scenery.
FYI, if you’re heading out of country and are facing a language barrier, I highly recommend heading to the App Store for your phone and finding Google Translate
Once on there, you can translate whatever you’re seeing by pointing the camera at a sign or menu or newspaper or whatever and it will superimpose the English over the foreign text.
Even better, if you click the arrow to download the language before you head out on the town, it will do the translation in real time without needing to go online.
The other handy app I’ll recommend is Currency. It shows all the currency you want - tap on the type you can see a price for and it will then show you the conversion into all the others. I like it over XE because it works offline as well as online and it is mirrored on my Apple Watch, so I don’t even need to get my phone out to check a price.
Also: XE’s app has been giving me fits - it got stuck on the “send money” screen and won’t go back to the currency conversion.
And that’s your friendly travel tip for today. Now I’m going to go back out on the balcony and watch the fjords go by.