Sea Day/Tromso

June 13th and 14th
At Sea/Tromso

The 13th was a sea day, so nothing too exciting there. We had a show that night with a singer from Texas, nothing that spectacular. That night I went up to the crew bar to check out what “the thing to do” here is like. It’s an OK bar, a little bit of a walk to get there, but it was busy due to some battle of the DJ’s that was going on. I hung out there pretty late meeting with people and talking to the guest entertainer who was nice enough to buy drinks for the band. On this ship, as opposed to the RCCL ships, the bar works on a card you credit money to in advance. With Royal, your Seapass card acted as a credit card that would have to be paid on each pay day, which makes way more sense from a business standpoint. I’m not planning on putting any money on my card here, which therefore prohibits me from buying anything, which probably isn’t a bad thing. Anyways, that was the night.
The 14th was spent in Tromso and I had plans to make the most of it. Not only were we in port for a large part of the day, but the band had the night off, so I didn’t have to worry about playing that night, so I was all set for a great day. Anyways, I set my alarm for 9:30, woke up when it went off, fell back asleep, and didn’t wake up again till 2:30! Let’s just say I was a little upset. The ship was due to leave at 6:00, and I had an ambiguous note on my schedule which implied a rehearsal at 4:00, leaving me about an hour to do what I wanted to get done. So I ran off the ship and quickly started getting acquainted with the new port. To see as much as possible, I ran almost everywhere, despite being dressed in heavy jeans and two sweatshirts. The first thing I saw was a botanical garden, and though claimed to be the further north than any other garden, it turned out that there was little more to it. We’ll just say the sparse plants, dull flowers, and overall uninteresting collection reflects exactly what you might expect an artic garden to look like. From there I started running up the hill I was on and that the ship was docked at in order to try to find some nice views. Most of my friends likened the port to Alaska, and although I haven’t been there, I can certainly see why. The snow-capped mountains and quaint villages were really beautiful, not to mention it was really cold, and I’m fairly sure that’s Alaska in a nutshell. But regardless, it was gorgeous. My running didn’t take me anywhere especially interesting, nor did it yield quite the views I know this landscape produces, and my time off the ship was quickly running out. I did end up getting my feet really wet taking a short cut between trails through what looked like dry land but turned out to be some strange Norwegian marsh, so that was fun. I ran through a residential area of the city and then found my way back to the ship just before the 4:00 whatever that was listed on my schedule. Turns out that the rehearsal listed was nothing more than the directors attempt to make us appear to be working that day, meaning I didn’t have a rehearsal and had no real reason to kill myself outside running through the Norwegian landscape. Well, at least there wasn’t much there for me to miss in the first place, so maybe I picked a good port to totally blow my wake time on. Well, tomorrow is another port, and hopefully one that I don’t mess up. Tell ya about it later!