Next month I expect to get up to the Frisian islands with my cousin Sam, which should mean some good Dutch coastal pics for this series, so I’ll share all the remaining “coastal” appropriate shots from the first full day on the boat, 21 January. We spent much of that day docked at Ålesund, because (as I understood) daylight in winter is too short for the boat to make it up and back in the narrow fiord nearby, as it would do in the summer. One thing I loved about the cruise was our view of both the wild mountainous coastlines but also of the small villages tucked in all along the coast. The boat make short stops at many of them, but many more we glided past without stopping, including a few in the gallery below.
Yes, these photos were all taken within ten minutes of each other from the top of the boat, shortly after 11am on the 23rd of January :-). First whirlpool experience in the Arctic Circle!
Today’s one of only two this year when Kirkenes, Amsterdam, Sydney and Nairobi will all get more or less the same 12 hours of day and night each. These last shots taken before we got off the boat on January 26th were taken a week after the sun first popped back over the horizon up here…and of course, for a couple months on either side of June 21st, it won’t pop below the horizon, giving it 2x as much sunlight as Nairobi (nearly on the equator) will get that day. Happy vernal equinox, fellow northern hemisphere residents :-).
The Aurora was, of course, the main reason we decided to take that cruise to the far north in January. I posted the first “skylights” entry early on the 23rd of January, the morning after we first saw them. Then, I showed one of my own very subtle images, plus one Gary had taken with his camera which allowed a much longer exposure. From calendar images, or people who can take truly long exposures with an excellent camera on a tripod, you’ll get a much more dramatic view. But the subtle, ghostly green you can dimly see above and below come much closer to what my own eyes experienced on the three nights when we were fortunate enough to spend time appreciatithe aurora. These were both taken around 18:30 on the 23rd of January, the second evening they graced our skies. One’s eyes need time to adapt – at first, you might think it’s mist or a cloud, but the longer you stay and let your eyes adapt, the more you’ll notice how the lights change shape and move around. Our cameras tend to see the colors better than our eyes do, but we found that bundling up well and braving the wind and cold for a longer time in the darkest place we could find really did the trick to experience these best.
King Crab catching on the frozen fjord, our early-afternoon (about 1:30pm, these photos) outing before our overnight on the ice beds (still to come, here) at the Snowhotel Kirkenes, in Finnmark County, Norway.
I’ll admit right now, for Sam and anyone else who’s curious: if I had a more legitimate “canal” photo from the “country” I’d post it: must get out to the countryside asap once I’m back in Amsterdam this coming weekend and do so, or indeed I’ll have to let this series sleep for a bit. Still, lovely photo & fiord, eh? 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 