When we woke up this morning, we were surprised to see that the Bolette was at anchor off land; a quick look at the MarineTraffic app showed that we were in Kristiansand. We couldn’t understand it – we were supposed to be at sea today. What was happening? About an hour later, the Bolette weighed…
Sweet dreams are made of this,Who am I to disagree?I’ve travelled the world and the seven seas… The Eurythmics During the night we had had to put our watches forward one hour in line with European time, so it meant an hour in bed lost. Therefore, when the alarm went off at 8.00am it was…
Having not yet cruised in 2023 (!!), it was with great excitement that we woke up this morning to the happy knowledge that we would be joining the Fred.Olsen Cruise Lines flagship Bolette later this morning in the Port of Tyne, for a wonderful 10 day cruise to the Nordic capital cities. 😊 We love…
Got up about 8.30 this morning and looked out of our balcony doors at a grey choppy sea and a grey cloudy sky. Didn’t think we would spend much time out on deck today! We had been looking forward to our visit to Belgium as we had planned to get the train from Zeebrugge to…
At some point during the night we had woken up to see that the Arcadia was on the move again, making her way back along the North Sea canal. It was a pity we weren’t in Amsterdam again today, but we had a nice relaxing day at sea to look forward to instead. 🙂 In…
Woke up at 8.00am after an excellent night’s sleep. I’d been wearing some industrial-strength earplugs while I slept so nothing disturbed me at all, and I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I got out of bed, despite the fact that we’d had to put our watches forward an hour to European time. Looking outside, the…
We would spend today crossing the North Sea in the famous shipping forecast areas, hence the title of today’s blog. We would try not to get too depressed that this was the last day of our fantastic cruise and tomorrow afternoon we would be back at work! ☹ In the Ballindalloch I enjoyed a substantial…
At 7.00am this morning the Balmoral entered the Kiel Canal again, for our return journey to the North Sea. We got up about 8.30 and enjoyed a good breakfast before going out on deck for a look around. Although the weather was dry, it was fairly dull and cloudy and the brisk breeze still had…
We awoke this morning to a flat-calm North Sea with the sun tentatively peeping out from fluffy white cumulus clouds. We were up at 8.00am, and off we went to the Ballindalloch restaurant for our breakfast. As tonight is a formal evening, we found the usual bottles of cava next to the fruit juices, so…
The slightly-increased motion of the Balmoral on the waves this morning showed that we were in the open sea once again; we could tell we were on our way home because of the grey skies and threatening rain. Nonetheless, we had a full day at sea to look forward to today as well as one more…
