iPhone rocks. Totally.

Let me take a few moments out of your life to shamelessly promote my
latest acquisition and, frankly, the coolest vacation tool EVER.

This photo was taken with the iPhone earlier this morning, and I liked it so much I've already emailed it all over.

What's more, I have been able to surf the web without paying exorbitant prices for the privilege while on board the cruise ship.

Cover flow and photo sharing has been highly popular with everyone, and made showing off my company a real pleasure.

So thanks, Apple! You've really outdone yourselves this time. The iPhone ROCKS.

- Kristiana

Sent from my iPhone

Correction

Oh. We don't debark at 8:15. We sit in the nightclub and wait for debarkation instructions at 8:15.

Docked at Flam

Our first stop on the Norwegian coast. Having already spent time in Flam, Kristiana and I have booked a shore excursion, a coach to nearby Aurland and a farm where we'll be served coffee and waffles. This differs from the onboard cuisine principally in that it's on a farm. OK, that was mean. Still there's something about an excursion that ends with waffles that's intrinsically appealing. We debark in about 15 minutes.

You are missing some STUNNING scenery...

>

> Awakened this morning at 3am by shutter clicks, I found myself in
> the midst of a photographer's dream - no one else is up, and the
> light is perfect -so there are plenty of opportunities to wander the
> ship and find just the right vantage point to capture passing snow-
> capped mountains, sleepy towns, waterfalls, and the sunrise breaking
> through the stormclouds. It's still way early, and I'm tired, but
> also exhilarated by just being here.
>
> Sent from my iPhone

Sunrise on the fjord

Fjords by night

Towel monster

A gift from our steward. Or a terrifying stowaway.

Catching up

Catching up

Kurt and Marcia, our taxi, embarcation and lunch friends.

Catching up

All at sea

Today is a sea day, a nautical term meaning succor for the jet-lagged. We have no ports of call and no shore time, and are sailing north from Copenhagen to a point partway up the Norwegian coast by the most direct route. We are out of sight of land and, for the most part, out of reach of GSM towers. It is, in short, a day perfectly suited to putting off both activities and blogging, and just catching up on sleep.

So I will write about yesterday instead, which was much more interesting. Over breakfast at our hotel we were pegged as Prairie Home cruisers by Marcia and Kurt, a very personable and interesting couple from Seattle who had done the cruise before. We decided to share a cab to the ship, and enjoyed their company throughout the ride, the various forms of processing we underwent, embarkation, and lunch. Exploring the ship afterwards we found, among many other things, the nightclub, the casino, the piano bar, the extremely well-stocked library with adjoining espresso bar, the various dining rooms, the tennis courts and assorted pools, and the teens-only themed tropical waterfall grotto with pools, which we envied.

We also toured the spa, which is not merely the onboard purveyor of spalike services but which you must pass throught to reach the gym. Nice bit of marketing, that. We each signed up for membership in the Thermal Suite, a set of rooms with steam, jacuzzi, and as their centerpiece a set of heated tile lounge chairs sort of extruded from the floor in which you basically lounge and melt. The perfect thing after a long day of sightseeing, we figure. We also bought some sessions in a shiny egglike pod which simultaneously warms and gently massages you while spraying you with soothing aromas - the better to relax you while the gently humming white pod clones your body for eventual possession by our alien masters, I imagine. Anyway, half an hour in The Pod is said to substitute for three hours of sleep. Anything that dares make a promise like that has to be tried, however poor the odds.

Dinner companions, randomly assigned and yours for the duration of the voyage, are always a source of trepidation on a cruise like this. Anything can happen from mere uncomfortable silences to the dread People With Whose Political Opinions We Disagree. So we were not merely pleasantly surprise but delighted (and here I wish my blackberry did italics) to make the acquaintance of tablemates Kristi, a mostly-retired opera singer now living in Dublin and reading up on theoretical physics, and Madeline, her 9-year-old daughter who is lovely and charming and everything else that a pretty much idealized 9-year-old can be. There will be many Kristi-and-Madeline stories in days to come, I'm sure.

After our *delightful* dinner we sought seats for the 10pm PHC show itself. What a pleasure. But I'll write about that later, because tonight's show is beginning.

Arrival in Copenhagen and return to consciousness

Copenhagen International Airport is nonsmoking, but you can tell Denmark is a smoking country with your first breath of air when you step inside from the jetway. During the entire walk from the gates (eerily similar to Oslo's in design as if they'd been copied from the same blueprints, but built from metal and linoleum instead of wood) through the very attractive shopping area through passport control, baggage claim and finally the terminal area I saw no smokers, yet the smell hung in the air everywhere.

Both of us were tired to the point of catalepsy during the short flight from London, so instead of the highly recommended quick and inexpensive public transit we took a cab to our hotel, the smallish but very pleasant Copenhagen Strand. One side of our room faces the water of the Inderhavnen canal, one of the large waterways that cuts through the city (if it were Venice, this would be the Grand Canal), and the other overlooks a little courtyard and back street. completely charming. Through our window little whiffs of the Jazz Festival drifted in, but we couldn't hear or see from where.

After freshening up a little it was about Fpm local time so we decided to put off the need for sleep just a little while and wander a little first. We walked two blocks up the waterside to Nyhavn, the short canalside street of outdoor cafes end to end that you can see in every guidebook and on the cover of ours. On the way to Nyhavn Kristiana thought she could hear jazz coming from several directions including across the channel (the Copenhagen Jazz Festival is HUGE), but once we turned on to Nyhavn the New Orleans style saxophone band at the far end of the street drowned all the others out.

Kristiana and I took different sides of the canal - she wanted the best vantage points for photos and I wanted to wander among the cafes themselves - and as I passed the bandstand I saw police arriving to divert traffic. Shortly some kind of march, perhaps 500-1000 people (I have no special skill at estimating crowds, but at the end of a day of international travel including a layover at Heathrow my sense was that it was a good three large superjets worth). The crowd was mostly though not uniformly young, and very passionate in their cause, though the loud synchronized chanting was all in Danish so I could not at this point tell you what that cause was. The procession was followed by a sort of mobile DJ van emblazoned "SUMMER OF 69 FOR A NON PROFIT KICK ASS CULTURE," and as it drew up to a point behind the bandstand it stopped and over its speakders boomed several minutes of speech - again in Danish so again I can't say what it was, but I got a couple minutes of video which I will try to post if I get a real connection later (I'm writing this on my Blackberry). At the end the chants resumedan and they moved on.

My need for sleep was now overwhelming so I went back to the hotel. Before I could finish texting Kristiana, she walked in the door as well. she was hungry but hadn't yet found anything that appealed to her, the plate-of-clams-and-a-pint-of-Carlsen cuisine of Nyhavn not really meeting her definition of jet-lag recovery food.

I napped briefly - less than the length of the album playing on my iPod (Wendy Luck's The Ancient Key, if you're interested), and awoke to the smells of Indian food that Kristiana had materialized from somewhere and had already eaten her fill of. (Note to Kristiana: how'd you do that - did you just rez it out of inventory or something? Do we have Build privileges here?)

Now it's morning, both local time and body time. Kristiana has gone out to shoot pictures in the morning light while I blog. As soon as I post this, I'm heading out to find her and get an espresso.

Just the luck, Part II

We're in the departure lounge @SFO. Kristiana just got word that a delivery has arrived in her cube at work. It's from Samsonite. Lovely. It's the suitcase she ordered weeks ago, which was delayed in shipping, which she cancelled unshipped over a week ago and has since replaced.

In other words it's a bloody damn nuisance that we'll have to do something about when we get back. Unless Josh, the friend/coworker who alerted us, follows through on his plan to pack himself up and check on as luggage to come along on our trip.

Just the luck

We leave in about, yikes, four hours.  And after weeks of our being more or less complete social shut-ins, in the last 18 hours I've been pinged by three different friends that I haven't talked to in…well, far too long.  Naturally I've been too frantic to really give any of them the level of attention they deserve.  If you're reading this, I'm sorry I was so rushed, and I look forward to talking more when we get back.

I also definitely have come down with a flu.  It's not a really bad case, but besides making me generally headachey, cranky and sweaty (all just lovely on a long flight), it's giving me those little mental lapses that slow down packing by 2x or 3x.  Where's that phone charger I just had in my hand?  Did I just put the bluetooth headset in the packed-in-luggage pouch instead of the carry-on pouch?  Better open both up and see.  Etc.

Our ride comes for us at 1:30.

Last-minute shopping

the iPhone's headphone jack has too little clearance for standard headphones. There's an adaptor, but it sold out quickly. On a whim I called the Apple store this morning to see if they had gotten more. After the surreal experience of hearing Kristiana answer the call (she subbed for the regular autoattendant voice talent during the iPhone launch), I got through to a store employee who confirmed that yes, they were back in stock. Hooray - Kristiana will be able to listen on her favorite (Sony EX71SL) earphones during our flight.

Frequently Asked Questions, round 1

Thanks to Hollis and Stacey.

Do you just fly directly to Norway, or what?
We fly to London (insert rant about Heathrow here) then from there to Copenhagen. We have one night in Copenhagen (during its jazz festival but unfortunately a day too late to see Eliane Elias), then board the ship in Copenhagen the next day. The ship cruises up the coast of Norway and back, then returns us to Copenhagen, where we spend a little more time before flying back to London.

Do you have a picture of the ship?
There's a good one on the Cruise Norway main page.

How many people will be on it?
It's a 1,200-passenger liner, and the Prairie Home cruise has bought out the entire ship.

Have you been on a cruise before?
The most I've ever cruised was three days on the Hurtigruten freight/passenger liner up the coast of Norway. Besides that, just an overnight from Miami to Bahamas, and a couple nights on the Queen Mary (the ship that's now a hotel docked in Long Beach) with a view of the parking lot from my porthole. What can I say, my parents are airline people and I was raised on flight. Kristiana has been on "real" cruises before, and has opinions about the best lines. And the worst. I don't know if she's been on Holland America before.

What's the Prairie Home part of the cruise?
OK, you caught me. It's all on the website, and I haven't studied it. I know the general idea is that Prairie Home personages and guests are the on-ship entertainment for the cruise as well as setting the general tone and agenda, and I know there are lectures on writing and so forth, but I have been a bad boy about studying the details.

Will the food be Norwegian-themed? Will you drink Aquavit?
I can't imagine there won't be Norwegian-themed food, and I can't imagine there will only be Norwegian-themed food. I expect salmon, fiskeboller, and undoubtedly cod. Garrison is quoted as having uncomplimentary things to say about lutefisk, so I don't expect any except for humor value. I don't expect reindeer meat, which I think (I could be wrong here) is too precious to be wasted on the uninitiated or unappreciative. I will be curious to see whether our Norwegian seaman's meal from our last three-hour-tour, steamed shrimp on bread with mayonnaise and lemon juice, will be presented, and how it will go over.

As for Aquavit, sure, a little, why not? I've never developed a real taste for it, but I don't dislike it one bit.

Test post #2 from blackberry

A second test post from my blackberry.

Test

Is this thing on?

Restarting after 5 years fallow, and an upgrade to the latest template.