catch up time 'cos the wifi was down! part one

day 6 (27th february) it is easy to lose all sense of date and time in any other life whilst on board as the daily programme (which lou always pick up one day in advance thus causing me further confusion!) is headed by the day of the cruise so far. it is geared to informing us of arrival and departure from each stop, where to meet for the various excursions, deadlines for signing up to said excursions, meal times which move around according to, you've guessed it, the excursions! still tired from the migraine and a bad night due to bumpy seas (a lot of up, down and banging from various parts of the boat) i spent most of the day in the cabin, not bothered about eating a great deal. and it is easy to eat a great deal on this ship! we were booked to go on the excursion to north cape the purportedly northernmost point of europe although both rough guide and lonely planet write of the dispute about this veracity of this fact. whatever! we were booked to go on a bus for a 35 km drive from honningsvag, a port we were due to arrive at just before midday. not long before that the tour manager, 'alan rickmans' as a fellow passenger has dubbed him, announced that due to a trailer stuck across the road which wouldn't be moved in time the excursion was cancelled. i can't say i was that disappointed. nested into our cosy cabin, the thought of a three hour round trip in filthy weather to a place where visibility may be so bad as to render the exercise pointless.....lou went off to try to get on the web in our spot in the café but no dice. at dinner we discovered there had been a call to see the lights about 11.30 the night before. we must have been completely out of it as we hadn't heard a thing and the speaker is between our two bunks at pillow level! we were assured that they hadn't been that spectacular. at 10.15 pm the call came via 'alan' and the intercom and this time we were ready for it. out we trooped (the routine of throwing on the layers and grabbing the camera already set up on its tripod is becoming second nature to us both!). they weren't bad but i was beginning to wonder if it was possible to see the green of the lights with the naked eye or only on the camera shots that lou was getting so successfully even if he didn't think so! that night was even bumpier and both of us were awake from about two til four thirty. we could see snow lying on the deck outside and white horses as well as a lot of white water we were making. arctic indeed!