Scotland Rules!

The theme of the last few days has been high seas, howling winds and the tenacity of hope. We visited the Fram museum in Oslo, Norway. The Fram is a sailing ship with a deep, thick, rounded hull. It looks a little like a hazelnut and was designed to withstand the crushing ice of the polar seas. The Fram museum is the Fram itself in a building with a sharp roof, and it is one of the best museums I've been to. We clambered all over the solid ship--up the sloping deck, down steep ladders past the narrow cabins and deep into the hold. We saw photos and silent films of a the ship locked in ice, the ship being tossed about in a storm--the round hull rolling recklessly--the ship on its way to the Antarctic, its deck swarming with sled dogs. We saw photos of grizzled men with frozen beards. The men's arms stood out from their sides, the shape of their necks lost in headgear. I sometimes found it difficult to plod back up the sledding hill in all of my layers, so thick that the whole length of my legs rubbed together with every step. Swish, crunch, swish, crunch.These men traversed mountains dressed in wolfskins, snowshoed across glaciers, and survived for years on hard tack and seal fat.

When we left Oslo we learned we would skip our next port in the hope of reaching Greenock, Scotland before the roughest weather hit, kicked up from a hurricane and a tropical storm spun off of the East coast of the States. This ship glides through the water. We are so large and so heavy and so full of stabilizers, that most of the time it's hard to tell we're even moving. It took ten foot waves and near gale force winds to get us to shimmy and shake. The stabilizers prevent the typical pitching and rolling, so instead we rock and vibrate, like a train. The dining room becomes a sea of bobbling heads; people bump into walls, chairs and each other, servers rush to carry plates to safety. Chris found he couldn't comfortably read, so, just like the intrepid explorers of Antarctica, we spent the afternoon watching movies. One was surprisingly OK, "The Vow", and the other was disappointingly even worse than we expected, "The Accidental Husband". Chris also watched ESPN, when the signal allowed. We ate our meals by the large windows and watched, hypnotized, as the waves rolled by, the wind sheering off their tops and streaking them in white. Occasionally, the stabilizers, the waves and wind would fall out of synch and the ship would rumble and groan. At some point in the night the knocking and tapping of phantom items came to an end, the shuddering and shaking dropped off and we found ourselves safe in the lee of the Hebrides. Day two at sea was no big thing. The Promenade deck was even reopened.

Today was brilliant. Chris has declared it his favorite day so far, and decided that we should move. To Scotland. We came in to Greenock and passed through the friendliest, most cheerful tourism and information center. We were given clear and detailed instructions on how and where to catch the train to Glasgow, where we met up with friends and had a lovely afternoon. It was a nice treat to actually see people we know and get to have some real catching-up conversations. Throughout the day, everyone we came across was nice: the information center volunteer; the man in the corner shop who sold me a top up voucher for my phone; the girl in the phone shop who told me I needed a new SIM card for my top up voucher to work, but that I could get one for a pound across the street; the girls selling train tickets; the gentleman checking train tickets; the waiters at the coffee shop and at the restaurant; the people lining the streets waiting for the parade of returning Olympic champions. Glasgow has certainly lived up to its reputation as a friendly city ;) Even the weather treated us well, with mostly blue skies. We felt right at home and called out the names of our faithful British companions as we strolled the streets, "WHSmith", "Primark", "Argos", "Pret!" "Sainsbury's Local". We took the opportunity to stock up on some British treats. Tomorrow morning I will figure out how to smuggle crumpets past the buffet greeters to the toaster. In the end, under a dramatic sky of rolling clouds, a great big team of bagpipers gave us a wonderful send off as the wind blew our ship safely off the pier. As Chris said, it felt like the town was actually glad to have us come visit.