Photographer at Sea

Everyone on board has a camera, of course. Including the two professionals aboard: Camille, the in-house photographer who offers tips and provides her photos at the end of the journey (for a price, of course), and Dan, part of a contingent of travel journalists aboard this repositioning cruise, accompanied by Hurtigruten's global PR manager, Øystein Knoph.

But the photographer pictured here is no professional. He's a weight-lifter, based on the amount of heavy glass in that lens. He was trying to catch photos of trailing birds this morning on the Labrador Sea. I seriously doubt he could hold the camera steady enough (no tripod) to get a decent snap. I am reminded by this scene of the old saw about the inverse ratio between the size of a photographers lens and his...

As for me, I'm relying on my iPhone 7's camera and my lightweight, compact Canon G-9, which has served me well for the past eight years. I considered bringing one of my old 35mm film cameras with lenses, but decided the weight and bulk would be too much. The best camera in the world is of no use if it's too heavy to lug out.

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Newport: Memory of Childhood

To most the city of Newport, Rhode Island, is associated with the Gilded Age mansions lining Ocean Avenue and the Cliff Walk. For me it's the Awful Awful. The Awful Awful is a thick milkshake, but instead of being made from ice cream, milk and syrup, most of its dairy content comes from ice milk. It originated at Bond's, a northern New Jersey ice cream chain with an outpost in my home town, Elizabeth. It got it's name because it's "Awful Big, Awful Good". Drink three and get your name inscribed on the wall, plus a fourth for free. Two ice cream chains in New England took notice of the thick shake and bought rights to market it under the Awful Awful name anywhere but in Bond's home territory of the Garden State. But when one of them starting expanding, not being able to enter the New Jersey market was a major impediment, so they changed the name to Fribble. That's what the chain -- Friendly's -- continues to call its shake, though it&#

Into the Bay, Up the River

The Fram's observation deck at night. The 'H' is for Hurtigruten A day of rain, with enough wind to make it biting, greeted us as we anchored in Rockland, Maine Thursday. Too nasty for me, even though I planned to revisit the Farnsworth Museum and its extensive collection of Wyeths, along with Chlde Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, Thomas Eakins and Louise Nevelson, among other American artists and sculptors. It's only a slight detour from my regular route to Bar Harbor each summer, so I'll return on another occasion. After taking on a pilot in mid-afternoon we sailed Penobscot Bay to its namesake river, passing under the Penobscot Narrows bridge (pictured above), a cable-stayed span which replaced a 1931 suspension bridge I crossed many times en route to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. We anchored in the Penobscot River early in the evening a short tender ride from Bucksport, where we spent the morning and early afternoon Friday without rain or much w

Back in Bar Harbor

When you're away from home for so long and have little in the way of scheduled commitments, knowing the day or date largely becomes irrelevant. Even holidays seem unimportant. I should have paid more attention. Egg Rock Lighthouse at sunrise At our shipboard briefing before landing in Bar Harbor Tuesday we were told that, in addition to the optional excursion, we could hop on the Island Explorer bus system emanating from the Village Green, which I use during my regular summer visits, to reach all points on Mount Desert Island. My plan was to bus to one of my favorite spots for watching the tide come and go. But the buses stop running immediately after the Columbus Day weekend, the "official" end of the season in Bar Harbor. If only I had remembered that the Columbus Day weekend was last weekend, not next. My plan to visit my favorite rock and tide pool fizzled when I walked up from the waterfront to the Village Green and saw none of the propane-fueled buses wi

Greenland Passage

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