London Still Rocks!

This morning wasn't any easier a morning to get up in.. but I managed it, valiantly. After breakfast, there was an onboard lecture about   Norwegian languages , which   I popped along to. She started by showing us the "family tree" of languages: Always interesting to look at, but here she was concerned with the Scandinavian languages, branching off from the Germanic , with Norwegian closely related to Danish and Swedish . However, beside the tree, she pointed out a "bush", which includes Finnish and Sámi , with something called Kven floating nearby.. Now, when I thought of Norwegian languages previously, it was with a focus on just "Norwegian" and "Sámi" - but she was here to tell us that it's way more complicated than that! She showed us a slide illustrating some similarities between "Norwegian" and other languages: ..and then described how this fellow called Ivar Aasen formalised Norwegian in the 19th and 20th centuries...

D inner was buffet again, and hallelujah, it was an improvement on lunch ! It started early, to allow us time to look around   Svolvaer , our next stop. It was already dark of course, but what the hey, I could go have a look.. and thanks to the announcement on board that reminded me of Magic Ice , an ice bar & sculptures that I'd planned to see. They had turkey, and a chicken sauce, hmm.. anyway, it was quite edible - and they had the most gorgeous "vegetarian" (I assume they mean vegan) chocolate mousse. I made sure to get one of the chocolate roses on top. Again, I could have died of thirst before I got anyone's attention - what IS it with these people? Damned if I was doing without my included, and non-refundable, bottle of wine.. as it was, I had my dinner half-eaten before the wine arrived, and ended up pouring quite a large glass to take back to my cabin for later. That's four wine glasses now decorating my cabin.. We actually docked early, for once, and...