Posting this a bit late but I wanted to capture some photographic highlights from our 10 day excursion to Morocco in September to review locations for the 2018 Evocative Morocco artists’ tour.

We travelled from Tangier in the north (just a short hop from Lisbon) south to the blue city of Chefchauen (via Tétouan and Oued Laou), on to Fès (briefly), then to the cedar forests of Morocco’s surprising winter ski resort in Azrou.

Next it was a long hike from the Rif through the Middle Atlas to the Erg Chebbi desert in the Sahara for two nights, including one in a tent in the dunes.  Next stop after travelling through the Todra Gorge was a wonderful riad, Les Jardins de Skoura, set amidst a date palm grove.

We then travelled through the High Atlas to Marrakech for a quick lunch before moving on to the Atlantic coast at Essaouria, a place we’d heard lots about but had never visited before on our four previous Moroccan visits.  Wonderful!  So paintable that we’ve added an extra night there on next year’s artist’ tour.

Then back to Marrakech airport for the painfully long departure procedure before the quick flight home to Portugal.

Below are some favourite pics from the repérage trip to Morocco September 2017:

Tangier

Asilah, near Tangier

Pam with wall art in Asilah (the art changes every year)

Unusual windows in Asilah

Tétouan, the old capital of Spanish Morocco

En route from Oued Laou to Chefchaouen

The blue city of Chefchaouen

Pam at “work” in Chefchaouen

Street scenes in the Medina of Chefchaouen

  Paul & Pam                                                                          Chefchaouen colour for sale

Riad El Amine, our Fès destination in 2018

Monkeys in the cedar forests near Azrou

En route to the Sahara

Riad Madu on the edge of the desert in Merzouga

Pam and Paul at the desert camp

Todra Gorge en route to Skoura

   Les Jardins de Skoura riad                                         Have a fresh date

The surprisingly peaceful Medina of Essaouira

Local ladies at the seafront in Essaouira

Essaouira port, with just one or two seagulls!

Farewell Essaouira and farewell Morocco.  À bientôt.

Our last port of call on Thursday (July 20) was the northern Danish town of Skagen.  Now how do you think you’d pronounce that place name?  And, for that matter, the name of the peninsula on the tip of which it sits: Jutland.

No and no.  It’s Skane and Yuland.  The vagaries of the Danish language.

Skagen is a popular beach resort that fairly buzzes in the summer and we were there for one of their few  summer afternoons when indeed it was pretty crowded — but not at the beach which is permanently closed to swimmers due to the treacherous currents.

A quick walk around the town and then back to the ship for a fun final evening: singing, dancing, plenty of wine and stimulating conversation over dinner covering Trump and Brexit.

And so it ends as it began — in Copenhagen, where we docked on Friday morning, painlessly disembarked and off to the airport for the flight to London.

I’ll be back with more travel yarns later in the year when we will be in Morocco.

Skagen houses

Got to talk about Bergen – Norway’s second biggest city and birthplace of Edvard Grieg (he of Peyr Gynt).  We docked here at breakfast time and we’re greeted by a rarity in Norway: brilliant sunshine and temperatures that rose to 27 deg: this was Bergen’s summer day, turned on just for us!

The weather stats for Bergen are astounding: more than 230 days of rain a year, June this year had 28 consecutive days of rain, the average annual temperature is 7 deg, and the annual rainfall is 2,250 mm — that’s a staggering 2 metres+ of rain!

We opted for a do-it-yourself tour by Hop-On bus which gave us a great overview of this very charming city and its beautiful architecture before we took the funicular up the steep hill of Mount Fløyen for one of the most spectacular panoramas we’ve ever seen.  Pics below.

Down to the harbour for a seafood lunch before returning to the Silver Whisper for the evening’s activities, which included a wonderful night of opera from the resident sextet the Voices of Silversea, whose tenor, Stephan from Wales, was just stunning.

A note about the buildings in Norway.  We learned all about the fire in Ålesund and apparently there were similar fires over the years in Bergen.  All the buildings have been made of wood because it’s cheaper to build and cheaper to heat.  Also easier to burn down. So after successive fires gutted the city, they opted for stone for their main city buildings, but most homes continue to be built in wood and painted in a variety of colours.  Beautiful, but … Stubborn folk these Vikings!

Back to Denmark tomorrow – our last full cruise day.

It’s now Wednesday, July 19, and we’ve just docked in Bergen, Norway’s second largest city – and we have sunshine!  We’ve had patches of blue on other days but today is cloudless and predicted to be 22 deg!   This must be the day they have summer.

Going back to Monday, we spent the afternoon in Ålesund, Norway’s art nouveau city that was rebuilt in that style after a fire in 1904 destroyed most of the old wooden buildings.  It pelted with freezing rain the whole time we were there, but our walking tour was made enjoyable thanks to a charming Russian guide, who has called Ålesund home for 18 years.

The buildings are amazing given the tendency in the 1960s to rip down anything “old” and the inside of one of the grand old houses that we were able to visit contained some real art nouveau treasures of furniture and glass ware.

Here’s a misty look at Ålesund as we sailed away on Monday evening (by the way, sunset is around 11 pm!)

So now for yesterday – Tuesday, July 18, in the picture postcard perfect town of Geiranger, that sits at the end of a 16km long fjord, rightfully recognized by UNESCO as Norway’s most beautiful waterway.   Sailing in during the morning, we passed dozens of waterfalls, the best being the Seven Sisters and the Suitor (pics below).

After lunch, we went on a 3.5 hr coach journey to Mount Daisnibba, 1500 metres above sea level and well above the tree line, where it snows every day, even in mid-summer!  Not surpsing that it was so cold – the latitude is to the north of the Shetland Islands and pretty much in line with Rejkavik, Iceland.

The views were very special, not only of a glacier, mountains, and our boat way below in the fjord, but also of the lush green mountain meadows populated mainly with goats (farmers get 80c a litre for the goat’s milk) and the huts and farmhouses with turf roofs.  How do they control the weeds?  They put a kid goat on the roof to take care of the overgrowth!

A really spectacular day finished off with a great meal on board with a couple from Sydney, washed down with a very nice Douro red.

After a full day’s sailing on Saturday (July 15), we reached Flåm, our first Norwegian port, at 8 am this morning (Sunday).  Heavy rain all night but thankfully the predicted showers stayed away early this morning giving us some wonderful views of the Sognefjord.

It took the ship 8 hours to travel the 204 km along this 1308 metre deep fjord to reach Flåm, a tiny village surrounded by snow capped mountains and dozens of waterfalls.

We went ashore by tender and explored a little of the township.  Cold with ocasional scattered freezing rain showers – a typical Norwegian summer’s day!

This afternoon we took a three-hour excursion by the Flåmsbana (railway) which snakes its way through incredible scenery (how many waterfalls can you cram into a 20 km journey) — “one of the world’s great train journeys” to quote their slogan on the side of the carriage.  The train takes an hour to rise 810 metres, via some 180 degree loops, to Vatna-Halsen, where waffles, cream and strawberry jam awaited us.

Now back on board the Silver Whisper.  Just learned that Federer won Wimbledon.  What a champion.  Dinner tonight is at the outdoor Grill, which we’re looking forward to (enjoyed it greatly on the Alaskan cruise three years ago).  Previous two dinners have been in the main restaurant – fantastic food and wines.  We’ve also joined a trivia quiz group and our team won (of course).

We sail for Ålesund tonight – Norway’s art nouveau gem.

A Norwegian Lorelei sings for the tourists at this breathtaking waterfall.  She literally pops out of nowhere and bursts into (weird) music as the train passes by on the way back to Flåm.  Norway is full of legends and trolls –  something to do with long winter days and nights.

We are at sea.  A whole day’s sailing ahead as we plough the seas (actually, at the moment, the Kattegat) en route to Flåm in Norway from Copenhagen.

Departure from Portugal on Thursday (July 13) was painless thanks in part to an upgrade on TAP which made the 3.5 hr hop to Denmark very pleasant.

Today we explored the charming city of Copenhagen with its great architecture, millions of bicycles (literally) and changeable weather (sunshine, showers, howling winds and freezing temperatures in the one morning). Took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour and hit the main sights, including the famous (and quite small) Little Mermaid (see below).

Lunch in Nyhaven on the canal (also see below) before boarding the Silver Whisper, our home for the next week.  First people we met were from Caloundra but seems the majority of guests are Americans and Europeans.  Our suite (aka a cabin) is luxurious on Level 6, starboard side.  Our charming butler Ravin (from Mauritius) brought us champagne — and so it begins!

More tomorrow.

Here we go with a new series of blogs, this time relating to our travel adventures in 2017 — starting with a cruise through the Norwegian fjords sailing from Copenhagen on July 14.

We’re still in sunny Óbidos and getting ourselves organised in spite of a bung knee (Paul) and minor flooding in the kitchen.  We depart here July 13 in the evening for Copenhagen and getting pretty excited although a Google search of weather forecasts at all our ports of call is not very encouraging — rain predicted every day!  Hopefully, that will not be the case.

Stay tuned — just like we did this afternoon (Sunday, July 9) with a concert by the local Óbidos Band in the town square.