On to the QM2, At Sea & Stavenger, Norway: The Tropical Paradise!

8754 Our tour group getting oriented and washed off at the same time.  The golden on the lawn is the owners very pregnant dog.  She was very sweet but having a hard time moving around.

8769 A Chinese Hairy Palm, the only palm they've been able to grow here.  The 'hair' apparently helps it cope with the cold winters.

8789 A pond with water plants and water loving trees.

8800 Another pond with waterfall and the forest above it.

8802 Diana on the beach.

8815 Their picnic area.  A great place if it was a nice day.

8817 Flowers, trees and rocks.  Typical scene in most of the garden.

8823 Hillside flower carpet.  Notice the cylindrical trees.  Got to prune them all the time to get that shape.

8837 A flower close-up.  I could have sent a lot of these.

 

July 13 – Southampton, England.  Today we board the QM2 for our first ever cruise.  Every time we've been on Cunard ships it's been to get across the Atlantic.  This time we're heading for a few stops up the Norwegian coast.  I was filling in things to do between the end of our tour of Eastern Europe because the QM2 had just left for the US as our tour was ending.  So the time in Luxembourg, London, Oxford and Southampton was fun but it was an add on to wait for the ship to get back.  When I discovered that it was doing a 7 day cruise up to Norway before the crossing I booked it partly because we've never been in the Norwegian Fjords but also because it's less expensive to be on the ship than to stay in a London hotel, especially if you figure in food.  Just the hotel is almost as much as being on the ship.

 

I really dislike embarkation day so I didn't take any pictures or do much of anything but get on the ship, eat lunch, unpack and go to the welcome aboard show.

 

July 14 – At Sea Aboard the Queen Mary 2.  We are sailing on the North Sea past numerous oil rigs today.  It's Sunday so we went to the nondenominational Protestant service.  I like to go on the ship because the captain usually leads the service, a nice touch.  The ship's Master is the Cunard Commodore, Christopher Rynd, on this sailing.  The Commodore is the chief captain of the entire fleet.  We haven't met this one before.  They are usually very senior men close to retirement.  The last few times we've been aboard the Master has been a Captain.

 

The seas are calm but the weather is not very nice.  I guess we're about to pay for all the nice weather we've had since we got to Europe.  It's getting cloudy and we're passing through rain showers.

 

Life aboard is just like I described it on the way over, at least until we get to a port.  That will be tomorrow.

 

July 15 – Stavenger, Norway.  First port in Norway and the weather is not good.  We have selected a tour with a great name, The Tropical Flora of Norway.  Stavenger is a small place so we decided to head out of town.  First we took about a 25 minute ferry ride to a small island near the city some way up the fjord.  The attraction here is the garden.  In the 1960s a nursery owner from Stavenger wanted a little place to get away from the city and tried to buy a plot of land on this island but the farmer would only sell the whole farm so he bought it.  Over the years he brought plants out to the island to give himself something to do.  Most of his land was rocky so he had limited planting area.  Nevertheless, over the years he managed to develop quite a garden.  As he got older and his son took over the nursery, he had even more time to spend on the island.  He moved in some dirt at places to increase his planting area and little by little the garden grew. 

 

His little island is exposed to the Gulf Stream so the climate is quite mild, much milder than the mainland just a few miles away.  He experimented with various plants and found palm trees and cactus that would grow out here.  Soon, with the help of his son they were bringing in more soil and creating water features.  They started doing garden tours on a very small scale, mostly for locals to show them what was possible here.  The son got the bug and when dad retired he took over the garden's management.  He bought the farm next door because it has a spring and that would give him a reliable source of water. 

 

The garden is now a major attraction and brings visitors from all over.  It's very large and has separate areas for different types of plants.  It has a sizeable lake that has many varieties of water plants, a cactus garden, palm trees, flowers of many types and koi in a very nice pond.  The place is a riot of color interspersed with green areas, water features and rocks.  They even have a beach.  The trees are all pruned to be tall and slim, about like an Italian Cyprus.  This is so that they won't block the light from the flowering plants.  Apple trees are the exception.  They've actually trained them to be a hedge.  Very easy to pick.  It's dead on summer and the temps are cool and the cloud cover thick.  There's some light but it's not a great deal, if the plants miss any of it they won't do well.

 

We went in to their pavilion to have some tea and scones.  We're wet but our rain gear has kept us dry inside.  Then it was back on the ferry and into Stavenger.