Hurtigruten; Saturday, 25 July, 2015

Breakfast and then off the ship at Kirkenes to join the tour to the Russian Border. This tour had been cancelled when we'd tried to do it in January 2013, and even with a full ship the numbers taking part only half filled a coach.

The tour headed out of town and passed by the local iron ore mining village and mine before stopping off at the Long Fjord for a photo-stop before continuing onto the border.

Due to the nature of the border, being both an international frontier and the edge of the Schengen agreement, it's not actually possible to see much of Russia, other than one of the border watch towers, but it's still quite impressive to have made it to what once was one of only a few points where a NATO country and the USSR shared a border.

Back from the border and back onto what was now the Southbound Hurtigruten to start our journey back towards Bergen.

Next stop was Vardø with a quick visit to the monument to those killed in the Norwegian Witch trials, before getting back on the ship.

The tour leader had organised a waiving competition with her counterpart on the MS Nordnorge, an almost identical (but not sister ship) to ours. With glorious sunny conditions the original plan had been to pass the Nordnorge as it left the port in Berlevåg with passengers on their respective port sides waiving. In the end the Nordnorge was running quite late and was only a few hundred yards in front of us as it entered the port. Thankfully as the weather was much nicer than the previous evening it was safe for us to enter the port at the same time, so whilst the Nordnorge was docking we came alongside, their passengers ran round to starboard and put us to shame with the sheer number of balloons and decorated sheets they had produced.

The whole event was marked with a large amount of horn blowing from both ships and hoses being use to form water arcs between the two ships. No doubt much to the chagrin of the poor people of Berlevåg who were trying to get some sleep.

After the Nordnorge left we docked and as the sun started its bizarre journey back round the sky to its Western starting position, but still in full view, I headed back to my cabin