The End of an Exceptional Cruise

July 26, 2024

This trip would have been an overwhelming success just because we were with our children, Jilayne and Jeffrey, and thier spouses, Rob and Heather. The fact that we all were entralled with the whole week in Iceland made it exceptional. Unfortunately, we all fly home tomorrow and reality will set in on Sunday.

Thursday we were in Djupivogur,  the only bad weather day we had on the trip. It rained, at times hard, during our entire excursion.  The good news is that we were on a bus the whole time except for two stops for photo opps.  The first was along the fjord, again with breathtaking scenry.  This time it was enhanced with the low hanging clouds.  The second stop was in the "valley of the waterfalls".  The waterfall we stopped at was the most impressive of the many we saw.  This is another opportunity to suggest that you visit Tim's Facebook page for lots of pictures.  We had a particularly good tour guide on this tour. He was both informative and humorous. Previous tour guides  had pointed out fish farms in the fjords, but our guide on Thursday was only one to explain that the farms were owned by Norwegian companies and these farms were creating an enviromental problem.  Fish farms are cages in the fjords where mostly cod and salmon are raised. The problem is that some of the fish escape the cages and infect the wild fish with  a desease called skin lice. We asked why the government didn't do something about this. He said tour guides were not to speak badly of the government or even talk about Icelandic politics, but he was able to vaguely suggest  that the government was not trying hard enough to solve this problem. He also told us that all the myths and lullabies in Iceland ended with someone dying. He read us the lyrics of a particularly popular lullaby and then sang it in Icelandic. The words were very sad and, in fact, had the baby dying at the end. It was  beautiful when sung in Icelandic. There is actually a very good reason why the lullabies are like this.  In the 17th century when these lullabies were created most everyone lived in turf houses with poor heat and little food. It was a very hard life and many parents thought their babies would be better off in the after life.

Friday turned out to be the best day weatherwise; temperatures in the upper 50's with abundant sun.  We are in Heimaey in the Westland(?) Islands.  Tim and Lynda did not signup for an excursion today.  The children are on an ATV excursion. There was an excursion Tim wanted to sign up for, an e-scooter trip to see a Puffin colony. Tim was outvoted 5 to 1 from taking the excursion. He did go into the village and enquire about a taxi taking him out to the Puffin colony.  It was reasonably priced but the driver would not wait for Tim to take some pictures and bring him back to the boat.  He would drop Tim off and return later. Tim wasn't wild about the thought of standing among the Puffins waiting for the taxi and watching our ship sail off toward Reykjavik. 

Usually our blog is full of many references to the fine meals we have had during our travels. A quick word about the food onboard the Viking Mars. The food was excellent in all three of the restaurants on board.  The only disappointment was Manfredi's, the Italian specialty restaurant.  While the food was very good, the service was no where near the quality of service in the other restaurants.

Thanks to  those of you who have read our blog and to all of you that responded on Facebook to our pictures as they were posted.  We look forward to having you join us vicariously on our next adventure.

Two Quaint Icelandic Villages

 Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Tuesday morning we docked in Akureyri, the second largest city in Iceland. Like yesterday, when we opened our cabin's drapes we looked out on  spectacular scenery. Most of the mountains are covered in green vegetation and if you look carefully at times we can see blue artic lupines in bloom. One of our guides told us that erosion is a major problem in the mountains so the government had small planes fly close to the bottoms of the mountains, literally throwing large quantities of artic lupine seed out of the plane. Where the lupines have taken hold they help control the erosion as well as look good.  We can also see many small streams flowing down the mountains created by the melting snow that is also in view. 

The first of our two stops on our excursion in Akureyri was to a botanical garden. We were a bit unsure of how nice the garden could be in such a northern climate, but it turns out the gulf stream flows along the west coast of Ireland moderating the climate. The garden was beautiful with abundant  flowers in bloom.  Many of the flowers we recognized such as foxgloves and dahlias. The foxgloves were particular impressive with several varieties we've not seen before.  We saw several other flowers we really  liked and noted their names so we can research them at home as to whether they will grow in our flower zone.

Once back on the bus we went up the mountain to a large ski resort that contained 17 different ski runs. The sole purpose of this stop was for us to get out of the bus and admire the scenry  from the top of the mountain as opposed to the bottom. It was every bit as spectacular from the top as it is from the bottom.

Akureyri is only 62 miles from the artic circle.  During dinner as we were sailing towards our next port of call, we were informed that we had actually crossed over into the artic circle. We will receive official certificates as proof of this accomplishment.

It is Wednesday as I (Tim) sit on our veranda writing this blog posting.  It is taking some time to write because I can't stop looking up the mountains along the fjord. As much as we love the setting of our house with the beautiful flower beds we've created and the woods and meadow surrounding us, it will look pretty boring compared to this.  We are docked in Seydisfjordur, a tiny village of 700 people. Despite its diminutive size it has several claims to fame.  Many, many years ago it was one of the three finalists for the honor of becoming the capitol of Iceland. In the 1800's a very wealth entrepreneur built a dam across the river in the village that allowed Seydisfjordur to become the first village in Iceland with electricity.  The same gentleman also paid for the first telephone cable that was laid between Europe and Iceland. Unfortunately, most of the excursions offered were too physically demanding  for us, so we opted for the walk around the village with a tour guide that ended with a very professional concert by a male and female vocalist. He did not tell us much more then what we have already related to you in the blog  (!!!) Just thought of an interesting fact that is applicable to all the small towns in which we've have been .  Most of the houses in these towns were built in Norway, dismantled and shipped to Iceland and rebuilt here.  This is because there are very few trees in Iceland.

We will be back in a couple of days for the conclusion of our trip.

Welcome to Iceland

Monday, July 22, 2024

We discovered very quickly that it never gets dark at night this time of year in Iceland. So we have added another unanswerable questions to the list that includes "What is the meaning of Life?"  What is the exact time that dusk becomes dawn?

Five years ago  we took our children, Jil and Jeff, and their spouses, Rob and Heather on a cruise in the Caribbean to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.  Grandchildren were not included and our children were thrilled. They enjoyed so much that at the end of the cruise they asked if we could do it again for our 55th aniversary.  Last fall we told them our 55th was coming up so we needed to plan the next cruise and where we were going to go. They surprised us by quickly responding "Iceland".  So here we are.

We were scheduled to fy out of Detroit last Friday evening. Of course we woke up Friday morning to find the airline industry in chaos. When it was time to leave for the airport United Airlines still had our flight listed as leaving on time.  By the time we arrived at Detroit Metro our Chicago flight was now delayed 2 hours which was not a problem because our flight to Reykjavik was also delayed.  The only problem we faced was Tim and Lynda being re-introduced to the joys of flying in coach. Our last cruise in March had business class airfare included.  We finally boarded our ship about noon on Saturday.  We were lucky. We were told there were about 150 passengers who's flights had been canceled.  After lunch we spent the rest of the day unpacking, napping and exploring the ship.

We had an afternoon excursions scheduled, so Lynda, Tim, Jil and Rob, took the cruise schuttle bus into Reykjavik  to explore the old town section.  It was the only opportunity to see any of Reykjavik.  Sunday morning Jeff and Heather wanted to sleep in and enjoy their first morning without teenagers in the house. Our first stop was the beautiful and somewhat contemporary appearing Lutheran Cathedral. The outside facade was everything we expected and the interior was a very simple, but impressive design as one expects in a country with Scandinavian roots.  In front of the cathedral was a statue of Lief Ericksson that was given to Iceland by the United States in celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Iceland parliment.  From the cathedral we were walking toward the main pedestrian shopping street of Reykjavik. Unfortunately Lynda became ill so Tim and Lynda found a taxi and returned to the ship.  Jil and Rob reported many interesting shops including a photographic art gallery where they bought a couple of impressive prints for their home.

Besides volcanos, Iceland is famous for the many geothermal hot springs that occur all over the country.   We were told that geothermal springs provide 90 percent of the energy for Iceland.  Our excursion on Sunday was to Sky Lagoon where a large pool built out of the lava stone is filled with water from one of these springs.  The pool is only 4 feet deep and has a long infinty wall right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.  The temperature is a toasty 100 degrees.  Convienently there is also a walk up (doggy paddled up?) bar.  The Lagoon also has a program called "The Ritual"  which we all took.  It starts with a plunge into a pool of cold water, followed by sitting in a sauna. We sat in the sauna for about 10 minutes and then went into a room called the "cold water mist" room. From there you picked up a bowl containg salt and essential oils and rubbed it all over your body, except your face and then went immediately into a steam room to melt the salt off of you and open your pores.  The last stop was the cold plunge again but I don't think any of us did. We spent some more time in the pool before we returned to the ship. We all felt very refreshed but also felt in need of a nap.

Sunday evening our ship left Reykjavik  and Monday morning we woke up  anchored in a fjord off of Isafjordur. Don't ask us to pronounce it.  It turns out that Isafjordur is a fishing village and is the worlds largest producer of medical grade fish skin. Fish skin has been found to significantly shorten the healing time after surgeries. We also visited Bolungarvik where we visited the Museum  of the fishing industry.  It basically was a group of old buildings and an old boat that was used for fishing in the time before the cumbustion engine. A young man did give an interesting and humorous brief lecture about what fishing was like back in the day. The other stop was at a small but beautiful waterfall cascading down a mountain.  Our guide had a plastic pitcher that he dipped into the stream and offered us a drink of the water.  It was cold, clear and delicious. Probably the highlight of todays excursion was the fantastic scenery we saw.

Due to technical issues beyond our understanding we are not posting pictures on the blog.  Go to Tim's Facebook page for pictures.