When Suzi and I first visited Iceland more than half a century ago there were no trees. It was heathland. Not barren, just treeless. Icelanders told us that in the 9th century, when settlers first arrived, the island had about … Continue reading The Mother of All Parliaments. Þingvellir, Iceland
We made it to Paamuit, Greenland, but in Ringo’s words, “It don’t come easy.” In past posts you got the story of our encounters with ice, hurricane force winds and 23 foot seas, our cancelation of one port and reordering … Continue reading It Don’t Come Easy, Paamiut, Greenland
…toil and trouble. Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble. Hveragerdi Village has been an exurb of Reykjavik since the late 1920s. It’s close to thermal springs and it became home for people who did not need to go into the capital … Continue reading Bubble, Bubble…
Last night all the elevators homed in on the lower promenade deck, deck three. They do that when the ship lists more than 5 degrees. Then Captain Paul Adams came on the PA system. We were watching the film “Wicked,” … Continue reading Course Correction
…and drinking Krap. Okey, most people call it the swimming in the Blue Lagoon but it reality they are swimming in the wastewater from a power plant. And Krap? That’s the name of Iceland’s favorite blueberry slushy sold at the … Continue reading Swimming in Power Plant Effluent…
8:00 Wednesday morning, our second day in Reykjavik, the PA chimes ring. Captain Paul Adams comes on. Our string of luck with the weather is about to run out. A North Atlantic low will create high winds, heavy seas and … Continue reading Plans Change, The Party Continues.
This was the type of shore day I’ve been waiting for. Get off the ship, wander for a few hours, and get back on, take a nap. Nothing special, nothing extraordinary to process afterwards (Although I love it when that … Continue reading A Normal Shore Day, Isafjordur
Saturday night Volendam had its sock hop. We danced to ‘50s and ‘60s music, so you can’t really blame me for humming that ridiculous old Bobby Darin tune all Sunday morning while visiting the Forest Lagoon, a geothermal mineral bath … Continue reading Splish Splash
Djupivogur, Iceland has decided to slow down. Its four hundred residents have opted to join the Cittaslow movement. Cittaslow started in Italy and grew out of the slow food movement. Membership is open to towns of under 50,000. The goals … Continue reading Tankurinn, It’s not what you may think.
Between our visit to Kamoyvaer fishing village and our return to Honningsvåg the weather cleared up unexpectedly, there was no fog and no wind. It was the perfect day to visit North Cape. North Cape (or Nord Cap) is branded … Continue reading This is the Donut Hole
Kamoyvaer is the type of town I love to drop an FM translator into. A translator is a low powered FM repeater. I’ve put them into small fishing towns along the Alaska Panhandle. Kamoyvaer fits the profile, in this case … Continue reading East of the Sun and West of the Moon
It was like we were in Tromsø on two different days. The night before this first call north of the Arctic Circle at latitude 69o the forecast called for temps in the 30s and a “wintery mix” of rain and … Continue reading St. Olaf vs. the Trolls
The click of a padlock and we are locked out. We were visiting the Sverresborg Trondelag Folk Museum, a open air museum with buildings collected from all over the region and assembled in a folk park. I particularly wanted to … Continue reading The Norski Elvis
The Lewis Chessmen may be the perfect icon for this portion of our voyage. The Chessmen were discovered on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. They were carved from walrus ivory from Greenland, probably transited through … Continue reading Ravenheart
Eidfjord sits at the end of Hardangerfjord, a deep (more than 2800 feet) and long (111 miles) fjord extending inland from the Norwegian sea. At the head of the fjord is the Hardanger plateau and the Hardangervidda National Park. The … Continue reading Hardanger Fjord
St. Giles Cathedral, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, is ironic in several ways. First off, I find the idea of a Presbyterian Cathedral, Presbyterians have no bishops, to be almost oxymoronic. But what I really find funny is the stained … Continue reading Reformation and Art, St. Giles Cathedral
I had never been to Edinburgh on a nice day. Every time I’ve been here the skies were gray, or it was raining. The gray skies, the brownstone buildings, and the Sir Walter Scott Monument, a gothic tower blackened by … Continue reading Auld Reekie
First, “Firth of Forth” is not easy to type. Autocorrect helpfully suggests “first of four.” Firth is only sort of an English word, mostly Scottish, deriving from the Norse. It has the same root as “fjord.” The Firth of Forth … Continue reading Firth of Forth
While I mostly write about ports and port experiences, on this sea day I write about some of the social events on the ship. Today we have our third block party, where we all go into the hallway, the staff … Continue reading Sea Day Catch Up.
May 4th and 5th are big days in The Netherlands. On May 5, three days before VE Day, the end of the Second World War in Europe, the German commander in the Netherlands signed an instrument of surrender with the … Continue reading Freedom in Haarlem!
Ghent has three large churches almost in a row. Each one of them is grand enough to be a cathedral, but two are parish churches that look like cathedrals. Gothic Ghent had the mega church figured out before the U.S. … Continue reading St. Nicholas Church, Ghent
The Holland America tour of Ghent may have been the best organized ship tour I have been on. On each bus seat we found a map of Ghent and a card with an emergency number to call in case we … Continue reading Ghent
In an earlier post I talked about “ship days.” Days that we are in a port but choose not to go ashore. This last couple of weeks has been intensive. As I write this leaving the Netherlands we have had … Continue reading Ship Day, Shore Day, Cherbourg
Asterix and Obelix are French comic book characters, Celts, who resisted Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. When I was reading these comics to my kids, I assumed that the Celts in Brittany, a peninsula at the western edge of France, were … Continue reading Celtic France, Brest