Cruise Day 10 - Lofoten Islands

We were late into our port today because the ship’s pilot that Princess hired at Tromso was not certified to take our ship on the southern route, so we had to backtrack over 80 miles which added 4 hours to our travel time.  So the Shore Excursion staff had to scramble since we arrived at Lofoten Islands at 1pm rather that 9am.  The Captain decided to stay at Lofoten for the scheduled 9 hours so we did not depart until 10 pm. To make matters easier, they moved all excursions back by 5 hours so our excursion had to meet by 6pm and was not scheduled back until 8:30 pm. As you can understand, that made eating dinner a bit of a challenge. 

On a positive front, the delayed arrival did let the staff add a Zumba class in the morning and a few other activities like Lawn Bowling (I came in second out of 10).  We did enjoy seeing the mountains as we sailed in.  But having seen mountains like these for many days now , our picture taking was limited. After lunch, Mary and I used our Elite privilege to tender to the shore with no waiting.  But it was rainy and not much to see so we came back to the ship fairly quickly.  

After a light supper at the grill we headed out on our excursion.  Our excursion was a bus tour around a couple of the islands stopping at a small fishing village, then at two white sand beaches.  At first we were worried about getting back to the ship in the dark DUH!  (See post abut the Midnight Sun).  The scenery was beautiful with mountains soaring above the sea but the beaches, while quite nice, were not as impressive as those in our Great Lakes state.  After returning, we went to the buffet for a quick pasta snack and dessert.

Tomorrow is a Sea Day so we can rest up and participate in a few shipboard activities.