New York City

Our cruise ended at a dock in Brooklyn, New York. One advantage of this location is that we sailed past the Statue of Liberty! Mary snapped this photo from our balcony well before sunrise as we entered the New York harbor.

After breakfast she took this nice photo of the Manhattan skyline, featuring the new World Trade Center building that reached 1776' at the top of its mast.  Lastly, as we approached Detroit Metro airport we overflew it and she took this photo of the airport.

So now we are home and getting back into our normal routine... until our next adventure. 

Cruise Endings

It starts when you notice the pill bottles starting to get a bit empty.  Next you get a note from the ship about disembarkation instructions (when and where to meet to get off the ship).  But it really hits home that the cruise is over when the protective mat shows up on your bed so you have a place to put your suitcases when packing.  That happened today.  So now we're spending the afternoon making sure all our stuff fits in our luggage.  We always leave some room when packing before the trip but we always come back with more than we left with, in this case a new sweater for me and embroidered sweatshirt for Mary along with a few souvenirs. 

We enjoyed a British Pub Lunch today, fish and chips for both of us, followed by a Princess special dessert buffet when the pastry team shows off their masterpieces. Here are two of them. It was hard to decide what to select.  I had hazelnut cake ands tiramisu while Mary had pavlova.  YUM!

And what more fitting picture can there be to end a cruise than this one:

Halifax and Peggy's Cove

This afternoon we took an interesting bus ride to Peggy's Cove which, unfortunately, was experiencing a lot of fog as you can see in these pictures.  It is a quant fishing village, but has the most photographed lighthouse in Canada as well as this famous fishing village scene.  Our tour guide was excellent and told lots of stories about Halifax and its history, including how it housed 12,000 stranded passengers when US airspace was closed after the event os 9/11/2001. 

It was kind of sad to realize this was our last sail-away, as New York City awaits after one more day at sea.  But all good things need to end and this has been one very good vacation. 

HMCS Sackville

While walking around the Halifax waterfront this morning we came across the Canadian Corvette Sackville.  This class of ship is the same size as PC 462 that my father served on in the Pacific  in WWII.  What a thrill it was to come across this ship!!   It was exciting to board her and take pictures.  I can't wait to show them to my dad next weekend.  

These ships are anti-submarine escorts which the Canadians used to escort convoys from Halifax to Iceland, where the British took over for the run to England.  My dad's ship did convoy escort duty in the Pacific and was involved in the battles of Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. 

Welcome to Halifax!

After 6 days and 2 hours at sea, we finally arrived at a port - Halifax, Nova Scotia. We were quite surprised to be greeted by a bagpiper and drummer!  They played 4 numbers while the ship was docking.  We docked after dark so we are not getting off the ship tonight, but waiting until morning to enter Canada. 

Mary and I enjoyed seeing Mama Mia this morning on the big "Movies Under the Stars" screen on the ship's open deck; the sunshine felt good and we enjoyed the movie even after seeing it many times. In the afternoon I played bridge while Mary enjoyed the sunshine on our balcony. We had a late afternoon snack so we could watch the ship enter Halifax Harbor, and then had a later supper.

Tomorrow we walk around Halifax in the morning then take a tour to Peggy's Cove in the afternoon. 

Finally some Sunshine!

We continue to enjoy relaxing on board and have settled into a regular sea day routine.  It warmed up today into the 60's and was sunny, so some people were actually out on deck (or balconies) enjoying the sunshine.  It was nice to see people in lounge chairs by the pool, and quite a change from the cold temperatures we've had before today; rumors say it might reach 70 tomorrow!  

Our main activities today were a lecture about Halifax in the morning, playing bridge in the afternoon, and enjoying an excellent lobster and prawns dinner with Floating Islands for dessert, followed by the last production show this evening, Caribbean Caliente.  Also, being a clear, sunny day this was our first chance to get good sunset pictures. Too many clouds before this or the timing did not work with our other activities.  

Halifax Tomorrow!  

Membership has it's privileges...

Mary and I are taking advantage of our new Elite member benefits on this cruise. Besides carrying the prestigious black card around and in addition to each of us receiving some free internet minutes, we have enjoyed the following:

• On both formal nights we've ordered deluxe canapes in our cabin. Salmon, caviar, etc. 
• We enjoyed a 10% discount on several on-board purchases
• We had a bag of laundry done for us at no charge
• Special priority line at Guest Services
• Today we're having afternoon tea delivered to our room.  I did not realize how much food was involved so we ate some, but are saving the cookies for tonight. 
• Free minibar in our room (not that we drink any hard liquor) but the two bottle of beer have been enjoyed
• "No Wait" tender service - Instead of having to get a tender ticket and queue up for an available tender, just go to the departure location and get on the next tender.

Membership does have it's privileges...  8-)

Cruise Map

Mary captured this screen shot off the TV to show where we are on our voyage and I thought it would be interesting to share it with you.  It shows where we started, headed to Norway and the Shetland Islands, followed by Iceland. We are now nearly to Canada (next 2 yellow dots) then on to New York (off the picture).

Sea Day #3

This is our first cruise with so many consecutive sea days.  We are enjoying these days with on-board activities, various presentations, and book reading.  I am especially enjoying playing bridge on consecutive days.  

It would be nice to be out on deck, but due to being so cold the deck chairs are quite unused as you can see in this picture.  We have seen a couple of hardy individuals in the pools, but the Jacuzzi's seem a LOT more popular. 8-)  But that did not stop Bill from doing a putting challenge in the windy desk 18 (highest passenger point on the ship)

Mary went to a tour of the theater which included a talk by some of the singers and dancers, and a tour of the backstage area.  Amazing what goes into these production shows.

The Buffet featured German food this evening so we ate there rather than the main dining room.  It was delicious! Here's my plate, loaded with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut, and a picture of the German desserts, including Black Forest Torte.

We had an announcement from the captain earlier this evening that we have to skip the port of St Johns, Newfoundland due to weather -  apparently there's a storm moving into the area so docking would be a safety concern.  We are now scheduled to arrive at Halifax Friday evening and will stay overnight and all day Saturday. So instead of four days at sea, we get six consecutive days.  

Quiet Sea Day as we head for Canada

We had quite a bit of commotion in our hallway last night.  A water pipe broke just down the hall, flooding about 9 rooms!  We had all kinds of people on our hallway, containing and repairing the pipe and also carrying buckets of water to be dumped.  We're not sure where the passengers were taken for the night as the ship is entirely full. Today they replaced all the carpeting and have been busy drying the rooms.  It appears like the rooms are back occupied as of this evening.  We were amazed that they had rolls of carpeting available, while here we are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!  

As to pictures today, I am featuring the Horizon Buffet.  We have breakfast and lunch here - and sometimes supper if the dining room menu does not appeal to us.  

Mary attended a Chocolate Journeys demonstration today. Chocolate Journeys is Princess' latest food feature.  We've had their specials for dessert in the dining room twice and they were delicious! 

Restful Sea Day

We woke up this morning to very calm seas - so calm that both Mary and I thought we must be docked, but we were not, since it's still three days until our next port. I snapped his picture of the ocean just after sunrise.  We had a fairly quiet day today, with me going to Zumba followed by both of us going to a presentation by the ship's astronomer about seeing stars and other objects in the night sky from cruise ships. After lunch I had a good time playing bridge while Mary enjoyed some sunshine on the balcony - it was actually warm enough for her to read and catch some rays. 

Tonight was the second formal night, and dinner was followed by the Captain's Circle party.  I enjoyed a Lobster dinner while Mary had Duck a la L'orange and we both had a delicious Chocolate Journeys dessert with a mixture of caramel and various type of chocolate.  

Later tonight is our last chance to see the Northern Lights so we'll be out on deck for this possible sighting. 

Golden Circle Tour of Reykjavik

Today we took an all-day tour of sights around Reykjavik called the Circle Tour, visiting all the major tourist attractions around this interesting city.  The tour started with a geothermal plant that uses lava-heated water to 350 C to first spin a turbine to generate electricity, then to heat water for heat the building and homes in the city.  

Second was a dual purpose stop - seeing a geyser and having lunch.  This geyser spouts every few minutes and after two small eruptions, it came through with a couple of larger ones that went far into the air. We had a very nice lunch with spinach soup followed by salmon, fish cake, potatoes and vegetables, with a cream puff for dessert.  

The afternoon consisted of stops at a magnificent waterfall named Gullfoss which stands for Golden Falls.  As you can see, it is a very fast flowing double waterfall.  We spent quite some time here looking at the falls from several viewing platforms. 

Our last stop was very geologically intriguing to me.  The tour called it Thingvellir and told us about how the ancient Vikings had an annual meeting here to establish laws and judge disputes.  But what fascinated me is that this is the place where the American and European geological plates move apart from each other at a rate of 2 cm/year.  We walked down a path where the Teutonic plates are moving apart as you can see from this picture. 

And now after having been north of the Arctic Circle, we've left Iceland and will experience our first trans-Atlantic crossing, as we heard to our next destination, Canada.

Once More to See the Great Northern Lights....

Today we crossed the Arctic Circle and headed to a Stargazing program at 10:00 tonight where the ship's crew was supposed to turn off the lights on the top of the ship for better nighttime viewing. 

We did not expect to see much due to cloud cover and some light rain.  The lights went off for a few minutes, but came back on right before the Northern Lights appeared.  It was quite amazing to see them and I captured a few photographs.  It was interesting that they did not show up on the camera screen but they did when looking at the picture.   I tried to video them, but they did not show up. 

So here, for your viewing pleasure are some rather amateurish pictures of the Northern Lights:

How do you pronounce the town we visited?

Today we visited Isafjordur, a town in northwest Iceland. It is the third largest town outside of the Reykjavik area but to put that in perspective, the entire peninsula has a population of only 7,000.  We walked around the town a bit before our excursion, but there was not much to see. 

We took a boat ride to Vigur Island this afternoon, a private island with a small sheep farm, but it is famous for Puffin nests and Eider ducks.  This island is too far from the coast for mink or fox' to swim so it is predator free for these two animals.  Each summer some 60,000 - 90,000 Puffin come here to nest, digging nests with small openings but go 4-5' deep. But they leave in mid-August so we did not see any today.  A few Eider ducks remained on the island after nesting.  The farmer collects down from their nests weekly until their eggs hatch. They built these openings in the wall for the ducks to provide shelter from bird attacks. The down, once cleaned, is amazingly light!  We held a large ball of it and it  was so light it felt like you were lifting air.  

The mountains around this fjord are incredible.  Click the picture on the right to enlarge it. Along the bottom is a road and those are 50' telephone poles and single story buildings. You might be able to spot a car on the road as well to give perspective to how tall the mountains are. 

Flora, Falls, Fjords, Food, and Fish

Our afternoon excursion in Akureryi took us to the local Botanical Gardens for a very pleasant 20 minutes stroll. Amazing that in a place of cold climate the flowers could grow so well.  We then rode to Godafoss Falls, which was very impressive to have that much water going over it this late in the year.  I can only imagine how much more there would be during the spring runoff. 

After returning to the ship, we were entertained by a narration as we exited the long fjord.   Here are a couple of pictures taken as we headed north toward the Arctic Circle.

Next the food:  It was surf and turf night in the dining room! Check our my plate here with a filet and jumbo shrimp.  YUM!  We were surprised at lunch by having Mary's all time favorite dessert: Floating Islands, a meringue confection with hot custard sauce, YUM again!

After getting back to our room we were watching the sun set from our balcony as we sailed out of the fjord.  Mary said "It would be just perfect to see a whale right now".  Maybe 5 seconds later a whale surfaced right in front of  us, not 50' from our balcony!!  As we sailed on and pulled away we could see several other small whales surface, blow, and dive.  What a great and very unexpected sighting! 

Akureyrl Shopping Trip

Third trip to Europe, third new sweater.  This one is from Iceland with the traditional Icelandic pattern around the neck. I was also very happy to buy the wool stocking cap, as my Aussie hat kept blowing off in the high winds unless I kept my hand on it.  So now I am all equipped for a cold Michigan winter. 

While shopping (and stopping at a bakery for a treat) we ran into a couple of trolls who agreed to have their picture taken.  Sure glad they those polar bears with them were tame!  

Now that we've complete our morning shopping and had lunch, we are ready for our afternoon excursion to Godafoss Falls and the Botanical Gardens.