Where I Make Do While My Suitcase Parties In Oslo

There won’t be a separate blog for Day 17 – the transit day from Norway to Iceland, but here’s a brief summary:

Everything went perfectly, except for one tiny detail: I was in Iceland, but my suitcase was sitting in Oslo. Fortunately, IcelandAir had already located my bag and had it lined up to be on a flight to Reykjavik first thing in the morning. IcelandAir provided me with a cute little kit that included a (very nice) t-shirt, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, a razor, and a teensy weensy container of deodorant. They also gave me documentation and a brochure to place where I could rent some outerwear (all I had was the hoodie I had on). We took a cab to the address on the brochure. I rented a raincoat and gloves. I demurred on waterproof pants (anything they had would have been about 12″ too long) and hiking boots (guaranteed none of their shoes would have fit my box-shaped feet). Fortunately, I had packed a little extra clothing in the carry bag, and I had all of my prescription meds.

Now it was Thursday morning – Day 1 of the Icelandic part of our adventure. The morning’s schedule included a trip to the Blue Lagoon. I would need to rent a bathing suit, since mine was in the suitcase on its way from Oslo.

Our tour guide was the same person (Lena) who picked us up at the airport. Yesterday evening she seemed to have a rather abrupt/clipped demeanor, and her English was good, but not great. There were two buses, two tour guides, two groups. We were randomly assigned to Lena.

This morning she seemed a little more abrupt, maybe? as she gathered us up to board the bus. The bus and bus driver were different from the night before, which apparently was not planned. We also heard that someone from the other bus suddenly became sick overnight and left the tour to go home.

Lena proceeded with her tour guide duties, talking about Iceland in general – e.g. what the country was like. I found myself just staring at the scenery as we sped towards the Blue Lagoon, located not far from the international airport.

Before too long, we could see the steam of the Blue Lagoon in the distance. Apparently the name “Reykjavik” comes from “smoky harbor”, because the Vikings saw the steam from assorted geothermal sites.

The Blue Lagoon is not a natural thing – it is an artifact resulting from the building of a geothermal power plant in 1976. The “lagoon” is the runoff from the power plant. Originally, nobody wanted to bathe in this water, since it was basically waste water. But in the mid-1980s, Grímur Sæmundsen began investigating the potential healing properties of the water. The modern-day spa was opened in 1999.

When we arrived and got off the bus, Lena took off towards the spa without looking back.

Lena raced right along the entire way. When we got to the spa, she had disappeared inside the building. We all made the same mistake – we walked through the wrong line in our attempt to follow her while she arranged for our entrance.

Turns out she had left half the group behind at the bus. When they finally caught up (for once it wasn’t me!!), one guy tried to ask Lena to make sure the whole group was together before she took off. That part of the group had absolutely no idea where she had gone, and were a bit panicked. She was a bit rude and abrupt with him (something about timelines?) – but the guy was right: all she needed to do was wait another couple of minutes for the whole group to disembark the bus OR announce on the bus what we needed to do even if we didn’t see her. She had done neither, and now she had upset customers, which didn’t even seem to phase her a bit. This was going to be a long day.

She also provided no information on how I could rent a bathing suit. Fortunately, the spa’s staff was very helpful. Obtaining a suit was super easy.

We were all given green electronic bracelets, which we would use to control our lockers. I used a locker room on the main floor that didn’t require climbing a huge flight of stairs. A bunch of us in the locker room grabbed a staff member to show us how to use the bracelets – somehow the instructions posted on the walls didn’t make 100% sense.

Once suited up and in my robe (that was way too long, as expected), off to the pre-spa shower, and then to the lagoon!

Andy brought his phone to take photos.

We had a total of 2 hours at the spa, including getting ready to go into the lagoon and then getting dressed. I had to leave myself at least 30 minutes for getting dressed.

Took a minute or two to get used the lagoon – and then it felt WONDERFUL.

Our package included a drink and 3 facial masks. The first mask was a lava scrub, that took quite a bit of effort to removed. I had put my hair up in an attempt to avoid getting it wet, but the mask around the edges of my face got into my hair. Yum.

The lines for the mask started to grow, so a second window opened up. The 2nd mask was “anti-aging”, left on for up to 10 minutes.

Around this time, a staff member announced “story time”. I kept an eye on the clock – there would not be time for the 3rd mask AND story time.

The staff member told the lagoon’s origin story (see above). We had no idea the spa was barely 25 years old.

Fun story:

In the mid-2000s, the spa owners wanted to build a restaurant. But they could make no headway plowing and drilling through the lava field. Finally, it was decided to bring in an elf-whisperer, who studied the site for 3 months. She declared that the elves were seriously angry, and if they wanted to build their restaurant, they would need to do 3 things:

1. Put the plans for the restaurant on a USB flash drive.
2. Have the Prime Minister of Iceland present the USB drive to the elves, and
3. Insert the USB drive into the rock.

Amazingly enough, this was done, and then work was able to proceed! Apparently if you go into the restaurant, you can still see the USB stick in the wall! Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to see it.

As I expected, it took me about 30 minutes to take a shower (no time to wash my hair), get dressed, pay for the rental suit, and get back to the bus. I could feel my hair stiffening from the lagoon-mist residue. Blech.

Back on the bus, we headed to the hotel for the lunch break. We ate lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, where we saw Cathy and Carl, a couple we had met on board ship. We talked about our respective tour guides – their’s sounded much better than ours! We decided we would change buses. We knew that the tour guide can make or break the experience.

After lunch, we approached the second tour guide – Elin? Ellie? – and she was happy to have us on board, especially since she had lost the two people that morning to illness. Elin was all happy and light! Even the bus was better – it had USB ports for our phones! All was well with the world, but Lena didn’t seem happy we had left her. All the more reason to change.

The afternoon included a tour of Reykjavik, something called the Petran center, a ginormous Lutheran church, and an “open air museum”, though not necessarily in that order.

First up – the open air museum. It’s a collection of historic buildings from the last 100 years or so, brough from their original locations from all over Iceland to this spot.

Our local tour guide was dressed in period clothing. She walked us from building to building and explained each one. And of course I don’t remember now what she said.

The church is still used for weddings and other events.

Next up was a visit to the Perlan center – mostly for the bathroom break and the observation deck.

We didn’t have enough time for any of the interactive shows/activities, but the view was great.

Next up was an alarmingly tall Lutheran church (yet not a cathedral) called Hallgrimskirja. I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce that.

There was construction work going on inside the sanctuary. so we couldn’t sit anywhere.

Then we were on our way to the city center for the most physically challenging part of the tour – keeping up with Elin. BTW, Elin’s English was fabulous – very colloquial, and she loved to tell jokes. And randomly break into song. We kept thinking how different the day was with her as our guide instead of Lena.

She also had a tendency to take off without looking back, but somehow we always found her.

First up was city hall, with a giant 3-D map of the entire island. It was down a flight of stairs that I didn’t want to deal with, so I sat up at the top, and heard almost nothing. I think the big white patches are glaciers:

As it grew later in the day, it became harder to keep up with Elin. I focused on walking. Andy took some photos.

Amazingly enough, it barely rained the entire afternoon. Elin called it a “beautiful, warm summer day”. Not sure I’d go that far, but at least it was somewhere around 50 degrees and not pouring.

A couple of people stayed behind at the end of the tour to go to dinner. We opted to get back on the bus and go back to the hotel It did rain on us a bit on that walk, but my umbrella was good enough.

A quick photo stop of the Harpa concert hall on the drive to the hotel. Photo credit goes to Andy – I didn’t get off the bus.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant – second meal there in one day. The nearest restaurants were not interesting enough to walk to them in the rain.

And my suitcase showed up right around 7:00 p.m. YAY.

Tomorrow: The Golden Circle

Where We’re Back To Being On The Correct Side Of The Road, Don’t Have To Overthink Crossing The Street, And Get Rained On

Head’s up – there will be no blog for Day 17. Today was our last full day on the ship. Tomorrow is what I call “vomit us off the ship” day, a/k/a “disembarkation”. No matter what cruise line, on the day of disembarkation the level of efficiency getting people off the ship is just amazing. Always polite and professional, the message is still Very Clear: We’ve loved you for the last two weeks, now go home.

We woke up this morning in Norway – Bergen, to be exact. And it was pouring out with massive cloud cover. Nothing stops the excursions, though.

Our morning excursion was a little bit of a panoramic drive, followed by a cable car up to the top of Mt. Ulriken, one of the mountains surrounding the city. As we entered the cable car building, there was a surprise flight of stairs up to the cable cars (not mentioned in any description of the excursion). There was a way around it – walking up a somewhat steep ramp. I opted to climb the stairs up, as time was of the essence.

The view from the top is supposedly spectacular. This is what we saw:

We did get to enjoy a honey bun that is Bergen’s specialty.

Once we came down via the cable car, I opted to take the ramp down to the bus. Then we were back on the bus for a preview of the city. We noticed that our tour guide, though very knowledgable, seemed to be reciting from a script; she referred to her comments as her “presentations”.

Our next stop was at the Fantoft Stave Church. A stave church is a Norwegian medieval church made entirely of wood. The first iteration was built around 1150 CE. It’s been rebuilt a couple of times.

There was a “wishing stone” on the side of the church – if you held your finger there for 3 seconds and made a wish, it would come true. One guy wished for it to stop raining, and it did!

This medieval stone cross was on the church property:

Even in dreary weather, Bergen is a beautiful city.

When that tour ended, we had 45 minutes to the next one. Andy went back to the ship to grab some food and brought me back a sandwich and a cookie.

We weren’t expecting much from the second tour, since we’d already seen a bit of the city. But this tour was much more extensive. The tour bus was weird, though – there was a barrier behind the driver that blocked the front row seats on the left side from seeing out the entire front window! There was no jump seat for the tour guide so he had to sit in the good front seats. How odd.

It seemed that English was this tour guide’s first language; his shpiel was natural and flowing.

These buildings right by the harbor are a part of a UNESCO designated street.

The skies cleared and the day turned into a beautiful afternoon.

When we were back at the pier about about 4:30, I went back to the ship to begin the packing process. Andy stayed in the city to go up the funicular (Floibanen) to the top of Mount Floyen.

Our last official full day of the cruise! No missed ports! No unscheduled days at sea! It’s a miracle!

The evening was spent packing carefully – the bags had to be outside our door by 10:00 p.m., so we had to plan what was staying behind for the morning. Our scheduled departure time was 5:45 a.m. Yay.

Tomorrow: Vomit-off-the-ship (disembarkation) and transit to Reykjavik.

Where I Get To Scratch A Pony’s Head. That Is All.

The weather forecast for today was not good – on and off rain and wind. Our lucky streak of fantastic weather bit the dust.

We were scheduled for the noonish slot for the included schedule, because our originally booked schedule was canceled due to the aforementioned predicted weather. Another excursion involving a boat was also canceled.

Knowing all this, I fully intended to bring a mask to help deal with the wind. I’ve always had an issue with gusty wind – I tend to involuntarily flip into hyperventilation in the midst of all that air coming at me. Many years ago I read somewhere this is an artifact of asthma, which I have. So I really, really intended to bring a mask.

Which apparently did not happen, as it was not in my purse. The walk from the gangplank to the bus was agony. One of the port workers came over to walk with me (I think she was concerned I was about to drop, and she wasn’t wrong). I managed to choke out, “It’s a bit windy!”. She replied, “This isn’t WIND! This is just wash drying wind!”, which mad me laugh, which was actually not a good idea, since I didn’t have enough air to both laugh and walk.

Once on the bus, I was not keen to get off the bus again.

The countryside here is as beautiful as everywhere else we’ve been so far. There was one quick photo op stop – Andy did the honors.

We arrived at the main event about 15 minutes later – a Shetland Pony breeder, Carol (no idea her last name), has a few ponies in a pen by the side of the road. We got to touch them – they like head and butt scratches just like dogs do. We were explicitly told NOT to feed them, but of course I watched as one woman pulled some grass and fed it to a pony who also did not listen to the instructions. Fortunately, the pony was after the grass and not her fingers.

Carol made sure to mention that they are NOT FAT nor are they PREGNANT. The round bellies are all muscle. These are work horses, bred to pull more than twice their weight. Though they are not work horses any more. They spend their time roaming the fields and every once in a while get stuck in a pen so these strangers can scratch their heads and butts.

A few more bucolic scenes:

Once back at the ship, I made a beeline for the gangplank. Andy took the shuttle into the town of Lerwick (the size of a postage stamp), and walked around a bit.

He visited Fort Charlotte, which was built 350 years ago. I think that’s the Viking Venus in the background. My guess is that ship is on the same itinerary, but in the opposite direction (i.e. the ship just came from Bergen, Norway yesterday).

And a very pretty Scottish Episcopal Church

The Shetlands are very beautiful, but I wouldn’t want to live here.

Tomorrow: Bergen, Norway (our last full day on board ship). Looks like the weather from here on our is the direct opposite of up until now…

Where We Spend A Bit Too Much Time On The Bus Just To Have The Loch Ness Monster Be A No Show

Today’s outing was another mid-day excursion – from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. with no mention of food. This time, we brought bagels from the breakfast buffet.

Our excursion included Urquhart Castle (or what was left of it) on the shores of Loch Ness. We drove through Inverness, the largest city in the Highlands, and then through the rolling countryside.

As with many of the Viking excursions, the description wasn’t clear at all, though it mentioned an elevator at one point. It wasn’t clear until we got there.

The bus parking lot was at the street level, then we walked down to the car parking lot and the visitor center’s entrance. THEN there was an elevator down to the visitor center, where I was able to borrow a “buggy” – an electric scooter. It was adorable! The temptation to run into oblivious people ignoring my “EXCUSE ME” pleas was almost irresistible.

The buggy couldn’t take me everywhere – there were lots of steps to different sections of the castle sections. But it was good enough for me. Andy wandered over the entire site and took plentiful photos.

As with most things Scottish, it’s history is fraught with back-and-forth battles between the Scots and the English. In 1692, the English blew up the castle, so that it wouldn’t fall into Jacobite hands. Here is the link to the wikipedia page for more detailed info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urquhart_Castle

Unfortunately, but as expected, the Loch Ness Monster did not make an appearance. Loch Ness is a HUGE lake – anything could be hiding in there!

Here aer some photos of the castle:

Drove back to the ship a different way than the way we came. I noticed the driver didn’t bother with GPS – he knew exactly where he was at all times.

Another thing I noticed as we drove along, small towns and villages controlled traffic without traffic lights by using these tiny intersections where traffic briefly narrowed to one lane, forcing each direction to stop and wait until the other direction cleared.

The approach to our ship was across a narrow (and a bit harrowing) bridge:

Bridge to our ship’s pier – we were just a few feet over the water

Later in the afternoon we found out that our excursion for tomorrow in the Shetlands (a boat ride to watch for wildlife) was canceled due to a bad weather forecast. Sounds like our lucky streak of glorious weather is about done.

Our remaining choices were limited – we opted for the included “panoramic tour” (i.e. bus ride). There’s supposed to be a port shuttle that we can take into the town after we get back. However, we couldn’t seem to get an answer as to exactly where in the town the shuttle would drop us. The town is very small – not sure a shuttle is needed? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

Tomorrow: The Shetlands

Where We Had A Great Plan, But Realized It Just Wasn’t Going To Work

Yesterday’s plan for today involved leaving the morning tour at the end of the walking part, wherever and whenever that might be, and then zoom up to the Edinburgh Castle (“zoom” is a relative term here), to see if we could get in. This plan also involved the ready availability of taxis to drive us all the way back to the cruise port in Rosyth (I still can’t remember how to pronounce that), which is about 45 minutes away from Edinburgh. And, for some reason, the ship did not arrange for a shuttle from Edinburgh to Rosyth, even though there was a shuttle from Dublin to Dun Laoghaire (about the same distance).

Guest Services assured us that taxis will in fact take our fare (she’s personally done it), and that there are many cabs floating around, AND there are several “taxi ranks” (taxi stands) around the castle. The taxi issue is a non-issue.

This morning when we boarded the bus (all the male tour guides were dressed in full kilt mode, down to the little knife tucked in the right sock), our tour guide said that there were protests scheduled for later this morning (of course! We’re there, so there must be protests!). Therefore, he was flipping the itinerary – we would have our 90 minutes of free time, followed by the panoramic drive through old Edinburgh and then head out of the city, thereby avoiding the protests. As is tradition, exactly what the protesters were protesting was not clear.

We were dropped off around the corner from Edinburgh Castle, right at the beginning of the Royal Mile:

First, Andy walked up to the castle to see exactly how difficult it was. Turned out that it was do-able.

There were grandstands left over from the Edinburgh festival last week that, of course, blocked the spectacular view of the city .

It was at this point that we realized (by looking at the ticket line) that the idea of spending any time inside the castle was non-viable, especially since the castle’s website said the self-guiding tour takes at least 2 hours. Even if we did stay after the excursion, we wouldn’t have that much time – we had to get back to the ship by 4:00, which meant we’d need to start looking for a cab around 2:00 p.m.

Between the castle and the Royal Mile, that’s really all we would have been able to accomplish anyway. We still had another hour to roam the Royal Mile. Which we did – we bought some stuff, took some photos, and headed back to the bus. The concept of spending the afternoon in Edinburgh was officially toast.

Back on the bus, we drove around old Edinburgh. As is tradition, we never saw any protesters.

That was about it. We would have needed a couple/three full days to see anything more substantial. For a morning, it was fine.

Once again we had a free afternoon; Andy is doing his “long run” marathon training on the tread mill in the fitness center (doing the long run in Edinburgh was another casualty of the distance from Edinburgh and lack of shuttle).

Tomorrow: The Shetlands

Another early day, but this gives us more flexibility after the tour to roam around a bit on our own.

Andy caught this photo while we were having breakfast and we entered the harbor of Kirkwall on the biggest of the Orkney islands.

Once on the bus, our tour guide told us that we’d have 2 stops: the first, at some standing stones, and then in the town of Stenness.

You’ll notice that the countryside is treeless – the Orkneys are too windy for most trees to survive, except for one grove where the landowner took the effort to care for the trees and protect them.

Our first stop was at the Ring of Brodgar. Other than dating back about 5,000 years, not a lot is known about these stones or their function.

So, this tour was rated “easy” – meaning little or no walking, and any walking would be easy on flat surfaces. Which is exactly what the path up to the stones was *not*. It was at least a quarter mile to the stones from the bus parking lot, uphill. And then, of course, back down the hill. Fortunately it wasn’t raining, because otherwise the path would have been rather slippery. We had 30 minutes to explore on our own – I knew that by the time I got up there, it would be time to turn around and come back down.

Andy was able to grab some good photos of the stones. Not quite the same imposing sight as Stone Henge, but a still a mysterious stone ring.

Back on the bus, next up – we’re on the road to the town of Stenness, where we had some time to wander around, sample some Orkney ice cream, and shop in the local stores.

Dr John Rae – a well known Arctic explorer – came from Stenness. Here’s his statue:

We did buy a few things (shopping has been sparse this trip so far), and then it back on the bus. When we arrived back at the port, we took the shuttle into “downtown” Kirkwall and then walked over to the cathedral.

The cathedral was built starting around 1100 – it’s been in use for about 900 years! Here is more info on the cathedral’s history: https://www.stmagnus.org/visiting-the-cathedral/history/

The interior is stunning, and unique – I don’t recall seeing anything elses like it in all the cathedrals I’ve visited over all my years of travel.

And, of course, the requisition exquisite windows.

One more amazing photo – I think this is the pulpit. I could be wrong (I’m not 100% familiar with church structures).

After we left the cathedral, we wandered a bit to see if there was some shopping to be done, but, no, not really. We walked back to the shuttle stop, and took the shuttle back to the ship.

Tomorrow: Edinburgh! Spoiler alert – we found out today that for some unfathomable reason, there’s no shuttle service between Edinburgh and the port (though there was a shuttle in Dublin that was just as far to the port as Edinburgh; we can’t figure this out and are a bit annoyed). We do want to wander a bit, so after confirming that cabs will indeed take passengers from Edinburgh to Rosyth where the ship will be docked, that’s our current plan.

Where We Go On Separate Excursions In This Unbelievably Beautiful Place.

We were scheduled to be in Ullapool only a few hours – we docked at about 11:30 a.m. and all aboard time is 5:00 p.m. We were are on two different excursions: I was signed up for the included walking tour of the town, and Andy signed up for something called “Knocken Crag Hike”.

We went down to Guest Services to hopefully break some larger pound sterling notes and get some more detailed info on my walking tour. Negatory on both questions; the ship only has euros and US dollars, and there was almost no information about the walking tour other than “Walk for an hour. Have a snack”.

Good news! It is spectacularly beautiful!

Bad news! When I found my 6′ tour guide at the pier and I mentioned that I walk slowly, she said, “I’m sorry, but I have to maintain a certain pace to keep the timing with all the groups.” Ok, then. I followed the group for a couple of minutes, and then just stopped. It was ridiculous. She was loping along like a gazelle – I could see that the group was struggling to keep up with her, not just me.

The town of Ullapool is so incredibly tiny, it was super easy even for me to walk around on my own.

I found a little shop and bought some items. I knew the name of the restaurant where the group was supposed to meet to have a snack and some entertainment. Eventually I found my way there and sat on a bench in front by the water, just enjoying the view.

There was no other way in or out of the restaurant other than right in front of where I was sitting. I waited until 2:00 p.m., but I never saw any Viking group go in. I suspect that most people opted to roam the town to shop or just go directly back to the ship. So I went back to the ship and enjoyed some gelato while sitting out on the open terrace on deck 7.

Andy’s excursion was quite a bit different. It was a bit of a drive out into the countryside for a hike categorized as “demanding” called “Knocken Crag”; it was definitely categorized correctly!

The tour guide was a geologist, who explained the different rock formations along the way.

Here is a photo of the tour group following the guide down the mountain/hillside. Note the tour guide is a little old lady, who is marching down the trail as if she were walking in her own house. Note how everybody in the group is trailing behind her just a bit more tentative where they put their feet.

Once we were both back on board ship, we watched the scenery go by as the ship pulled away from the harbor.

What a glorious day!

Tomorrow: The Orkneys

Where The Universe Makes Up For Yesterday In Wales With A Spectacular Day Not Spent In Belfast At All

Today’s excursion is to the Giant’s Causeway – about 90 minutes outside Belfast along the Atlantic coast, it’s a rock formation made up of basalt columns. The logistics were a bit awkward: we had breakfast around 8:30ish (?) with a departure time of 10:15. Obviously no room in there for lunch AND the excursion description makes it clear there’s no lunch included. But there will be a visitor center, so maybe we’ll be able to grab something there.

Oh and no bathroom breaks until we got there.

We were at the pier early, so the excursion director switched us from the second bus to the first bus – at 9:45, we were off!

We didn’t get to see much of the Irish countryside at the Dublin stop. Today made up for that. How gloriously green!

Along the way, our tour guide told us the Causeway’s origin fable – a giant, one Finn MacCool, created the Causeway so he could fight his Scottish rival, one Benandonner. Of course the details escape me now, but it was a great Irish tale, for sure!

We made one photo stop at the ruins of Dunluce Castle, which may look familiar to Game of Thrones fans: it is the location of the “Seat of House Greyjoy” – the “Castle Pyke”.

At 11:30 on the dot, we drove into the parking lot. We picked up our audio guides after the obligatory trip to the bathroom, and off we went.

One of the more annoying things about the Viking excursions is the lack of actual information in the descriptions – they are way too vague. The published description failed to mention the existence of a shuttle from the visitor center down to the main Causeway. I discovered this when I called Viking to ask for more information. The Google Machine also helped – there’s a 1 pound charge for the shuttle each way, cash only (though perhaps one of the buses has a credit card reader, nobody knows).

The shuttle made all the difference! The walk down to the Causeway is long (it must be close to a mile) and very steep. I’m assuming this is the trigger for the “moderate” rating.

The Causeway is spectacular!

If you happen to have knees that work, walking and climbing on the rocks is relatively easy, because the rocks are flat like patio stones. 1868 6815

And just like any other rock formation location, there’s names for the various configurations.

It just doesn’t get old <6822>,6819

We hoped to at least grab a sandwich from the the visitor center, and maybe walk just a little bit down a different trail, but we were running out of time. The crowd had grown considerably; even though a third bus had been added, we had to wait a while for a shuttle to take us back up the hill.

By the time we were back at the visitor center, we only had about 20 minutes left before we needed to get back on the bus. It wasn’t even enough time to buy a sandwich.

The photo stop on the way back was at the Cariick-A-Rede Rope bridge. This is a BIG NOPE.

The gorgeous countryside is mesmerizing

Once we were back at the ship, Andy went to exercise, and I went up to the “Wintergarden” venue for High Tea – scones! cucumber sandwiches! Earl Grey tea!

On the feedback form, I will be recommending that Viking could at least send along a “box lunch” on excursions with zero time for a lunch break.

Tomorrow: Ullapool (Scotland Highlands)

Where Once Again I Am Thwarted By The Not-Detailed-Enough Excursion Descriptions, But Wales Is Beautiful Anyway

The vetting process for the offered excursions for Viking cruises is excruciating. First, we have to wait until the actual excursions are finalized (as opposed to the “suggested” versions). Then we have to read through the descriptions and glean as much actual information as possible, which can be virtually impossible. The descriptions are vague, and the categories (“easy”, “moderate”, “demanding”) are so general as to be meaningless. For example, the Dublin bus tour was rated “moderate” for no reason that I can see (other than the longish walk to the bathroom). Leeds Castle and Canterbury Cathedral was a true “moderate” – a bit of walking, some on cobblestones, but completely flat. And a few stairs in the castle.

Today’s excursion to the South Stack Bird Preserve was rated “moderate”. When I called Viking to get a more detailed version of the description, it sounded do-able: short walk to the visitor center, and an hour walk with a guide, followed by free time in the reserve. The walk sounded fine. It also sounded like there was other stuff to see in case it was more than I could handle.

Reality: Good news: There was zero walk to the visitor center (the bus was parked right in front of it). Bad news: The walk included 40 uneven, slippery, and steep stone steps down. The guide said the steps were designed by a man well over 6 ft tall “with 7 foot long legs”. This did not sound good at all. If I had known this, I would not have booked this excursion for myself – I would have picked the easy panoramic drive.

I opted to stay behind while Andy did the walk.

More bad news: there really wasn’t anything else to see or do. Apparently the purpose of the excursion was to do this walk down to a viewing point. This was not even remotely clear from the description.

Good news: I did manage to toddle up a steep hill where I did see some beautiful views:

Bad news: Many people had booked the excursion expecting to see puffins. Puffin season is long gone (April – July). They are all out to sea now for the winter. Andy said they hardly saw any birds at all. We did see a kestrel trying to catch some fish just before it was time to get back on the bus.

Andy had different views of the same thing I saw, but photos really don’t due the views justice:

And also an ancient (several thousand years) showing evidence of human habitation.

Of course, photos can’t really show the how stunning the views were from where Andy wa

Ah well, you win some and you lose some.

This is as close as we were going to get to a puffin:

We went back to the ship – fortunately, a relatively short drive. Andy had another excursion in the afternoon: Holyhead Trail, which is a hike through the town of Holyhead (pronounced “holly-head”).

The hike turned out to be not too exciting, but here are a few highlights.

This is the “Excalibur” – a platform used to do maintenance on the wind turbines out at sea:

The tour visited the Holyhead Fort. The fort’s walls are from Roman times.

This is the first church built in Holyhead

This church replaced that one:

While Andy was off on his walk, I ran the laundry, wrote a couple of blogs, retrieved our passports (they were collected until after Dublin), and listened to the port talk for tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Belfast {and I’m hoping the “moderate” excursion goes better.}

Where We Survive A Somewhat Tedious City Tour And Reclaim The Day With A Visit To St. Patrick’s

Our ship is docked in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Duhn Leery) – combined tender and bus commute of about an hour. Why we’re so far away, no idea, but it’s a bit of a nuisance.

As in: another early morning and rushed breakfast to get to the designated spot to get our tickets, then wait in line to board the tender to take us to the pier in Dun Laoghaire, to board the bus for a 40 minute drive to Dublin and THEN begin the tour.

Most of the time our tour guides are great. Every once in a while, we don’t. Today was the day. I don’t remember his name, but I think he was the most depressing tour guide I’ve ever heard. Basically, he divided Dublin into 2 categories:

“Old Dublin” = “GOOD”

“New Dublin” = “BAD”

For example: while we were in the center of old Dublin, he’d say: “Look up and see the beautiful old buildings, then look down at the lower part, and see nothing but ugly plastic and fast food”.

Rinse and repeat.

Neither of us took any photos during the tour. Everything just sounded so depressing.

Viking rated this excursion as “moderate”. I had asked a Viking rep why (because it was labeled as a “panoramic drive”), and they thought maybe there was a church involved with steps. As far as I can tell, the only “moderate” part of the excursion was the bathroom break. A 10 minute walk through a park in the rain in order to stand in a line (in the rain) for another 15 minutes just to get to the bathroom door. All the buses were lined up in the parking lot – there were hundreds of people in the line.

Of all the things we drove by, only St Patrick’s Cathedral was interesting. The tour bus dropped off anybody who wanted to stay in the city at the pre-arranged shuttle stop. While we were figuring out the logistics, a woman sitting next to me on the bus with her mom (Ann and Veronica) asked if they could split a cab with us to the cathedral. Of course!

It took a few minutes (and some help from a Viking person) to flag down a cab. We were at the cathedral in about 10 to 15 minutes.

Since the shuttle bus back to the ship ran every hour on the hour until 4:00, our goal was to be on the 2:00 p.m. shuttle. We bought our tickets (absolutely no queue whatsoever), picked up our audio guides, and off we went.

St. Patrick’s is just spectacular. That’s all there is to it.

Jonathan Swift, known as the author of “Gulliver’s Travelers”, was a dean of this cathedral and is buried here. Who knew?

If you are a science person, the name Richard Boyle might sound familiar – as in “Boyle’s Law”. Apparently his family was wealthy enough (his father, also Richard Boyle was 1st Earl of Cork) to erect a monument to the entire family. Richard Boyle, the “Father of Chemistry”, is the little boy in the center of the bottom row.

All four of us were done with the audio tour by 1:20. Andy grabbed this photo of the cathedral from across the street:

We figured we had plenty of time to make the 2:00 p.m. shuttle back to the ship. But grabbing a cab turned out to be harder than we thought, even with a steady stream of cabs on the street in front of the cathedral. We ended up using Uber – the car that picked us up was a taxi!

We ended up missing the 2:00 bus by just a couple of minutes. But then we had some time to sit in the beautiful afternoon. The next bus arrived at 2:30, and was filled by 2:45, so it left. We were back on the ship by something after 4:00 p.m.

Tomorrow: Holyhead, Wales