We arrived early in Reykjavik, and we docked at the pier before we woke up. Our excursion today was meeting to leave at 10:45 a.m. so there was no reason to neither hurry nor get up early. Breakfast to the room again: croissants, rolls, muffins, juice, coffee and tea. Not an exciting start to the day, but tasty and easy. It is nice to have it preordered the night before for delivery to the room. Reykjavik proper has a population of 115,000. The entire country h...

Philip and I did not have a shore excursion planned for today. We originally planned one, but it was full by the time we tried to book it. We decided to spend the day just visiting the town of Isafjördur where we docked. Turned out to be a good plan as the town was charming. We visited the maritime history museum first. Although we had not changed any money for Icelandic krónur, we had no trouble using Euros everywhere we went including admission at t...

Last night during our passage from Lerwick to Akureyri, the ship crossed the Arctic Circle. This is the first time that we have been that far north so I stayed up watching the ship's position on the TV screen. We passed the latitude of 66° 33′ 44″ north by just a bit. It was still light outside last night even though it is a month passed the summer solstice. We took a full day excursion today including stops at Godafoss (the Waterfall of the Go...

Second full "at sea" day. Second trip to the spa. We started the day with breakfast in the dining room. There are two dining rooms on the ship, but it looks like we will always be in the La Bussola Dining Room. It is where we are assigned for dinner, and so far, it has been the only one open for lunch and breakfast. The other one says it is for overflow, but I did see people going in there for dinner. Before leaving home, Philip and I decided that we would be ...

It has been almost thirty years since Philip and I last visited Scotland, and we have never been to the Shetland Islands before. We booked a shore excursion to Jarlshof with a shopping stop in a small village with two wool shops and a sightseeing drive around the town of Lerwick. Arriving by tender to the city pier, we see lots of Welcome to Shetland signs, but nothing about Scotland. The people here think of themselves as Shetlanders, not as Scots. There are m...