It was drizzling Tuesday morning, but we took the tender across the Thames and did a walkabout in Greenwich. We’ve been here before, but there’s lots to see that we haven’t. We skipped the Royal Observatory, the home of Greenwich Mean Time and the location of the Prime Meridien. Been there, done that. Instead after a bit of a walk including on the grounds of the Royal Naval College, we visited the College’s famous Painted Hall by Christopher Wren. We also saw the Chapel (no photos allowed). We stopped in at the Greenwich Market for a cup of hot chocolate while waiting for the College to open at 10 AM.

The Painted Hall

The Nelson Room in the Painted Hall

The Chapel (picture from the internet)

Then we visited the Cutty Sark before heading back to the ship. The collection of ship figureheads was the most interesting part. (See Elaine with the figureheads.) (See the Viking Saturn anchored right behind me on the Cutty Sark.) (We didn’t use the old latrine!) You can walk on the top deck, the under deck, the first deck, and under the ship as if it was in dry dock. And the riggings are amazing. Pretty well done.

We didn’t get very wet with the light drizzle, but it started raining heavily as we reboarded. Good timing.

Dinner on board. Final drinks. Bye-bye to our favorite bartenders and staff. Sad. But happy sad. and bed. Disembark at 8 AM. More (maybe from the Heathrow Marriott tomorrow).

Cheers.

We spent a quiet day on the North Sea under sunny skies. Reading, Eating, Drinking, Napping, Watching the Ocean, Counting Oil Rigs and Wind Farms, Chatting with friends. Really nothing to report. Here’s a couple of pictures of the sun.

Tuesday morning – 6:00 am

We are anchored on the Thames in Greenwich. You can see the Cutty Sark in the picture. Forecast – rain. Oh, well. We’ve been here many times. We’ll spend a quiet day and walk around a bit if the weather allows. We sleep on the ship tonight and head for our airport hotel tomorrow morning. Flight home to PHX is on Thursday. Be back tomorrow with a short final report from the Heathrow Marriott.

For no particular reason, here’s a picture of one of my favorite photographs posted on a wall on Saturn. Alas, the reflection from the windows on the glass take away from the beauty.

Today we are docked in Rosyth, a rather industrial port area and former naval base, about 30 minutes from Edinburgh. Oddly enough, Viking did not offer an excursion that goes into Edinburgh proper, a lovely place to visit. Having been there five or six times, we wouldn’t have taken that excursion even had it been offered. One reason for not offering an excursion there today is perhaps because it is Edinburgh Marathon Day and the city would have a slew of road closures.

Instead we picked an excursion to Linlithgow Palace and town. Alas, we finally hit a morning of heavy rain. An umbrella covered bag piper greeted as we disembarked the ship. Linlithgow Palace is a ruin – no roofs! No protection from the rain. We braved the brief foot tour of the Palace and then chose to chill in the bus rather than walk through a rainy town on Sunday morning when most everything was closed anyway. The Palace has a royal history (that will be of little interest to royal disparaging Mianne) and was home to Scottish Kings and Queens of the 15th and 16th centuries. It was the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots (Queen from the age of 6 days old). But it has been a ruin for a long time and is only very slowly getting restored. The restored chapel is a popular place for weddings. We saw what we could while getting very wet. (Find wet Elaine in her blue raincoat – twice.)

We did get to cross the Firth of Forth bridges on the way to Linlithgow. The new one is a magnificent structure, but I couldn’t get a good picture from the bus. Here’s one from the internet that shows the old bridge (which we crossed going to Linlithgow), the new one (which we crossed going back), and the railroad bridge at the top.

We were back at the ship by 12:30. Our other choice for sightseeing would have been the shuttle bus into close-by Dunfernline (which has its own abbey). It had stopped raining but the skies still looked threatening and we opted to stay aboard ship. Good move because is was pouring again later in the afternoon. Dinner tonight was in the reservations-only Manfredi’s Italian restaurant. We ate their once before earlier on the cruise. They offer a very good Italian style ribeye steak. Elaine had the blackened pork chop. Yum. We ate as we sailed out of Rosyth under the Firth of Force bridges. We also passed by Cunard Lines’ newest ship, just christened recently, the Queen Anne. It joins the QE2, the QM2 and the Victoria in Cunard’s fleet.

The sail out of Lerwick last night was under bright sunny skies. These were taken at cocktail hour as we set sail:

And on Saturday morning we anchored off Kirkwell in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. It was cool (48º) and overcast. We are in port with Ambassador Lines Ambiance. Ambassador is a new UK based cruise line with just two ships so far. The Ambiance holds 1,400 passengers to our 928. After breakfast and once anchored with the help of the port Pilot, we tendered into port and boarded our bus for our introductory tour. The tour guide told us we were actually lucky because for the past two days her tours had seen nothing but the road five feet in front of them because of thick heavy fog. So, count our blessings. We saw more than that. Lots of cows on Orkney, famous for its cheddar cheese.

First stop on our tour was at the Ring of Brodgar. Everyone knows about Stonehenge. The Ring of Brodgar is even older. There’s been limited archaeological investigations at the Ring of Brodgar, so we don’t know its age for sure. In the absence of scientific dates, our best guess is that the main ring was constructed sometime between 2600 and 2400 BC. The surrounding burial mounds and stone setting likely date from between 2500 and 1500 BC. The Ring may have been involved in ceremonies celebrating the relationship between living and past communities. It’s also been suggested that the sites in the surrounding area were used for observations of the moon from the Ring of Brodgar, though there’s scant evidence for the activities Neolithic people did at the site, or why. It’s easy to see why Orkney’s Neolithic inhabitants might have set up a ceremonial circle on this spot – surrounded by hills and lochs, the site has a truly spectacular setting. Standing in its centre gives the sense of being in a natural amphitheater. Unusually, the ring has a truly circular layout. Of the original 60 stones, 36 survive, ranging between 2.1m to 4.7m tall. The stone circle has a diameter of 104m, and is encircled by a rock-cut ditch, or henge, measuring 136m across, making it one of the largest and finest stone circles in the British isles.

Next we stopped in Stromness (formerly Hamnavoe) located on an inlet of the Scapa Flow, We had a nice walkabout before reboarding the bus back to the ship.

You’ve got to love the variety of flowers we saw growing down just one little alleyway.

Lunch was on the ship, and we left port earlier than normal at 4:00 pm. The pilot was back on board for the departure and we sailed once the last tender had been uploaded to its berth. We are winding down now. We stop in Rosyth (near Edinburgh) tomorrow, have a sea day on Monday, dock in Greenwich (near London) on Tuesday, and disembark on Wednesday.

To prove we’ve crossed the Artic Circle, we have Viking issued certificates. We have on previous cruises been to Iceland, Nuuk in Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, but those are all just below the Artic Circle.

Dinner last night was in the Restaurant. We enjoyed the meal and a nice discussion with a couple from Taiwan who sat at the next table. Pictures of the appetizers and of us. The Caesar Salad with extra anchovies was great. Like the bolo tie effect?

We arrived at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands at about 7 AM this morning. Alas, Jimmy Perez, Tosh, and Billy were not there to meet us. They are three of the characters from the BBC series “Shetland” (based on Ann Cleeves books) that we have watched for eight seasons. Season nine is in production. It’s a great series and you can stream all eight seasons. I think maybe it is available via BritBox (which you can add as an option if you have Amazon Prime). We were greeted on the dock, however. I stayed away from Elaine with that axe in hand!

Anyway, it was a dreary and cloudy morning and that’s when our panoramic tour was, so the pictures are not great. We drove through downtown Lerwick and stopped at a couple of overlooks on the island. We saw Jimmy Perez’ house and the Police Station from the show. And we stopped at a Shetland Pony farm (ranch?). Besides Shetland ponies we saw cows, sheep, and golfers grazing about. Shetland has the UK’s northernmost golf course.

After returning to the ship, we took the shuttle bus into town and had a bit of a walkabout in Lerwick. Nice town. All our meals of late have been on board Saturn, so we decided to have lunch in town. We ate at No88 Kitchen and Bar, a pleasant little cafe/bar in the center of town. We both had very good Lerwick IPA and we both had delicious (best ever?) fish and chips. There are pictures of the beer but not of the food. The fork was quicker than the shutter finger. We bought souvenirs from the nice lady at the Puffin Republic store.

Then we returned to the ship. Later in the afternoon, the skies cleared and we had beautiful sunshine. Too late, unfortunately, for the picture taking sessions of the morning. But I snapped a couple from the stateroom balcony just to show you the difference.

Great pictures as we sailed out of Lerwick.

See y’all tomorrow.

Two sea days in a row. Good practice for our scheduled fall cruise when we wil have seven consecutive sea days between Dutch Harbor, Alaska and Sapporo, Japan. There was a mixture of sun and rain today. No big deal when you are at sea. And the weather is much warmer now as well. Today it was warm enough to sit outside and read when the sun was shining. The seas remain amazingly calm. You can hardly tell you are on a ship. No waves of note. No white caps.

On sea days you eat, you drink, you read, you nap. We did all those. We also watched a National Geographic film in one of the small cinemas about Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Endeavor journey to the South Pole. They never made it. The ship got trapped in ice and eventually destroyed. Amazingly enough, everyone on board was eventually rescued after Shackleton, ship Captan Frank Worsley, and Seaman Tom Crean took an agonizingly long journey in a lifeboat through the icy seas to get to South Georgia Island and its whaling station. Meanwhile the rest of his crew (22 men) remained stranded on perilous Elephant Island. A rescue mission sailed from South Georgia and everyone was saved after well over a year trapped in the ice. Tom Crean, you may remember, was a resident of Anascual on the Dingle Peninsula. We have oft visited the South Pole Inn that he established and ran in Anascual, and we have visited his grave located nearby the inn.

The ship has other activities and entertainment as well. There is some kind of show every night, but we usually skip them. There are trivia and “name that tune” competitions. We’ve participated a few times. There is an afternoon tea every day in the Winter Garden. Tonight there is a special “fish and chips” get together in the pool area. There is a lecture or two every day on some aspect of history related to the area.

Here are some random pictures around the ship that I took today. Note our “drinks package” magnet on the wall of our stateroom. It’s magnetized, and ship walls are steel, so magnets work. The sign is supposed to go on the outside of our stateroom door, but Viking’s steel room doors are coated with some not magnetic material, so it won’t stick there very well. (Best laid plans of . . . . .) See Elaine reading?

Back tomorrow from Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. Who has watched the cable series called “Shetland”? Great show.

Our first of two consecutive sea days turned out to be bright and sunny. And, amazingly, the sea remains like a lake. After staying up until midnight, we slept in, arising at a late (for us) 8:00 am. After breakfast as usual we spent the day just relaxing here and there. I found a new book to read in the ship’s library – Stalin’s Romeo Spy. I’ll probably have to end up buying it on Amazon since it’s unlikely that I’ll finish it while on the ship.

Oslo/Norway Retrospective

Oslo is a delightful city. If they didn’t experience cold and snowy winters, it would be a wonderful place to live. It’s squeaky clean. The people are friendly. There is lots to do. The public transportation is great. Good restaurants (albeit expensive). It is pretty easy to understand why Norwegians are consistently rated amongst the happiest people in the world. Pretty much the same could be said for Bergen which has the advantage of being much smaller in size. Norwegians generally like their government despite extremely high taxes. And they don’t worry at all about health care costs as those are covered by the government.

Northern Norway is beautiful too. But the towns are much smaller and very isolated. And then there is the two months of never seeing the sun. Could you deal with that? I think it would be hard.

Now we are heading toward the British Isles. Tomorrow will be another sea day before we arrive on Friday in Lerwick on the Shetland Islands, part of the UK.

After cocktails in the Explorer Bar, we had dinner in the Open Table specialty restaurant. The concept there is that it is a fixed menu, no choices, based on a different theme each night. Reservations required. Our friends, Jim and Theresa, had reservations as well, but at a different time. We went together in their time slot, and the maître d’ arranged a table of four for us. The theme tonight was Korean.

Internet is very bad right now. See you tomorrow.

First off as I begin the 556th post on this blog, thank you all for reading and viewing everything we post. And thank you all for the comments. We read every one, but we don’t respond unless there is a question to be answered or something to be corrected. There have been 1,789 comments in all. Those numbers do not include posts and comments from our old travel blog which was discontinued in 2013 (but which remains on-line for posterity here).

We arrived in Honningsvåg at around 8:00 am this morning under partly cloudy skies and very cool temperatures. The highs for the day ended up being in the mid-30’s. After our usual nice breakfast in the World Cafe, we headed out into the cold for our bus trip from Honningsvåg to the Nordkapp (the North Cape). It was about a 45-minute ride. It was difficult to take pictures from the bus window because a) it was cramped quarters and b) the reflections from the windows. I managed one. we saw lots of reindeers grazing in the cold. The reindeer are owned by local Sámi farmers.

71º 10′ 21″

Then we arrived at Nordkapp. Now taking pictures was hard because it was freezing outside. But we persevered. Fantastic views. Latitude 71º 10′ 21″ – billed as the northernmost point in all of Europe. Actually it isn’t, because a small sliver of a peninsula that you can see from Nordkapp is actually slightly further north, but it can only be reached by a nine-hour hike. So 71º 10′ 21″ is the northernmost point in Europe that you can drive to and you can actually see the actual northernmost point. For two months a year the sun never sets here (including tonight). For two months a year the sun never rises. I suspect there are less tourists here then. The views from the cliffs are stunning.

In 1943, the Battle of the North Cape was fought in the Arctic Ocean off this cape, where the German battleship Scharnhorst was eventually sunk by gunfire from the British battleship HMS Duke of York and torpedoes from the Norwegian destroyer HNoMS Stord, and other ships of the British Navy.

The steep mountain cliff rises 307 meters above the Arctic Ocean, and marks the end point of the European continent. Nordkapphallen, the visitor center, has a rich variety of sights including a panoramic film that takes you on a journey through four seasons in a landscape full of contrasts, light and breathtaking scenery. There are dioramas of local birds that look pretty real. At the top level of the building center you will find a restaurant with stunning views of mountain plateau and endless ocean, a coffee shop and a bar. There is a chapel, a cave of lights (that wasn’t working properly), and a small Thai museum. (Weird?) And of course there is the obligatory (huge) gift shop. It’s quite a mélange.

The Globe Monument stands almost at the edge of the clifftop, this iconic sculpture has become a symbol of the North Cape and is one of the most photographed spots in Norway. See cold Elaine?

Then there is the Children of the World Monument. The sculpture features seven bronze discs based on clay reliefs made by seven children from different countries, symbolizing friendship, hope, joy, and working together. See me in the pictures – twice actually, one not very obvious?

Then it was back to the ship to warm up, rest up, drink up, and eat up. Tomorrow we leave Norway and will spend the next two days traversing the Barents Sea as we head to the Shetland Islands. So far the ocean has been like a lake. You’d hardly know you were sailing. We’ll see if that continues. Here are some pictures taken back at the dock. As we ate lunch the huge MSC Preziosa (3,500 passengers) docked next to us. Glad they all weren’t converging at the North Cape site when we were there. (See the avalanche/rockslide fences on the hillside?)

While shoving of at 6:00 pm to head to our next port, we met Jim and Theresa (from North Carolina) for drinks and then dinner and then after dinner drinks. As we dined, we passed by the North Cape (with the globe) that we had visited earlier in the day. It’s way up there on that cliff!

The Midnight Sun

This cruise is titled “Into the Midnight Sun”. So last night we stayed awake until midnight. Here is the picture from our room at the stroke of midnight. That’s the low point of the sun for the day and it will start rising again as we go to sleep. I’m not sure if that’s a ship way out there in the distance or an oil rig.

Be back tomorrow for the first of two consecutive sea days.