We were blessed with good weather again today.  We had a 5 ½ hour tour called Picture Perfect Iceland which departed the ship at 7:30 am and returned at 12:30 – the all aboard time before the ship departs for our next port of call.  We got up at 6, had room service deliver breakfast and were in the Showroom at Sea by 7:10 to await the call to board our bus.

The title of the tour says it all.  We were driven around the Reykjanes Peninsula with photo stops at various scenic or interesting places.  Our guide was a professional photographer and would answer any questions we wanted to ask.  Most people, like me, just wanted to see the sights and take pics.  I am not sure the fellow answered more than two ‘photography’ questions all day.

So….again, I have a blog loaded with photos.  I am burning up my internet time very quickly and will probably have to buy more before the cruise is over.  I will live with that though as we don’t gamble, don’t drink, and don’t shop so we don’t spend very much money once we get aboard.

John and I found the first stop of the tour very interesting because we remember the teams on The Amazing Race having a challenge here.  It was not at all a pretty place, and it stunk to high heaven but it was neat to go there after seeing it on TV.  With all the traveling we have been doing lately usually it is us saying we have been there to someplace we see on TV or in a movie.  A bit different to experience the opposite.

We stopped at fish drying racks.  Lots of them – with thousands of fish carcasses hanging out in the sun to dry.  After the fillets are removed the rest of the fish – head and skeleton – are hung on pole racks and left to dry in the sun.  Iceland exports 22 tons of dried fish skeletons each year.  They are sent to Africa where people boil them into a soup and to Italy where people make them into a type of starch.  It was wise of the tour company to take us to the smelly, somewhat disgusting stop first because then all the rest of the nice and interesting places we saw blotted out the memory and the smell of this first one.

We stopped briefly at a viewpoint overlooking the coast and backed by colourful hills.  Very pretty place.

Our next stop was at some thermal pools – just like a mini-Yellowstone.  The guide warned us to stay on the boardwalk and stay on the paths because the ground may look solid around the open pools but it is likely not and the temperature of the water and mud is 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit).  “We don’t want to take you back to the ship medium rare or well done,” he said.  (And, as usual, with a rule, the EFM – Except For Me – contingent couldn’t resist and there were footprints in the mud near one of the mud pools). Just as I experienced in Yellowstone it was very hard to leave because there are so many colours, textures, patterns and shapes at thermal pools.  I was good though and I got back on the bus at the correct time.

The fourth stop was at a lava field.  Now we had driven through lava fields most of the day yesterday and again this morning – The island of Iceland is, after all is said and done, a lava field – but what made this one different was the moss.  All the lava rocks were covered with a thick, soft, grey moss.  It stays grey until it gets rained on and then it turns green in minutes.  The moss just grows over the irregular heaps of lava rock and gives them a bumpy sort of cushion appearance.

We drove through a commercial fishing community and past one of Iceland’s few remaining little fishing villages (the large commercial vessels are ending the old ways).  We didn’t stop but were able to get some shots from the bus.

One of many geo-thermal plants to harness the steam for electricty.

(I apologize for the quality of a lot of my photos lately. The focus ring on my wide-angle lens has jammed and will not move, therefore will not focus.  I am having to take all my photos with my zoom lens and it does not focus well from a moving bus.)

Next we took a gravel road down to Reykjanesviti Lighthouse (I sincerely hope you are pronouncing all these places correctly while you read this – I wouldn’t even attempt it.) The lighthouse was originally built on the coast but the coast kept falling into the sea so they moved it inland and built a tall mound to put it on.  Nearby is a cliff-face with lots of large rocks that the sea birds roost on.  There was a huge, high cliff that I really wanted to climb but there was not enough time.

I wish there had been time to climb up this hill.

The Great Auk, now extinct, lived and nested in the North Atlantic. They were a large, flightless bird – basically the original ‘penguin’ – that was hunted for their meat but the biggest destruction was done when it was discovered that Auk feathers made great mattress stuffing.  The mass killing almost wiped them out but for a few hundred that nested on one of the gigantic rocks off shore at this site.  However during one of the many fissure eruptions the rock collapsed into the water leaving about 3-4 pairs.  In 1844 some Danish taxidermists bribed a local farmer with huge money to row out to the islet and kill the last ones so they could stuff them for posterity.  Thus ended the existence of the Great Auk. There is a larger-than-life-size sculpture of a Great Auk at the cliff edge.

And last but not least we went to the famous Blue Lagoon.  The ship offered many different tours to the Lagoon so you could bathe in the warm healing waters.  The Blue Lagoon has become the iconic Iceland tourist trap. Locals used to go there often but very few of them do anymore.  The pools are not natural; they are the waste bi-product of a nearby geo-thermal plant.  All of Iceland’s electricity is produced from geo-thermal energy.  All of their homes are heated with hot water piped throughout the city and towns from thermal bore holes.  There are over 360 heated swimming pools in the country as well.  They have 80% clean energy. The only ‘dirty’ energy is from the aluminum smelting plants and the automobiles and buses.

The Blue Lagoon was just a popular relaxation area but it was discovered that the warm volcanic mud had healing properties for skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema.  Now thousands of people come from all over the world to slather on the mud and soak in the warm water.  There is a medical center nearby that treats skin ailments.  Both of our tour guides poo-pooed the place now. We didn’t go inside to see the people bathing but we did walk all around the outdoor pools. The blue color comes from the silica in the water that is left after geo-thermal electricity production.

Unfortunately, since both of our tours took us outside the city we did not have an opportunity to go into town and see the sights of Reykjavik.  This is a common problem we face on cruises – too many things to see and limited time and opportunities to see them all.  We have learned to choose the things we want to see the most and not fret over the things we can’t do, but it does make us want to return and check out all the things we missed.

What a difference a day makes!

During the night (Saturday to Sunday) we entered the Denmark Strait which is notorious for bad weather and rough water.  By the time we woke the ship was sailing through high waves and winds of 46 knots.  All accesses to the promenade deck were roped off.

John and I, fortunately, are not bothered by rough weather but navigating around the ship became a bit hazardous with all the wave action so we spent most of the day in our cabin – emerging for lunch, long enough to do a load of laundry, and dinner; our third formal night

We have met quite a few new friends on the cruise.  Our table in the dining room is open seating – meaning no fixed table at no fixed time.  Before we boarded the dining room manager had made a reservation for us for the first three nights at 5 pm at Table 134 – a round table for 8, not beside a window but next to the tables beside the window so we still had a good view.  Meghan told us that if we liked the table at the end of the three days to let him know and he would book it for us for the duration of the voyage; which pretty much gave us fixed seating.  We had a few different couples join us the next few nights, but over the course of the week we have become a regular eight; John and I, Bob and Barbara from Florida, Jim and Lynn from Victoria, and Lois and Sheila from Seattle.  Sheila and Lois had made no dinner reservations but were seated at our table the second and third nights and then tried for the next three nights to get back.  Last night they were brought to the table and happily announced that they were joining us from now on.  We have a blast every evening.

Due to the strong winds and high seas all day the Captain had to go slower than was required if we were to make it to Reykjavik by our scheduled 8am Monday morning.  Unless things calm down a lot overnight so he can speed up considerably we will be late arriving – possibly as late as noon.  This may put paid to our 8:15 am, 8-hour tour in a 4X4 on the glacier and into the ice cave.  I hope not.  I am looking forward to that one.  We may still be able to do it by switching the lunch stop for a dinner stop since the sun doesn’t set until 10:20 pm.

We saw a note in our mail slot when we left for the dining room at 5 o’clock.  Our tour is on for tomorrow with the full itinerary. Whatever time we dock is when we head off on tour.  Yay!  And the weather is supposed to be not too bad – partly cloudy and 12C (54F).

We woke Monday morning as we sailed into Reykjavik under blue sky.  And it was 8 am.  Once we had cleared the storm last night the captain poured the coal to it and made up a lot of our lost time.  We were told to go out to the parking lot at 9:30 and wait for our bus.  It arrived at 10:30 (many of the buses were late and there were a lot of very unhappy people. Turns out – rumour has it anyway – the shore excursions desk did not inform the tour company until we were docked that we would be arriving almost on schedule so many of the drivers had to go get their buses and guides and hotfoot it to the cruise terminal. There will be several letters of complaint sent to HAL in Seattle I am sure).

We boarded our bus and headed out of the city.  Iceland has a population of 300,000 – 2/3 of whom live in the greater Reykjavik area (the actual city boundary population is 100,000 but the same amount again live in the suburban sprawl.)  Iceland is 80% uninhabitable – all under ice or volcanic rock – and everyone lives along the coastline.  And since they have lots of coast they just spread out at will.  Tourism has recently become the number one money earner, followed by fishing and aluminum smelting; which is quite controversial because it does not employ many people, all the bauxite is shipped from Australia and Jamaica to be melted down and turned into aluminum in Iceland because the energy is so inexpensive here.  Then the ingots are shipped out to USA, Japan and Europe.  Icelanders are VERY proud of their clean environment and many are not pleased that foreign companies are benefiting from the country’s natural thermal power to produce a product that employs few people and puts pollution into the air.

Icelandic Horses – the only 5 gaited horse in the world.Our first stop was at Thingvellir National Park.  Here the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate are slowly separating – which will split Iceland in half in about 15 million years. The plates are spreading apart and separating by 2cm per year.  It was very easy to see where the earth is splitting.

It took almost three hours to drive into the Highlands and through the lava rock desert to arrive at the base of Uxahryggir Glacier.  We only had to wait 15 minutes or so for our pre-arranged entrance time into the ice cave.  The cave is man-made; actually carved out of the glacier by two farm tractors with sandstone tunneling drills attached.  It took 14 months to make and the company expects (hopes) it will last 10-15 years.  The cave is about 150 meters beneath surface of the glacier so you don’t have to worry about the roof caving in.  With all the bodies moving about the big open spaces though there are lots of places where water drips and puddles have formed. It has become a huge tourist attraction.

You can just spot the big 8-wheel trucks near the top of the glacier. We walked into the glacier and descended slightly to a bench-lined room where we added Crampons to our shoes for grip on the ice as we walked.  The loop takes almost an hour to do.  There are several ‘rooms;’ one was rented out recently to 60 people who had a summer solstice party and they also have a chapel where people can and do get married.

Our guide around the ice cave asked me if we were from British Columbia because we were both wearing the Painted Lodge jackets we bought at the Hanna Reunion in Campbell River.  I said yes, but not from the Island, that we were from Salmon Arm.  He laughed.  “I spent 8 months in Kamloops taking adventure guide training and went to Salmon Arm a couple of times. Lovely area.”  Small world.

Looking back at the entrance.  Crampons – great grip

Pointing out the ash-line from the 2010 volcanic eruption. After our tour of the ice cave we drove about 20 minutes to the hotel for our lunch.  By this time it was almost 4 pm and we had had nothing to eat since 8:30.

An hour later we were back on the bus heading for Hraufossar and Barnafoss; two waterfalls, neither of which are very tall.  Hraufossar is an actual waterfall from glacier run-off water and flows down a river. We could only see the channel as we didn’t have time to walk up the pathway all the way to the waterfall itself.  Barnafoss is a wall of running water that just comes out through the lava and flows down the walls.  It is strictly melting glacier ice that soaks through the lava rock underground.

We boarded the bus for the final time and started our long drive back to Reykjavik. Aug 3 was a Bank Holiday long weekend in Iceland and is a huge family holiday time.  Our drivers (there were 3 trucks of guests) felt we would get caught up in returning holiday traffic if we went the normal highway route so we took a detour which became two detours and added over ½ hour to our trip but gave us a lovely scenic drive back to the MS Veendam.

Iceland reminded John and me of New Zealand just the way the mountains were so close-up and of Hawai’i because we were constantly driving through lava beds from one scenic spot to another.  It is called The Land of Fire and Ice yet has quite mild winters with a normal snow fall of one and half to two meters and normal winter temperatures of 1C.  The sun rises for 3-4 hours in the winter and sets for only 3-4 hours in the summer. Tourist come all year round.  There were over a million visitors here last year and even more are expected this year.  I can understand – why there is a lot of beauty here; even in the deslolation of the lava rocks.  Tomorrow we are here until 1 pm and have another tour scheduled at the horrible departure time of 7:30 am.

WARNING:  This blog contains MANY photos of scenery, ice flows and ice bergs (plus a few seals – but only at the very end).

Today was strictly a scenic day.  We entered Prins Christian Sund at about 4:30 am (we missed it).  We woke up at quarter to 7, looked out the window and saw sheer cliffs rising up out of the water.  We dressed quickly and went to the bow deck, which the Captain had opened to passengers for the day.  The access to the bow deck is behind the stage in the showroom and only crew is usually permitted.

Due to the chilly temperature there was coffee and hot chocolate available.  We spent the next two hours watching the absolutely incredible scenery go by.  We were travelling VERY slowly and navigating past small, medium and very large icebergs.

    The Captain cruised into the Sund as far as a dead-end channel where a very remote village of 50-130 people live and provide guided fishing tours.  You could just see the tops of the roofs behind the rocks. At the end of the channel we did a slow turn around and sailed back to a fork in the Sund and headed out to sea.

If you look closely you can just make out the roofs behind the rock outcropping near the water.

We went to the Lido for breakfast and returned to the bow deck for the rest of the morning.  Mid-morning the crew brought hot Dutch Pea Soup out to warm everyone up again.  The day was glorious; beautiful sunshine with a few scattered clouds and not too cold, considering we were on the bow heading into the wind and sailing over frigid water
We were in the middle of know where when in the space of 15 minutes or so three different motor boats went speeding by. They must have come from or had gone to the little village I guess.

I love the blue-green sheen of the underwater ice.
I finally forced myself to leave the deck and go to the cabin.  I could have stayed all day without a break but I had taken so many photos I decided enough was enough.  In the cabin I worked on my blog from the last couple of days and uploaded the 205 photos I had taken today.

I think this butterfly must have come on board in Boston.  It was nestled on a window ledge near the Lido pool.  I don’t think it would want to go outside.

Just before lunch we entered the ice floe that drifts out to sea every summer with the melt and calving of the icebergs.  After we ate and visited for a while with our cruise friends Bill and Lynn we went back to the bow deck and watched the ship inch its way amongst the thousands and thousands of pieces of ice.  The tallest piece was estimated to be 275’ high.  The variety of shapes and wind-carved detailing on the ice kept us on the deck until time for dinner.

This ice berg had a cavern that the water would blow out of even though the seas were calm.   A swan

This berg would sink almost to the water line then rise up again – probably 25′ or higher. We had seen a few seals swimming in the pools of various ice bergs during the afternoon but during dinner we passed a couple of low flat ice sheets that were popular resting places for seals.  I guess once they have finished fishing for the day they crawl onto a piece of ice and have a nap.

We sailed out of the ice floe just as we concluded dinner and headed for open water. We have a sea day tomorrow before getting to Reykjavik, Iceland where we will be docked for two days.

We were quite pleased in Red Bay to pass an iceberg on the tender ride.  While eating dinner last night we passed three more large icebergs; and a pod of small whales was frolicking (probably minke whales) about 200 yards off the starboard side of the ship.  There is a family of three teenage daughters at the window table beside us and the mom and those girls were so thrilled to see the whale fins and tails and blows.  It was a nice ending to the day.

My phone clock acted up again and I was up, showered, dressed and tying my last shoe lace when John woke and told me it was 6:42.  My phone said it was 8:42.  John turned his off and on again and it came back 8:42.  Crazy. Anyway this time I put my jammies back on and crawled into bed.  I wasn’t doing that early morning thing again! Today is a sea day so we had nowhere to be anyway. Quite a few of our shore excursions leave the ship at 8 or earlier so I will have enough early rises to get ready and eat before we go out.

I woke again at 10 after 8 to another day of thick fog.  I do hope it clears off before the scenic cruising in the Greenland fjords day after tomorrow.  Tomorrow we are at Qaqortoq (Kakortok) and there are no excursions available. It is a tender port and we are there from 10-6.  It has a population of about 3000 and is the second largest community in Southern Greenland (4^th largest on the island).  There are a couple of old churches and the oldest fountain in Greenland within walking distance of the pier – also a geocache or two.

We pretty much did nothing all day – puzzles and read.  John was brave and walked 8 quick laps (2 miles) on deck in the cold and wind.  I don’t do cold.

 Tonight is our second formal night so dress-up time again.   Our cabin steward made my favorite towel animal – the puppy dog.

When I woke up in the morning I opened the drapes to see the Greenland coast lit up with glorious sunshine.

We were scheduled to go ashore by 10 but the ship was cleared by customs at 9 so the first tenders headed out.  We went in about 10:30 and avoided the first rush.  Greenland was discovered by the Vikings in the 10^th century and has been occupied for 4300 years.  It was colonized by the Danish April 7, 1775 and remained a colony of Denmark until 1953. It is geographically part of North America but is politically a part of Europe. In 1981 Greenland began full self-government with a constitutional monarchy, the King of Denmark being head of state.  The town of Qaqortoq is built up the rocky hills around a nice bay. We walked through town around to the lake and down the other side back to the pier.

  These carvings in stone were part of a 1994-95 project by different local artists.  There are over 30 of them located around the town.

There were lupins and buttercups blooming on every hillside. Absolutely lovely. John tried to locate a couple of caches that showed up on the GPS but the co-ordinates kept bouncing around.  Finally after we had seen most of the sites in town he found a cache 400 meters away in the other direction so we went looking for it.  The granite hills surrounding Qaqortoq are very steep and you can avoid the switch-backs on the roads by climbing long flights of stairs.  We hiked straight up an almost vertical hillside thinking it was the place in the directions that indicated you are to leave the road.  We discovered at the top that the path we were supposed to climb was just down the road from where we clambered onto the road again.  I could see a rock cairn on top of the hill and thought that would be where the cache was located.  Turns out it was not too far away and it didn’t take too long for John to find it hidden behind a rock.

From the cache site you could climb further away from the town and up higher and see the bay on the other side of the hill.  This we did.  The view was spectactular!

After taking some pics we made our way along the rocky hilltop and over to another cairn that overlooked the bay where the ship was docked.  John picked up a pointed rock as he walked along and placed it on the top of the cairn to finish it off.

   We continued on in a sort-of-toward-town direction to a third cairn and then made our way back to the road and the long flights of stairs down to the town center.

 Lots of long flights of stairs to get from one section of houses to another cutting off the road switchbacks.

We boarded a tender and were back on board about 3pm.  Plenty of time to check our photos, choose the ones for the blog, and dress for dinner.

We really enjoyed our day here. Gorgeous scenery, nice sunshine, cool but not cold, and we were only assaulted by the tiny black flies at the start of our walk. Being brilliant, I planned to bring our Australian fly covers with us. Being stupid, I left them at home.  Oh well, we survived the onslaught.

In the evening the fog lifted and we sailed through a large iceberg floe.  Some of them are humongous and there were lots of smaller ones – an amazing variety of shapes and sculptures.  One gigantic one looked like it had been put through a sawmill the sides were so perpendicular and the top was so flat.  And others were bumpy or had very tidy-looking globes on them.  Really cool stuff.

     Awhile later I went up to the stern and watched the sunset.  The sky looked like it was on fire.  And the moon in the other direction was almost full and throwing a glistening stream on the water.  A magical end to a wonderful day.

   Tomorrow we are scheduled to do some scenic cruising in Prince Christian Sound. The fog was rolling in again while we ate dinner and parts of the Sound are still blocked by icebergs so we will see what tomorrow brings.  Today was a great day!

Red Bay was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.  It provides the world’s earliest, most complete and best preserved testimony to the whaler’s work and life of the 16^th century. Several thousand Basque whalers would spend the summers here harvesting bowhead and right whales, the oil of which was shipped back to Europe for use in lighting and manufacturing.

There is not much of a town; a dozen or so buildings in total.  The area was only ‘settled’ in the last 150 years.  The year-round population is about 120.  If a cruise ship comes to town the population expands by about 200 per cent.

We woke at 6:30 and opened the drapes to discover thick fog.  Red Bay is a tender port.  Obviously such a small community would not have a cruise terminal.  We were on land and getting in our school bus by 9.  We passed by a substantial iceberg still stuck in the bay.  We will see more of them as we approach Greenland but it was pretty neat.  Remember that 90% of the berg is underwater so no matter how large the top you can see may be it is much, much larger below.

Our tour took us on a drive along the coastal road– which, incidentally is the only road – to the Point Amour Lighthouse, bouncing regularly over the pot holes.  It really brought John and I back to our time driving in Newfoundland last year.  Our bus driver (she is a regular school bus driver) did the same as John would do and drove on the other side of the road to try avoid the worst of them.

We did a rolling stop on a little bridge to get a photo of ‘the small waterfall’ on the Pinware River.  Well, the rapid anyway.  Not really what we would call a waterfall but it was a nice view. Traffic is so light in Labrador there is no risk of holding up other vehicles if you stop in the middle of a bridge to let a bunch of tourists take photos.  During our entire 40 minute drive we saw 4 cars and one gravel truck.

The only other stop on our way to the lighthouse was at the L’Anse Amour Burial Mound where a Maritime Archaic child was buried 7500 years ago.  It is just a pile of rocks but it is an important historical point of interest; showing just how long people have been harvesting the fish from the ocean in these parts.

 We reached our destination at the Point Amour Lighthouse, the tallest in Atlantic Canada and the second tallest ever built in Canada (the tallest is in Quebec somewhere). Johnny, our guide, told us we had one hour and 15 minutes to explore the gift shop, climb the 132 steps to the top of the lighthouse, or walk the foot path along the shore. Naturally, we climbed the lighthouse.  My schedule will always include climbing up whatever is high. I love to see the ground or water from above.

It is hard to see, but rocks under the water along the shore look like paving stones in a yard. We returned to Red Bay with only two photo stops. The first was made so that Johnny, our very funny and excellent guide, could run over to a flag pole and take down the Labrador flag so that all the people on the bus could get a good look at it.

The second was at an overlook of the Pinware River.

John and I had hoped to find at least one geocache during our stop here but the nearest one showing on the GPS was almost half a kilometer back through town and when we got to the site it had a second set of co-ordinates to follow which would have taken us even further away from the pier.  The last tender left the dock at 2:30 and it was getting close to 2 o’clock by then so we walked back and caught a tender back to the ship.  The fog was still so thick we were almost upon the ship before it was visible; one moment there was a solid white wall and the next there was a ghostly-looking ship skulking out of the mist.

Notice that the stone path around the information plaques at the Parks Canada Information Center is in the shape of a whale.

A foggy day, but a good one. We had a good bus driver, a great guide, and explored some new land and history – some of the best things about travelling.

I spotted this star fish as I was going down the gangplank to get on the tender.  He’s a pretty big one.

Yesterday was a sea day and we did nothing.  There was a whale sighting in the afternoon and we were on the starboard side where it was swimming.  I looked and looked and never saw it.  John not only saw the fins and back he saw the whale breach.  Figures.

It was formal night so we got all duded up for dinner.  After dinner we went to the Showroom at Sea where the captain introduced the ship’s officers and we had a champagne toast to a successful voyage (Gotta love the free champagne).  We skipped the evening’s entertainment in the show lounge – a jazz clarinet player – and went back to our cabin to read until bed.  I didn’t take one photo all day. So that was that.

We arrived in Cornerboork, Newfoundland at 8 am under partly cloudy skies.  Cornerbrook is a mill town with a large pulp mill right at the end of the bay and the town growing up the hillsides around it. We had no excursions booked and our only plans were to try find a light-weight cardigan to replace the one I left on the banguette in our Boston hotel restaurant and then go searching for some geo-caches. 

We wandered off the ship mid-morning and walked into town.  The ship was docked about a kilometer from town (a bit longer if you walked via the highway) There was a free shuttle but along the T-Railway path into town there were a couple of geo-caches.

The T-Railway is a province wide connection of walking/biking paths on the old railroad line.  The railway service in Newfoundland was discontinued quite a few years ago and all the tracks were taken out and either gravelled or paved.  An energetic person could go for miles and miles around the province on T-Railway.

The first cache was located quickly.

We searched and searched for the second one to no avail.  We read the previous logs to see if there may be a hint posted but all the posts were DNF (Did not find).  No one had found it since 2010 and yet the person that hid the cache checked it in January and said it was there, the co-ordinates were accurate, and “the cache was visible from a meter away without lifting a finger.”  The location was a little sitting area with big rocks forming a semi-circle, two benches, flower beds and rose bushes in bloom.  We looked and we looked and we looked and we finally gave up and walked the rest of the way into town.

I managed to find a new cardigan in the first shop I checked (my kind of shopping – in and out and done) and we walked back to the T-Railway to find some more caches.  There are seven hidden along the trail extending about 2 km to the west of town.  These Newfies hide hard-to-find caches.  We did find three more; only one of which was a quick find, and we gave up on the last one after searching up, down, over and around a big rocky slope for half an hour.  By then both our phone batteries were dying so we turned around, walked back to town and went to Tim Horton’s for coffee and an apple fritter for lunch.  After that it was a leisurely stroll back to the ship and we were on board again by 2 pm.

All in all it was a very exciting day in Newfoundland.  We enjoyed it though. And now we are sailing to Red Bay, Labrador.

I slept like a log and checked my phone for the time when I woke up. The light visible through the narrow crack in the window shade had that ‘very early still’ look to it but my phone said it was almost 8.  There was to be an interdenominational worship service at 9 but John was still sound asleep so I thought I would go back to sleep as well.  I drifted off and woke a while later, checked the phone – 8:18.  Oh well, I may as well just get up.  I gathered up my things, shut myself in the bathroom and showered and dressed for the day.  I was just brushing my hair when John poked his head in and said, “What are you doing?”  “Well it is after 9, so I figured I would get up.”  “It is quarter to 6,” he replied.  “No, it’s not.  I checked my phone three times because it looked ‘early’ outside, but it is after 9.  Here, see for yourself.”

“My phone says its quarter to 6.”  But when he checked my phone it said it was quarter to 9.  For some reason my phone did not pick up the right time zone.  Yikes!  And now I was showered and dressed at 6 am!  John crawled back in bed, I picked up my Kindle and my puzzle book and headed for the Lido on deck 11 to find coffee.  Continental breakfast service begins at 6:30, full buffet at 7.  I worked on puzzles at a table, savouring a couple of cups of coffee, ate breakfast and went to the Showroom at Sea to wait for the church service to begin.  John came in just as it was starting; having enjoyed three more hours of sleep.  It was going to be a long day!

My phone did eventually find the correct time, but not until mid-morning. Very strange.  I have never had that happen before (and I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen again anytime soon).

Fog rolled in during church service so we took a lap around the promenade deck to watch the water, then found a chair and read until lunch.  Because we had calm seas all day and we had no sights of land there are no interesting photos.  I took some of the water rolling away from the ship.  John loves to watch the water whenever we sail.  He could happily stand at the rail for hours.

   After lunch we returned to the cabin and I posted yesterdays’ blog as a time trial.  I had pre-written all the text, chosen and downsized the photos and had them in a separate folder so when I went online I could just copy and paste the text, upload the photos and put them where I wanted.  It didn’t take too long so I may be able to do my blog more often than I thought.  Perhaps it helped to have people out and about on the ship and not in their cabins on their computers so the server wasn’t bogged down.  Who knows, but I was quite pleased with how quickly it went; considering how slow internet at sea can be.  Internet on a ship arrives via a direct satellite transmission from 22,000 miles away and onto a moving vessel so weather conditions and other factors can have a significant impact.

We spent today sailing about 26 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia – very slowly during the fog and then the Captain sped up a bit to make up some of the lost time..  Tomorrow is another day at sea – and our first of 9 formal nights – and Tuesday we dock in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland. We spent two nights in Cornerbrook on our cross-Canada trip last summer so we have no tour planned.  All the excursion are places we previously explored.  We plan to find some geocaches.  John downloaded locations of caches at all our ports of call onto his new palm-size GPS so anywhere we either have no excursion or the one we are taking is only a few hours long we hope to see what we can find.

We got up early enough for breakfast today – $16.50 for bacon and eggs, $5 for coffee and $3 for toast = $24.50 plus tourist tax and state tax made for a $51 brekkie.

At noon we checked out of our room, walked out of the hotel to the taxi stand and got a ride to the cruise terminal.  Check-in didn’t take too long and our room was ready when we go on board.  We had booked an interior cabin on deck 5 but got upgraded to a slightly larger cabin with a window one deck down. We are only a couple of rooms away from the stern stairwell that goes right up to the dining room on deck seven.  Convenient I think.

We did a quick tour to get our bearings which is pretty easy to do since we have been on several HAL ships and the layout is pretty much the same on all of them. Then we got our Kindles and found a deck chair until the mandatory safety drill at 4:15.

After the safety drill we went to the dining room for dinner.  We were placed at a round table for eight with 2 couples from Florida (different areas – they didn’t know each other) and two ladies from Seattle.  While we were at dinner the ship sailed backwards out of its berth in Boston and then turned around and we were on our way.  We went on deck after dinner and took some photos and watched the skyline of Boston disappear.

John finished his little bit of unpacking and we loaded our photos onto the computers and bought some expensive internet minutes.  I wrote this text, chose the photos I wanted to add to the blog, logged on to Word Press to upload a blog for the day and the password was not recognized.  Strange since I went through a similar rigamarole at the hotel the day before and just set up a new password. I opted to leave it alone for now and went to bed.

Thus endeth Day 1.

PS.  There may be more typos than normal or the photo placement may be skewed now and then because I am not going to spend a lot of time online tweaking my blog posts.

We flew to Boston yesterday.  The ship doesn’t sail until tomorrow at 5 pm but we have done enough traveling to know it is not wise to take plane rides scheduled to arrive the same day you are scheduled to leave for somewhere else.  Too many things can go wrong.

Our first plane of the day left Kelowna at 8:50 am, which necessitated a 5 am wake-up.  Thanks very much to Carmen for picking us up at 6:30 and driving us to the airport.  This duty usually falls to our daughter but she had to be at work already at 6 am – go figure.

We arrived on time to check our bags, go through security, sit a few minutes and board the plane for Toronto.  Nothing exciting to report about that.  We had 1 1/2 hours between flights in Toronto. We had to do a hop through LaGuardia Airport  because WestJet doesn’t fly direct to Boston and we had to take an affiliate flight on Delta from La Guardia to Logan Airport in Boston. (WestJet just announced that they will be making direct flights from Toronto to Boson.)

Because we were now going to be entering the USA we needed to collect our bags and go through Customs and Immigration.  Our bags took over 1/2 an hour to fall down the shute.  We then had a long walk to Terminal A where we put our passports in the kiosk reader, received our receipts and entered the zigzag line to go through screening.  By the time we got to the tail of the line we had 30 minutes until our flight was due to depart.  The zigzag was 6 rows long and moving slowly. Not going to make it….

A fellow a couple of lines over heard us say we had a flight in 30 minutes so he flagged down a US customs officer and told them our problem. There was another couple in the line a row ahead of us in the same dilema.  The staff member waved us over to the NEXUS priority boarding line and we got through security quickly. We speed-walked to our gate; arriving just as the plane was due to begin boarding only to find out it was delayed 15 minutes.

Perfect!  We were starving – 2 mini-bags of 15 corn chips do not constitute a meal.  (No food on planes unless you pay extra for them.  John had a $7 turkey bunwich but I didn’t bother). We hustled over to a nearby food supplier, picked up an egg sandwich, a ceasar salad, one bottle of water and a granola bar.  Total cost $33.06!  Yes, you read that correctly.  When my mouth dropped the clerk said, “You have to love airport taxes.”  Seriously!!!  More like, “One does not have to like airport rip offs.” (Obvioulsy I should have opted for the overpriced airplane bunwich)

Anyway we swallowed the bullet, paid for our food and made it back to the waiting area as  boarding commenced.  Flight time from Toronto to New York is about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  We arrived a bit early  – about 6:50 pm EST.  I had a window seat on this flight and could see the ground almost the entire flight, which was nice; usually all you have is a great view of clouds.

The above three pics are blurry so don’t worry about your vison. We were flying out of Toronto and it was a bit shaky on the plane.  The normal airplane view. Our flight to Boston was scheduled to leave at 8 pm.  We landed at La Guardia and the Captain announced that the air control tower had put us into a queue formation that they don’t use because it doesn’t work well and we would be delayed getting to the terminal.  We sat out on the runway able to see a long line of stationary airplanes ahead of us.  15-20 minutes later the Captain came on again: the plane using the same gate we were scheduled to use had also been stuck in the queue and had just arrived at the terminal. Therefore, we would have to wait for it to deboard the passengers, get cleaned and re-stocked, board the new passangers and move away from the gate so we could get in.  Estimated wait time 30-45 minutes.  He shut down the engines while we waited.  Two more updates followed and we eventually deplaned at 8:10.

We were hoping that our Boston flight may have been caught in the back log and delayed in leaving but no such luck; it had departed on time.   We made another long trek to the Delta service counter in the next terminal and managed to get re-booked on the last plane of the day from New York to Boston, leaving in an hour.  With a 20 minute delay in departure time and a 35 minute flight time, plus luggage collection and a hike through the almost empy Logan airport we arrived at our hotel, checked in and got to our room at 15 minutes after midnight, Eastern Time.  The only available place to eat closed at 12:30.

Mad dash downstairs for food – made it with 5 minutes to spare! With the time zone change it was really only 9:30 Pacific Time but our bodies felt it was a lot later and we crashed as soon as we got back to our room.  Breakfast is served from 5 am until 10:30. We missed it.  We woke at 11:30 and then dozed until 12;30 so breakfast was lunch.  No bacon and eggs today.  Tomorrow maybe…. Just as well we don’t have to be anywhere until then.

PS.  Tomorrow we board the MS Veendam and begin our 35-day Voyage of the Vikings cruise.  Internet on board is VERY slow and VERY expensive so my blog postings will be sporadic.  If we have a port of call with a short shore excursion, or no excursion at all and we don’t spend all our free time looking for geo-caches, I will try find wi-fi to work on a blog.  I will do my best, but make no promises about scheduling.