Friday - day 8 - Seyðisfjörður, Iceland

We arrived at our first port in Iceland, Seyðisfjörður (pronounced "say-this-fyur-thur"), on Friday morning. We came in during a low tide period, and had been cautioned that the number of tenders available to transport passengers from the ship to the pier would be limited because only one tender could discharge passengers to the pier at a time until the tide rose. We decided to stay onboard until after lunch and enjoy the town a little later in the day.

Quite a pretty town as seen from the ship

Just to the right of town was this large wall going down the mountain as well as some smaller mounds nearby -- we heard (from another passenger) that these were to help in case of landslides.

A view of our ship as we were heading into town on the tender

A map of the town provided in the area where we got off the tenders

Near the tender drop-off area was a Technical Museum -- we didn't go into the museum proper, but visited an exhibit outside actually in the area where part of the Technical Museum used to be, but was destroyed by a landslide in December, 2020. 

There were a number of signboards... 

This one gave information about landslides since 1880...

I thought that it was ironic that the two houses that were destroyed in the 1958 landslide were named "Disaster" and "Debt" -- I don't know whether they had those names before the landslide or whether it was just the names they were given after their destruction.

The December 2020 landslide was, by far, the most damaging the town had experienced.

The pinkish-brown areas were where the landslide passed through the town.

One of the items that was damaged during the 2020 landslide was a tractor that had been in the Technical Museum...

A picture of it in the museum

It was severely damaged, along with the part of the Technical Museum, in the landslide.

As we left the Technical Museum grounds and continued into town...

... we saw Búðareyrarfoss, a waterfall up beyond the Technical Museum

We weren't the only ship in town on Friday -- there was also a Viking ship in town.

I had read that there were a number of houses in the town that were Norwegian "kit houses" (think Ikea houses!) from the early 19th century... we took a number of pictures of what we thought were examples of these houses...

I had read about the Seyðisfjarðarkirkja - "Seydisfjardur church" -- 

It was quite a pretty church down a street with a rainbow pattern...

Up a little closer...

Inside

More of the "kit" houses:

A view of houses across a lake in town

More kit houses:

I thought the exterior metal on this house and the yellow one below was special.

Another view of those odd mounds just outside of town that we heard had something to do with landslide amelioration.

When we got back to the tendering area, the fellows from the ship (who are always there on the pier with water) also had hot chocolate - since the temperature was about 50F and it was sprinkling a little bit, that was very appreciated!

Back on the ship - we took this picture through the window in the buffet dining area so there is a bit of a glare at the top, but this appeared to be a grain elevator in town. I did not see a lot of agriculture on our way in through the fjord, but maybe there is enough in the surrounding area.

The evening performance was by flutist, Simeon Wood.

He played a number of flute or whistle type instruments...

... and was a good entertainer.

Back in our room, as we were leaving through the fjord, I noticed these three houses that looked almost identical -- like houses in a housing development built by the same builder, but they were a distance apart from each other.

As we went further along, I saw these fields where hay had been harvested. This part was on the "other" side of the ship as we had come into the fjord so I had not seen it.

We appreciated visiting this little town (about 700 residents, I think). Although it was damp and chilly, we enjoyed the first place we've been in Iceland!

Thursday - day 7 - Seaday

We left Norway on Wednesday evening and started west toward Iceland.

As I've written before, we like seadays for the less busy schedule... although this seaday had a number of presentations and events that we wanted to attend!

We decided to have breakfast in the main dining room -- we always ask to share a table with others - this time, there was just one other fellow who wanted to share at the time we arrived, so we shared with him. He was from near Rotterdam, and wasn't much of a conversationalist, though being asked to speak in a language not your first before a good infusion of caffeine may have impacted that.

We then headed to "Coffee with Jai" (the cruise director). He was chatting with the cruise consultants, Melanie and Justin. He asked them questions about what they did and how they ended up in that job position. It turned out that they both joined Holland America as members of the entertainers -- her as a dancer and him as a solo guitarist. They happened to be on the same ship at some point, and fell in love, but then spent 6 years long-distance dating as working out their cruise contracts to be on the same ship at the same time was difficult. They saw the cruise consultant job and thought that they would like that, and, eventually they married, got cruise consultant positions, and were able to get contracts on the same ship (I'm not sure about the precise order of marriage, cruise consultant positions, and contracts on the same ship).

They also shared that they have a home near Dover, England (our departure port) and she has family (her sister, I think) near there. So, each time the Holland American ship stops in Dover, they can go home and see her young niece and nephew for a few hours. Melanie shared that her niece and nephew think that it is "Melanie's ship" (i.e., that she owns it). Melanie is British, and Justin is American, and they now live in England.

Right after the "Coffee with Jai", Melanie and Justin did a presentation at the same venue about booking your next cruise onboard. We stayed and listened to that and got some ideas about what we'd like to do for our next cruise!

Jai had gone directly from his "Coffee with Jai" talk to the World Stage...

... for a cooking demonstration with a couple of the chefs from the ship. We joined the cooking show a little late after Melanie and Justin's talk had completed. In the cooking show, they showed how the chefs make one of the dishes on the ship...

Finished product, Barbecue Salmon Bowl.

We had decided to go to the cooking show late to ensure we got seats for the next event in the World Stage, a conversation with the captain. As we expected, the room was packed for his talk...

Jai was also interviewing the captain. Jai does many things on the ship!

The captain has a wry sense of humor. Jai asked him if he was pleased that so many wanted to hear him, to which the captain responded, "There must be nothing else interesting going on!" (Jai said, "I just got my performance evaluation, I don't have interesting things scheduled!") Earlier in the trip, when we were going north from The Netherlands to Norway, he had said, "We earlier passed from the Germany part of the North Sea to the Denmark part of the North Sea but there was nothing to sea see there!"

The captain talked about various tools they use to evaluate the weather or hazards - around Greenland, there is a concern about icebergs, "Remember the Titanic," he said... This was a static view of the locations of icebergs -- not particularly helpful as they are always moving. He said that we take on two pilots for navigating around Greenland.

Of course, many people are on this cruise to see the solar eclipse - so the captain showed some slides regarding weather and clouds during the eclipse...

This picture shows winds (the arrows) and cloud cover -- we are going to be off the west coast of Iceland on the day of the solar eclipse. The orange line on this graphic shows the path of optimum totality. 

This chart shows the optimum path of totality (blue line in the middle) with the orange lines denoting the furthest out that totality reaches (time in totality will be shorter as we would move further away from the blue line). The captain has identified two points on the blue line where he hopes to find cloud free conditions on the day of the eclipse -- somewhere between those two points. He kept on saying, "It will be dark!"

Other things we learned about our Captain Werner Timmers. He is from the Netherlands (Dutch). He said that in high school, he wanted to be an architect, but when there was a job orientation day, the guy from the merchant marine was a lot more interesting. He went to school in the Netherlands to join the merchant marine, spending 1 year of the 4 years to earn his degree on a ship, as a cadet on the Holland America ship Noordam. When he graduated, he tried to get a job on a ship with no success, so went back to school for an engineering degree. While going to school, he worked making frozen French fries. Holland America contacted him and asked if he wanted a job and he decided to give up making French fries! He worked his way up through the ranks and eventually became a captain in 2001 (unfortunately because the previous captain had a heart attack -- he said he had no responsibility for that!). He said, "I haven't got lost yet!" though he says his wife says he isn't good about navigating on land -- "but a sea captain shouldn't put his ship on land!"

He answered questions from the audience -- someone asked about upcoming ports, he replied, "The ports are there, the goal is to find the ports and visit them. And, oh, avoid icebergs!"

Someone asked about his homebase, and he indicated that he lives just north of Orlando with his wife. They have two grown kids. He has dual citizenship with Netherlands and US, so he is a "Holland American"!

There were other talks in the afternoon, but they were going to be recorded and available on our stateroom TV, so we decided to skip them. 

Carl took a picture of my "workspace" in our stateroom -- small desk right inside the balcony -- I was probably preparing a blog post!

We decided to head down to the dining room for Queen Elizabeth Tea...

...one of the delicacies trays and our two cups of tea. We were at a shared table with two others -- they were both half of couples where the other didn't want to come -- a lady from the big island of Hawaii, and a fellow from near Atlanta in Georgia. We had a nice chat with them.

In the evening, we went to another performance by Philippa Healey (again, outstanding). We also listened at a couple of other music venues (one was the "house band" doing jazz and another group doing "Abba and Friends" -- though we thought it may have been better named, "Bee Gees and friends" as they seemed to include more Bee Gee songs than Abba).

When we got back to our room, our cabin steward had made us a towel animal -- I took pictures to try to figure out what it might be before we destroyed it... looking at the picture, I think it might be a rabbit?

We enjoyed our sea day... Friday we will arrive at our first port in Iceland.

Wednesday - day 6 - Sandnes/Stavanger, Norway

On Wednesday, we arrived at Sandnes, Norway. While Sandnes is a fast growing city, Stavanger, about a 40 minute bus ride away, has more interesting places to visit.

We arrived at Sandnes port...

... but decided to take the bus to Stavanger.

We walked through Gamle Stavanger (old town) -- lots of cobblestone streets...

...to get to the canning museum (combined with the printing museum).

The printing museum was combined with the canning museum because printing labels for the cans was an elaborate process.

We learned a number of things in the printing museum, including that, in the 1500s, a printed hymn book cost half a cow and a Bible cost three cows!

They had an activity for children to assemble a book, which I tried doing!

Some of the lithograph printed labels on sardine cans

Examples of cans used

Sardines were primarily packed in these smaller rectangular cans.

One of the workers at the museum, Lisa, gave us a tour through the canning museum area -- this was an oven where the fish would be smoked.

An area where we could try our hands at packing sardines (rubber ones) into cans.

A device that was used to cut the heads off the sardines after they were smoked.

The cans were filled with oil so the product could be sterilized in a machine like a pressure cooker.

The machine next to Lisa attached the tops to the cans. Sardine canning had to have specialized equipment to seal the cans as the cans were rectangular.

As it turns out, Stavanger is no longer canning sardines. Various economic factors in the 1980s caused demand to drop and even combining all the canneries into a single business did not resolve the pricing pressures that they were encountering. So the canning operation was moved to Poland.

This is a company that catches sardines in Norway, sends them to Poland for processing (using the Norway process of smoking the sardines) and canning, and then sends the finished product back to Norway, and out to the world.

We walked down to the harbor area of Stavanger -- there was a Costa cruise ship at the dock (no picture of it) -- much larger ship that ours. We figured Holland America gets a cheaper rate docking at Sandnes (follow the money).

As we headed back to the bus stop, we stopped off at Stavanger Domkirke (Stavanger Cathedral), Norway's oldest cathedral still in continuous use. It was founded around 1125 and completed around 1150. There was an admission charge to go inside, and we were rather pooped, so we elected to head on to the bus.

East end of the cathedral

We had a good time visiting our last stop in Norway.