Saturday - day 9 - almost Djúpivogur, Iceland

On Saturday, we were supposed to visit Djúpivogur (Dyoo-pi-voh-gur), which was a little bit of a backtrack from our route around the north side of Iceland (I started making a travel map here: https://journeyinamazinggrace.travelmap.net/2026-travels but it only shows straight lines between ports so it looks like we're going overland... we are not!). We were supposed to arrive at 7am, and we got to the area where we were to anchor out by 7am. But the captain came on to announce that the waves were 4-6', the wind was blowing strongly from the northwest -- which would be perpendicular to the route that the tender boats would need to traverse to get us in to port. So, for the safety of the passengers and crew, the captain decided that we should not make the stop in Djúpivogur, but rather continue on toward our next port of call, Akureyri. Thus, we had a "bonus" sea day.

I ran up onto deck to try to take a picture of the town -- I don't know whether the ship had already moved far enough away or the town was very small (it did have very few residents), or that it was far enough down within athefjord and I couldn't see it, but this was the best picture I got! I think that the town is somewhere along the middle of that picture.

I did see some crop land along the fjord as we were moving away.

What was very fascinating was how quickly the crew turned around and prepared a sea-day's set of activities for us -- 

....updating the schedule online as well as providing a new printed calendar of events.

Even a letter from the captain was printed and provided to each cabin!

One of the added activities for the day was a lecture from a fellow from England, Tony Lee Moral, who had worked on David Attenborough's staff -- he had been scheduled to do this lecture later in the cruise, but he did it on our unexpected sea day instead. (He has other lectures that he will be doing later on the cruise.) We had honestly never known David Attenborough's name before (we are obvious uneducated rubes) but when we heard snippets of his shows, we recognized his voice.

Travel guide Gage did a presentation on "The World Up Close: The Wizard of Wireless" about Marconi and advances in communication with the use of wireless.

Another guest presenter, David Perry, presented on "Paddlewheels, Steam, and Speed" about the evolution of boat travel and amazing advances made during the 1800s.

One of the slides he shared told of a ship that crossed the international date line and equator at precisely midnight on December 31, 1899, thereby having different parts of the ship in two different days, two different months, two different years, two different seasons, and two different centuries, all at the same time! (He also said that it was possible that the ship wasn't in the exact location at the exact correct time, but it would be at least theoretically possible.)

There were a couple of venues that were scheduled to play country music on Saturday evening, so we went to listen... at one of them, I joined some other folks doing a line dance, and Carl and I danced to one song. (We're both fighting colds so we weren't feeling like being too energetic.)

Later in the evening, cellist Darius Uhl was back on the World Stage, so we enjoyed listening to his music.

Our ship was to cross for a short time into the Arctic Circle on this part of our journey. Because the ship had started on it way to Akureyri earlier than anticipated, the captain let us know that we'd be crossing into the Arctic Circle at about sunset, 10:05pm. We looked out off of our balcony at that time, and we didn't see any blue (or any other color) line, but the next day, we both...

... got certificates recognizing our accomplishment!

Aren't you impressed?!?!?

We have certificates from our cruise last year for crossing the International Date Line and the equator; one more certificate to add to our collection! 

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.