Our last port of call was Bergen, which is also located on the west coast of Norway. This is the second largest city in the country. The forecast for this day called for intermittent rain. For the most part during our entire trip, we had mostly decent days of minimal rain. Luckily our dock was a short walk to the city center (I counted at least 3 or 4 other cruise ships in port the same time that we were there).
Day 11 of the cruise was a sea day. Not too much exciting stuff happened on the boat…mostly just relaxing and eating and exercising.
Our cruise had 2 stops in Norway. I didn’t realize how narrow the country actually is. It’s kind of interesting though that it has such an extensive coastline heading toward the north pole. Since we were cruising, the two stop were both port cities. Our first stop of Ålesund is on the mid-western coast of the nation. This city is known for its German art nouveau architecture. I didn’t realize there were different types of art nouveau. Many of the sights again required driving of some sort but we decided to just hoof it on foot and explore the small town.
Upon arrival it was overcast and started to rain when we disembarked. Luckily the rain was intermittent throughout the day so much of it was just gloomy and gray (I actually like this kind of weather).
I ran out of steam with my previous posting and took a long break from any new posts. Hopefully I can get back on track and finish our trip, which now was over 3 months ago. Here’s hoping!
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I’m starting to sound like a broken record but we again decided to rent a car for our last port in Akureyri. Akureyri is at the base of Eyjafjörður Fjord in northern Iceland. Luckily I was able to make a car reservation from my phone before we left Ísafjörður. The water was fairly active on the way to Akureyri but turned foggy upon arrival in port.
They do like their hatchbacks in Iceland (and Europe). Here’s our little Kia that we used to traipse around the countryside.
The town of Akureyri was actually a decent size but again most of the sights recommended required a decent drive outta town. We did end up having some time to explore Akureyri after we returned from our road trip. Continue reading “Cruise – Day 10 (Akureyri, Iceland)”
We arrived in Ísafjörður (I just loved saying it “issa-fyord-or”) in the morning. Initially we didn’t have any specific plans – no excursion, no independent tour. Since it had been easy to drive around Reykjavik, I thought maybe we’d be able to rent a car and tour the area (the actual town is very small and most of the cruise excursions involved traveling to other parts of the northwest fjords of Iceland). We first stopped at the visitor center to see if we could maybe book a last-minute tour (bus) but they were all full. The person at the counter suggested trying the nearby hotel as they sometimes have car rentals. I had never really heard of this but thought it couldn’t hurt.
Our second stop in Scotland was at Invergordon. This was a tiny little town but was near a slightly larger city of Inverness. From my research prior to the trip, most of the sights in this area required some form of transportation. We hadn’t pre-arranged any transportation so last-minute a day or two before we arrived we ended up booking a shore excursion through the cruise. One thing that D wanted to see were castles since the Highlands are supposed to be known for them. Also just seeing the scenery and lushness of the area was also something to see. We elected to take a pretty easy trip to Loch Ness (where the famous “Nessie” or Loch Ness monster is supposed to live) along with Urquhart Castle, which lies on the shores of the lake.
Shore excursions often have fairly tight time regulations so we prepared and went to bed early and got up early so we could get to our bus in time. This earlier morning wakeup allowed me to get some nice shots as we pulled into Invergordon – Port of Cromarty Firth (luckily the ship could dock so we didn’t have to take any tenders).
I guess the ocean around these parts have a lot of oil so there are plenty of oil rigs just sitting out in the sea. Invergordon is a port where they drag the oil rigs back towards shore for maintenance and other construction so there were some that were getting retrofitted.
Our tour was mostly a bus tour where we saw a lot of things while in the bus. I tried to get shots of various areas as we made our way to Loch Ness.
Continue reading “Cruise – Day 5 (Invergordon/Inverness, Scotland)”
StewsCat 