Saturday 29 September - Day 39 - Gatlinburg and Dollywood

Paul and I went our separate ways today - there was an optional excursion to Dollywood that I decided to do but that Paul didn't want to try.
In case it isn't obvious, the "Dolly" is of course Dolly Parton. I was quite concerned that it would be totally over the top country music and Dolly Parton but it was not so.
There were all sorts of shows - mostly country or gospel of course, but also a really good one featuring music and dancing from the 50s and 60s.
This is a photo from one of the other shows - this one is a Dolly Parton "Family Reunion" show and so of course was mostly country.  Up on stage here there's an uncle, a niece, and two cousins of Dolly's.

There are also a lot of craft exhibits - the sort of stuff you might expect like glass blowing and quilting but also an operational forge where they make things like house signs but also other functional stuff, a wagon maker (I could have purchased an 8 seater wagon for about $5000) and rustic style furniture.  They also have an area set aside where a lot of bald eagles live - these are ones that cannot be released into the wild as they couldn't survive.  They have a large area on the side of the mountain where they can fly around and also some are shown in cages from time to time.  There's also a show about them - all trying to raise funds for further research  help for the birds.  This is one of them; called America:

And of course there are the usual scary rides that you find in any fun park - being a coward, I didn't go on any of them  :-)
And finally, being the USA, there's food - huge serves, almost all full of fat or sugar or both - but really nice.
We spent about 5 hours there, and I could easily have stayed longer.

While I was off at Dollywood, Paul had a restful day in Gatlinburg.  Although, he did go for a ride on the chairlift and got some very nice pictures - here's a few of them:

For dinner tonight we wandered down to a local grill bar.  We both had a win with our main course again - as in, we both ordered something that was both a reasonable size and tasted really good.  But, Paul decided to have dessert - Fried Icecream.   OMG!!!  It was a a chunk of icecream about three normal scoop sizes, covered and fried of course, but then sitting on a dinner plate inside a huge tortilla-like edible bowl, and just covered with cream and chocolate sauce.  They delivered it with two spoons so clearly I had to help Paul with it!!

Friday 28 September - Day 38 - On to Gatlinburg, at last

First stop for the day was at Corbin, Kentucky - at Colonel Sander's original restaurant.  What more can I say?  Actually, I will say one more thing - it still functions as a KFC, and some of the things on their menu were eye-openers to me - eg I've never seen Chicken Livers on a KFC menu before this!

Long drives today through some nice scenery and some not so nice, with a lunch stop at a "Cracker Barrel" restaurant for lunch.  Paul and I both managed to get a nice, reasonably sized meal - of course the reasonable size is the achievement here.  For example, the other couple we sat with thought they had a reasonably sized meal too - until the waitress brought out the dessert that automatically came with it!!

I also bought a nice blouse at their gift shop - you come across some good clothes in surprising places here.

After this, we went just down the road to the Museum of Appalachia.  It's very well set out, although some of their smaller indoor displays are in desperate need of some sort of conservation work.  Overall though, well worth the stop.

There are quite a few buildings on site, all quite legitimate samples of Appalachian building - except for this one which was built for the Daniel Boone TV show:

 A couple of shots of some of the buildings:

 Just one shot from one of the many many indoor displays - this one speaks for itself (ouch)

Then, another fairly long drive into Tennessee, to our motel for the next two nights.  We're staying in Gatlinburg - famous to us for its mention in "A Boy Named Sue" (and Paul has been driving me nuts talking about Gatlinburg in mid July!!) but for Americans it's a gateway into the Smoky Mountains.  To be blunt, the part we're staying in is a very pretty tourist trap - the main road is miles (and I'm not exaggerating here) of souvenir shops, food shops mostly selling things made of sugar, and other tourist attractions.  However, we went for a walk around town and enjoyed ourselves doing all the touristy things you do in a place like this  :-)

Thursday 27 September - Day 37 - Abraham Lincoln sites and then on to Bardstown

This is the view from our hotel room window from last night (the Hilton in Lexington, Kentucky) - quite nice and not at all the sort of view they usually give to people on coach tours  :-)

Overall though I wasn't all that thrilled about this hotel - it's in a part of the city that has absolutely no grocery shops or any real amenities apart from restaurants.  Today we started off with breakfast at the deli round the corner - I was desperate for a continental breakfast - the best I could get was a tub of take-away fruit salad.  However, it was nice and I also had a huge coffee which was possibly the best coffee we've had since we've been in the USA, so it's all good.

As you can tell from the heading of this entry, this morning we concentrated on Abraham Lincoln.  During the first part of the drive, they showed us quite an interesting DVD about his life.  Then, we got to go to the place where he was born.  Now, they know roughly where he was born, but not exactly.  They've found a log cabin which they know is not the one he was born in (testing apparently shows it's at least 25 years too young).  And, he only lived here while he was quite young - by the time he was 5 the family had moved a number of miles away.
However, regardless of all that, the log cabin has had a memorial built around it, and a national park created around it.

This is the memorial:

And the log cabin is inside the memorial:

In the early 1900s they built a small inn and some cabins nearby, as it was becoming really popular to visit the site.  That inn and the cabins have now also been dedicated as heritage buildings:

After this, we had quick photo opp at the home he lived in from when he was 5 until he was 7 - it is also part of its own National Park:

The rest of his life was spent away from here, so we don't get to see any other sites.  I had not realised until now just how close to a king they regard Abraham Lincoln. It all seems way over the top to me, although I suppose at least in part that would be because we Aussies don't have any leader that we can (or want to) treat that way.

Anyway, next stop was Bardstown, first for lunch.  We had a quick sandwich and then walked to the Bardstown Civil War Museum.  We didn't have a lot of time to spend here, as it wasn't an official part of the tour - but in my feedback I'm going to suggest that it should be.  There are a number of museums all set up together and given that the tour is meant to be concentrating on history to some extent, I'd think they'd be a great place to include.

Next stop was the Heaven Hill distillery where we got to taste their bourbon and also had a tour of their warehouse (but not the distillery).  I've never really liked bourbon but regardless of that I found the tour to be quite interesting and well worth the time. Some things I didn't know:
* bourbon is legally the USA's national drink
* their master distiller is a member of the Beam family - as in "Jim Beam"  - and in fact a member of that family has been their master distiller since the firm started just after prohibition
* there are many many bourbon makers in Kentucky, and there's only one that has never had a member of the Beam family work as their master distiller (Wild Turkey)
* although I've never heard of them, or any of their brands, they're the second biggest bourbon distiller behind Jim Beam (they've got around 23% of the market compared to Jim Beam's 25 or so percent)
* they pay at least $4million per week in excise to the US govt


And, later on, I discovered that bourbon isn't all bad.  Cosmos had another 'wow' event for us when we got back to the hotel - a Mint Julep drink each.  Bourbon, mint, sugar and water - a really nice combination.  They had given us a teeny bottle of bourbon each as a farewell gift after the tour, and Paul and I had ours later with Coke. Also nice.   I think we'll sleep well tonight!

Wednesday 26 September - Day 36 - travel to Lexington

Today isn't really worth talking about all that much.  Lots of driving, through nice scenery but quite similar to the last couple of days.
Short photo stop at Charleston, the capital of West Virginia.  That's real gold on the top of the building:

This is the statue you can see at the bottom of the picture above - it's Abraham Lincoln in his nightdress.  Apparently he used to wander around thinking and reading at night and they thought it would be good to commemorate him that way:

Lunch was at a Golden Corral - which I must say has a huge range of food at an incredibly cheap price - $21.10 for both of us for as much as we could eat, including a large (endless refill) softdrink.  They had salads, all sorts of hot foods, and desserts.
Then we spent three hours at the Kentucky Horse Park - about 2 hours longer than I really wanted to spend there.  Last stop is our hotel for the night - the Lexington Hilton which is very nice, but because it's in the city there's no choice for eating except for restaurants or room service, but we'd have really liked just a snack.
Most coach tours have a day or two that's less than great, and this was one of them. However, tomorrow shows much more sign of promise.

Tuesday 25 September - Day 35 - Lewisburg and Beckley

I think I've seen approximately 5 billion trees today, which reagardless of the number seems to be about 0.005% of the trees in West Virginia  :-)
Actually, we did see some beautiful scenery today, although it was one of those days that comes along on these holidays where most of the time is spent travelling.
We stopped at another Walmart then went on to Lewisburg for lunch.
Unfortunately the weather turned nasty - a huge thunderstorm and then ongoing rain.  This was not really a good time to spring a surprise extra stop on us  :-(  
This was the surprise - an old grist mill in a beautiful spot on the river:

As it happens, it would have been a beautiful sight in the rain, but the downpour did make it somewhat uncomfortable.
We then drove on to the New River Gorge to look at the scenery and specifically the bridge - again, a bit underwhelming because of the weather, but the bridge is just amazing. I'd love to come back to it - you can actually do a walk across the catwalk and I'd really love to give that a try!!!  Here's the bridge:

 And this gives some idea of just how deep the Gorge is - this is taken from the same place as the shot of the bridge above:

Final stop for the day is Beckley where we're staying overnight.  Had a really nice dinner at iHop and crashed!
No idea when I'll actually post this by the way - T-Mobile doesn't seem to have any coverage anywhere we've been in West Virginia

Monday 24 September - Day 34 - Harper's Ferrry and Luray Caverns

Started off the day with a trip to Harper's Ferry.  This was the site of John Brown's attempted uprising to get rid of slavery - often seen as one of the flash points towards the Civil War - and was then later the site of a fairly important Civil War battle.

The town itself is at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers; at the border of Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.  Both rivers are in deep and narrow river valleys, and the town was mostly built on a tiny area of river bank, including some ground that was created by digging out the side of the hill.
No-one lives at Harper's Ferry any more, because it's far too prone to devastating floods.  The town was flooded many times, but was practically destroyed in 1936.  Since then, it has been rebuilt as a National Historical Park - you can visit and see displays about the events in the town and also see a lot of the old buildings etc, but few cars are allowed and no-one lives there.
The next stop was a Walmart, just to get lunch but also to stock up on any supplies we needed.
Then, we went to the Luray Caverns - a huge cavern complex discovered about 135 years ago.  It's also set up very nicely for visitors, although we were all a bit surprised to discover after the tour guide had chased us all into the cavern that the tour actually involves walking 2 kilometers underground!  However, it was worth it.
Afterwards, the tour guide suggested that we see the 'little' car museum in the same complex.  Turns out that there are 125 carriages and cars, mostly dating from before the 1930s and in excellent condition.  There must be millions of dollars worth of cars in there.
Final trip for the day was into the Shenandoah State Forest.  This was created back in the early part of the 20th century, and it actually involved some people being forcibly removed from their homes.  This seemed really unfair and sad to me, particularly since it didn't involve removing the Skyline Resort which was already a retreat for the rich and famous.  The resort still exists; in fact it's where we're staying tonight.  They try to insist that it's a 'back to nature' sort of place - no internet, mobile phones don't work here, there's no TVs in the rooms - but they have no qualms about having a satellite connection for the ATM and so you can pay for your room, meals etc by credit card.

Sunday 23 September - Day 33 - Mt Vernon and Gettysburg

Mt Vernon of course was George Washington's home, and it was our first stop on the trip today.  It's a beautiful estate and obviously an enormously popular place for Americans to visit.  The estate has been in the hands of the Mt Vernon Ladies Assocation since before the Civil War.  They paid around $200,000 for it in 1853 - a huge amount of money at that time and equivalent to over $5 million today - restored it and have been maintaining it ever since.
The home is maintained as it was when he died in 1799, as is the rest of the estate.  It would have been a beautiful place to live, at least for the family.  For the workers and slaves it doesn't seem to have been so nice.

Next stop was Gettysburg.  We had both always seen this as a highlight of this tour, and it was.  We were driven around to quite a few places, and it was just amazing to be able to see the places that I've only seen on maps and read about before this - it really makes the whole battle so much clearer.  One thing that became quite obvious for example was just how far out of place Dan Sickles moved his troops - I've seen it on maps and read about it, but standing on Little Round Top and having it pointed out in real life just made it so much clearer.

This is Devil's Den, viewed from Little Round Top:

After the tour of the battlefields we went to the visitors centre where we saw a movie about the civil war, and then saw the cyclorama - this is just one of the many scenes:

And of course, we ended up at the gift shop where we spent quite a bit actually - there were lots of nice things for sale and not so much of the usual cheap and tacky stuff.
I really would like to come back here and spend a couple of days to look at it properly.  This is the most visited historical site in the USA, and next year is the 150th anniversary - they get 2,000,000 visitors a year and they're expecting an extra million next year.
Gettysburg had about 2400 residents at the time of the battle and it still only has about 7000 residents - it can't expand outwards because it's almost completely surrounded by the Gettysburg National Military Park and it can't expand upwards because of a rule that says that no building can be higher than the town hall.  Many of the buildings still date from before the civil war, and buildings with damage from the war are highly sought after.
Tonight's dinner was an optional excursion to a restaurant which is in the oldest building in town.  The food was quite nice - although as usual in the USA there was far too much of it!  We ended up sitting with the three of the  'single' travellers - Rebecca from San Francisco, Bob from New Jersey, and Rob from Victoria.  We've all travelled a fair bit and had lots of stories to share - we had a good time.

Saturday 22 September - Day 32 - New York to Washington.

Got up early and caught a taxi to Penn Station.  Needless to say, because we were so early, everything went perfectly at the station - we had our luggage checked in with more than an hour to spare.
The train we caught was the Amtrak Carolinian - it goes from New York to Washington with about four stops, then continues on to Charlotte in North Carolina.  We took a business class seat, which cost basically the same as the economy air fare would have and to be honest I'd never go any other way.  The train is a bit old and the ride isn't at all smooth, but the seats were comfortable including a huge amount of leg room. The other real benefit is the luggage - the luggage allowance is far more generous than flying.
This afternoon is the technically the first day of the Cosmos coach tour, but it really only consists of arriving at the hotel and doing a bit of local exploration.  We're actually staying in Alexandria, just over the river in Virginia.  We went for a long walk and ended up seeing a lot of sights around the Alexandria Old Town - just lots of interesting little things like Robert E Lee's childhood home.
Not writing a lot tonight as we really really need to catch up on our sleep after a couple of really hectic days  :-)

Friday 21 September - Day 31 - New York

Once we finally got off the ship - see the previous entry for details - they put us onto a series of shuttle buses to take us a few hundred yards to collect our luggage and then go through customs.  Took a while but at least it was all air-conditioned.  Then we went outside into chaos.  We had planned to get a taxi but somehow we ended up on a bus.  First they said that we'd be dropped where we wanted to go in New York, but once they'd got us all on the bus, they told us we'd all be dropped at one place and would then have to get taxis.  Fortunately, the place they dropped us was only a block or so from our hotel, so we just walked there.
We had quite a chaotic afternoon - we needed to post home some souvenirs and warm clothes that we won't need any more, go and collect the tickets to Washington, buy an internet widget, and in my case stock up on some toiletries.  And, we needed to get this all done in time to go and see the Yankees game.
After some dramas we managed to get it mostly done.  Then we needed to get to the game - I had sorted out the instructions on how to get there via the subway, but what I didn't realise is that they feel absolutely no need to post any sort of information in the subway station about when your train will come, or even where.  However, Paul cornered a young man and asked him, and it turned out he was going to the game, so it all worked ok.
We were late arriving but many many people were still getting there.
The atmosphere once you're inside is just amazing - it's a huge stadium and caters to the American need for constant entertainment even more-so than at Angel stadium.  However, the real surprise was security - they were frisking everyone, if you left your seat you had to take your ticket with you and show it in order to get back.  There was more security here than on the Amtrak train we caught the next day!
Our seat was excellent - twelve rows from the front but with absolutely no chance of the people in front blocking the view: - no idea why the photo is sideways - I'll try to fix it sometime....

Anyway, we left the game and decided to get a taxi.  What we actually got was a hire car and we're pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be touting for custom there.  However, we got back to our hotel without any drama.
Next time we do this sort of thing, we have agreed that we will stay at least two nights in a row as a break between tours - this was just exhausting as we had to get up quite early to catch the train the next day.

I'm also not at all sure about whether I want to go back to New York - I'm going to think about that some more. It certainly won't be any time soon, as we're almost certain now that our next trip will be to the UK and Europe.

Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20 September - Day 29 and 30 - at sea

Nothing really to say about the last couple of sea days - we used them to totally chill out.  We blew some money at the casino, I went to a couple of "Enrichment Lectures", ate too much, all the usual things we do on a cruise  :-)

I've been gathering my thoughts about the whole cruise, and I'm posting them here mostly for my own reference later.

Embarking and Disembarking.  Bottom line - based on this one experience, the way Royal Caribbean deals with embarking is organised a whole lot better than on Princess or P&O.  However, disembarking was a completely different story.  It started off fine - we were organised in groups and were allowed to stay in our cabin until it was time to go and wait for departure.  However, they called our group to leave the ship *far* too early, and we got caught up with a crew drill of all things.  It took us more than an hour to get off the ship, and by then some tempers were fraying.

Food.  My standards are pretty low - just the fact that someone cooks the food and cleans up afterwards is heaven as far as I'm concerned  :-)
However, I found the food to be quite good, both in the Windjammer Buffet and in the dining room.  The only thing we learned to avoid is breakfast in the dining room - it's not so well organised, so unless you want to sit around for an hour or so you're better off at the buffet.
Like a lot of cruise lines now, as well as the old-fashioned set dining times, Royal Caribbean has a concept called 'My Time Dining' where you just show up in the dining room whenever you like and they seat you at random with other people.  They also recognise that some people like the idea of eating whenever the urge takes them, but also don't necessarily want to eat with other people, so they keep a stock of 'tables for two'.  Funny thing is though, for most of the cruise, we ended up getting a table for two, but then eating with the same three or four couples - all the others were Americans and we all ended up quite happily chatting each day anyway.  Thinking about it, we probably drove the wait-staff  nuts, as the 'tables for two' are in fairly high demand, usually by people who really don't want to talk to anyone except each other :-)


Cabin.  Our cabin is a "Superior Ocean View Cabin with Private Balcony" - basically at the higher end price-wise of the balcony cabins.  We have been in similar cabins on Princess and P&O, and this one compares quite favourably - it seems to be a little larger than most of our previous cabins, and it's set out quite well.  The balcony is a reasonable size - big enough for two comfortable chairs and a small table.  Nowhere near as big as the lovely Caribe deck ones on Princess, but also nowhere near as small as the tiny excuses for a balcony on for example the Pacific Jewel.  Also a three-seat sofa, as far as we can remember we've never had a sofa in a balcony cabin before (we did in the mini-suite on the Pacific Dawn).  And, even little things are just a bit better - eg the safe is actually big enough to put a couple of laptops in (not that we'd ever bother).


Wifi internet access - almost all of their documentation says that it's available everywhere, but it isn't. This is fairly important for us - not just because we're internet addicts but being away from home for so long we really need to be able to access the internet for banking etc.  There are a few hotspots around the ship but most of them are hopeless.  They're either in really inappropriate places such as the Windjammer Buffet (always crowded, so if you sit down and log on you're depriving someone of a place to have their meal!!) and the solarium (always humid / wet - there's a pool in the middle of it), and places where there are no seats - eg the library where there's only about 6 seats and they're invariably full, or Stargazers which has plenty of seats but is often closed for private functions. Apparently at the next refurbishment the wifi will be extended so that it's accessible in all cabins, but that's not until next year sometime.    Of course the actual access is still "cruise ship" standard which is roughly equivalent to dial-up!


Smoking.  Obviously we are far too accustomed to the 'no smoking inside' rules at home.  However, it's ridiculous to claim that 'some areas' in the Casino are smoking areas because all you need is one person to be smoking and the whole place stinks of it.  And, it's rarely more than one person (and quite often that one person isn't gaming at all, they're just smoking!!) - really with that sort of a minority RCI really need to reconsider just whose 'rights' they should be sticking up for. On the other hand, we were lucky with nearby cabins - apparently it's acceptable to smoke on the balcony, but no-one near to us did (not that we had a lot of days where the balcony was all that useful!)


Entertainment - we don't usually go to shows on cruises, and this one has been no exception.  The only organised events I have attended have been some 'Enrichment' lectures, and I've definitely been to worse ones.  The thing about going to a lecture on a cruise ship is that if the speaker is boring, the gentle rocking of the ship can so easily send you off to sleep, specially if you're drugged up on seasickness tablets.  Not a problem with any of these lectures - although the speaker was a little disorganised, the subject matter (Forensics and Criminal Investigations) was interesting to me, and as a former member of the DA office in Los Angeles he has a lot of inside knowledge about a lot of interesting cases.


Overall - I have to admit that it was somewhat of a disappointment, not because of the cruise line but because of the weather.  I'd never have dreamed that a cruise across the North Atlantic could be disrupted by a hurricane!  The real disappointment is of course that we missed seeing both the Faroe Islands and Newfoundland - it doesn't seem likely that we'll ever get to see either of them now.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday 16 - 18 September - Day 26 to 28 - at sea

Not a lot to say here.  The sea has gradually calmed down, although it's still quite cool.  Monday was a lousy day overall as it was foggy all day - but at the same time the 'apparent wind speed' was always around 60 miles per hour - far too cold and windy to go out on deck.  Tuesday was finally sunny for most of the day. 
I'd suspect that the captain may have had lots of complaints about missing St. John's - on Tuesday morning it got to the point where the 'Ship's Information' channel on TV completely stopped showing maps of where we are - because to anyone looking at the map, it seemed completely clear that we could have gone into St. John's.  The captain did his usual lunchtime broadcast and as part of it said that no matter how close it looks, we couldn't have gotten there until about 5pm - which is only an hour before we'd have to leave.
Sometimes when a ship misses ports on a cruise, they make a bit of a monetary gesture as an apology, but there's no mention of any such thing for us.  However, I have heard some passengers talk about getting lawyers to prepare letters about getting a refund of any port taxes we've paid for the two ports we've missed.  Personally I've got no idea if we paid port taxes and I'm certainly not wasting money on getting a lawyer to complain about it!!!
Anyway, as I'm typing this, it's just after 4pm on Tuesday.  Paul has gone up on deck to see if he can see land - according to the map we are fairly close to Canada at this point. I'm just hanging around waiting to go up to the hairdresser to have a haircut.  I didn't even bother asking how much they're going to charge, because I know it will be enormously expensive but I really don't have a choice - it's 5 weeks since it was cut so it's already becoming uncontrollable. 
Well, it's now a couple of hours later and the haircut was (1) well done, and (2) no more expensive than I'd pay at home.  I'm really pleased! 
Anyway, not much else to say so I'm off!!

Saturday 15 September - Day 25 - at sea

Well, I didn't top up the Travacalm with champagne, but just the same I slept quite late - at least for me.
We got up and had breakfast and then went to have a look at today's "sale" in the ship's store - today it was designer watches.  Lots of nice ones but nothing I really liked, so I didn't buy any.
We went and had a look at the photos that were taken yesterday and I was surprised and pleased - a number of them have turned out really nicely.
We then wandered down to the Casino to lose some money on the pokies.  While we were there, the captain made a really disappointing announcement - due to the weather conditions, we will not be able to stop in at Newfoundland either.  So, today is Saturday, and we're going to be at sea continuously until next Friday morning.  He's going to wait around here - to the east of Greenland and therefore sheltered from the worst of the weather - for as long as he can, and then make a dash for New York. 
This is really disappointing as we had some interesting shore excursions booked for Newfoundland, and to be honest, 6 days straight at sea is a little bit more that even I can completely enjoy.  However, there's no other choice - it's a bit too far to jump overboard and swim to Greenland :-)   I guess I'll be catching up on my reading - I've got a book to read about the Civil War which of course features in a few of the places we're going on the next leg of our travels.  And, although the internet access here is slow and expensive, it's good enough to allow me to buy more books for my Kindle, so I certainly won't die of boredom or anything!
There are also plenty of 'events' happening but to be honest Paul and I don't usually take part in too many of them.  However, there is a series of 'enrichment' lectures going on.  There's a man who used to work for the Los Angeles District Attorney office giving talks about forensics - he's not too bad at giving talks so I'll go to the others as well.
Tonight is 'formal night' so Paul and I will have to make a vague attempt at dressing up, as we want to eat in the dining room tonight. 

Friday 14 September - Day 24 - Reykjavik

No formal tours booked today.  After a nice sleep-in, we wandered off to breakfast and then decided to walk into the main shopping area of Reykjavik.  It was a fairly miserable walk there - cold and rainy - but the rain stopped once we got into the shopping area. Not a lot to say about the shops really, we spent a little money on souvenirs and looked in a few other shops then turned around and came home - again, walking in the rain. 
All up we walked about 10 Kilometres - probably about twice as far as we had planned - so when we got back we crashed.
We were due to leave port at around 5pm, and we left on time.  The captain announced that it isn't going to be smooth sailing tonight or tomorrow.  He is sailing towards Greenland tonight to try to get some shelter from another low pressure system, but even so we're apparently expecting a 5 - 6 metre swell.  As soon as I heard that I dosed up on Travacalm again  :-)
We had some photos taken by the ship's photographer tonight.  I have been a bit surprised at the lack of attempts to take our photo - on Princess and P&O they're always offering to take photos but on this cruise, not so much.
Hmm - as I'm typing (around 6:15pm on Friday) the sea is getting higher and higher - I've just heard the first round of creaking noises.  Maybe I'll top off the travacalm with a glass of champagne at dinner - that's an absolute guarantee that I'll go back to the cabin and sleep like a baby until tomorrow!
I'd like to go back to Iceland and spend a bit longer seeing the sights, but unfortunately it's not really on the way to anywhere for an Australian  :-)

Thursday 13 September - Day 23 - Reykjavik

Woke up this morning and the ship was docked in Reykjavik, finally  :-)
The plan for today was a privately arranged tour, organised through people on the Cruise Critic forum.  The original organiser arranged about 5 different tours over the two days we're in Reykjavik, but then she had to pull out of the cruise, so she passed them all on to another lady.  That lady in turn at some point decided that she would need 'captains' for each of the tours and I stupidly volunteered after no-one else would.  Never again! - it wasn't all that dramatic but it was a whole heap of stress I didn't need.
Anyway, the day started with us all standing around outside the ship, in the rain, waiting for our tour bus to arrive.  It did eventually, and we all got on the bus - including two people who weren't actually booked on our tour. I wouldn't have minded them staying, but they had already paid for a different tour and they'd have been really annoyed at having to pay again  :-)
Anyway, the first stop was what looks like a fairly mundane shopping centre (Thrastarlundur).  However, when you go inside, you can see that part of the floor is made of glass, and when you look down through it there's a rift in the earth.  Apparently they were going to build a four story building here - they had no idea that the rift existed until they started doing the foundations.  Once they found the rift, instead of abandoning the site they changed the plans to a single story building and made a feature of the rift - as well as the floor there are quite a few displays about earthquakes etc.

Looking down through the floor at the rift.

Next stop was the Kerio implosion crater. It was raining even more heavily by the time we got there, and absolutely no-one wanted to get off the bus, particularly since it looked like we were about to be shown an absolutely unimpressive sight.
Boy, were we wrong!
None of our photos do it justice - basically you walk up this little rise and then all of a sudden a huge crater appears at your feet, and way down at the bottom is a beautiful lake.  It must be a glorious sight in the sunshine.

Next two stops were waterfalls - Faxi and then Gulfoss.  Again, I'll let the pictures do the talking, first Faxi:

 And Gulfoss:

We also had lunch at Gulfoss - unfortunately we had to eat while sitting on the bus as there was nowhere else available.  Lunch was quite nice apart from the inclusion of some prawns - but Paul and I managed to swap his prawns for something from my plate without causing his allergy to kick in.
It's still raining at this point, and it seems to be getting colder - at each stop everyone is adding another layer of clothes :-)  While we were at Gulfoss, a bunch of about 6 or 7 Ford Expedition 'super-jeeps' pulled up.  They're for the more exciting sorts of excursions - they have tyres that seem to be about a metre wide and they can travel on snow, volcanic ash etc.  I was thinking that whoever was in them was going to be having a great time.  However, when we left Gulfoss, our guide told us that he had been talking to the guys running that tour, and he was told that it was a group of people who work for Sony, on a business trip.  Sounded really good until he said that they'll be camping out in tents tonight!!!  No free trip is worth that!!!
Anyway, next stop was Geysir - correct pronunciation by the way is gay-zeer with a rolled 'r' at the end.  The original Geysir is first mentioned in literature in the 1200's.  It now only bubbles water slowly, but there's still one that shoots water around 35 metres into the air, every 5 minutes or so.  I managed to be standing down-wind from it when it went off - I didn't get very wet at all but I still smelled of sulphur for a while.....

 The one above is 'Litli Geysir' - the water doesn't spout up into the air but it's constantly boiling and bubbling.  The two shots below are the one I managed to get caught by:

Last stop was the main reason that I wanted to go on this tour - the Thingvellir National Park.  We went into a spot where you can see and walk through the mid-Atlantic ridge - the place where Iceland is being gradually pulled apart by tectonic movements.  And actually, it's not that gradual - around 2 cm per year which is pretty fast on geologic terms.  Here are a few pictures:

Still raining when we got back to Reykjavik and onto the ship, but it stopped after a while, so we went for a walk - just to the visitors centre to buy some internet access from them (still expensive but not as bad as the ship's internet).  Then we went for a bit of a walk towards the city but we decided it was going to get too cold, so we went back to the ship.

Wednesday 12 September - Day 22 - "at sea"

Overnight we made it to Iceland - actually I believe we've been tracking around in circles outside Reykjavik since last night some time.  The seas aren't all that big any more, the elevators are all open and it's much more like business as usual.
That is, unless you're on Deck 9 - as we are.  Deck 9 passengers woke up this morning to toilets that wouldn't flush and hot water taps that didn't live up to their promise - cold water only.  All was better again by about 9am, but it wasn't very nice in the meantime.  Still, at least the toilet didn't leak all over (and under!!) the floor like the one we had on the Pacific Dawn!
We went to something called a "slot pull" this morning - a group of people get together and contribute a set amount of money which is then loaded up into a slot machine and then played out. There are apparently lots of variations on it, but the way this one worked was that we put in $15 each (which came to more than $450), then each of us had 5 $3 turns on the machine.  The hope of course is that at the end, you have more money than what you started with - but whatever happens, you then split the money up between the players.  We got $11 each back, and the only real beneficiary was a charity which is going to get the extra 30c each of us could have been given.  I shan't bother with this again though, the slot machines are so incredibly boring compared to the pokies I'm accustomed to playing - the Americans can have the slot machines all to themselves  :-)
I'm writing this part of the blog at about 3pm, and we have spent the whole day at anchor outside Reykjavik.  We weren't due to arrive until tomorrow morning, but the captain has managed to get a berth at 5pm today, so we might be able to leave the ship and have a quick look around Reykjavik this evening.
Later update - nope, still going round in circles.  The wind has picked up again, we can't dock until the Crystal Symphony - another cruise ship - has left the dock we need to tie up to.  Crystal Line cruises are very expensive, and their ships are much smaller (and therefore less powerful) than the one we're on.  Basically in this wind it would be too risky for them to try to leave port, so we just have to wait until they can go.  Latest news is that they're hoping to try to leave again around 10pm.  In the meantime, the Captain has backed our ship off shore a little - I'd guess that we're now a few yards over 3 miles off-shore, because that's the limit that lets them open the shops and the casino on the ship!  I have to say though at this point - about 8:30pm - there's no real sign of the wind slowing down - the waves seem to be quite high and choppy.

Still struggling with my ankle - putting it up whenever I get a chance!

Tuesday 11 September - Day 21 - at sea instead of visiting Klaksvick

At breakfast this morning, we were seated with 6 other people - two Danes and four Americans.  We actually had quite a nice time - I'm pretty sure the waiters were about to kick us all out of the dining room by the time we left  :-)
Apart from that though, we had a deliberate 'nothing' day - which is pretty much how we like to spend our days on a cruise anyway.
The captain warned us that the seas are going to be rough today, and getting rougher.   He was right - the waves are around 6 - 7 metres high!  They've had to stop some of the lifts from running due to the movement of the ship, and even the ones that are running are struggling - quite often you'll get into a lift and even though there are only 4 or 5 people in it, it will tell you that the lift is overloaded.  The best one was when Paul and I got out of a lift, no-one else got in, but it wouldn't move because it thought it was overloaded.  These are definitely the roughest seas I've ever encountered on a cruise - there's a constant rolling of the ship and various bumping / squeaking / grinding noises which can be really disturbing.  However, for a change, I've managed to master sea-sickness with generous doses of Travacalm!
And, again, what a surprise - we had dinner, came back to the cabin, and crashed.

Monday 10 September - Day 20 - Lerwick

By the time we woke up, the ship was docked in Lerwick.
However, we did have an advantage today - the 3UK internet hotspot we bought at the start of the holiday works here.  Yay!  Last time though, we won't be back in the UK on this trip.
We went on a shore excursion in the morning - the main part of the tour was to see the Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement.  It's a fascinating place, there are ruins ranging over thousands of years in age.  The only disappointment was that instead of letting us use their individual audio guides, we had a local tour guide.  He was quite well informed about most things to do with the Shetlands, but he admitted that he wasn't really an expert on the Jarlshof site so he was pretty much reading from a script for that part.  We had a big group of people and it was really windy so I couldn't really hear everything he said.  I got the gist of what it was all about though.

We also got shown a few of the highlights in and around Lerwick - it's a very nice place.  Here are some of the sights.

 Doesn't look that interesting, but in fact we're driving across the airport runway here - one of the main roads goes straight across the runway.

 First view of Lerwick from the ship - it's really a lovely place

 Brilliance of the Seas at Lerwick

And of course, the famous Shetland Ponies

We also managed to deal with a few humdrum daily things in Lerwick.  We posted some more souvenirs home, then topped up on supplies that would otherwise cost a fortune (or simply not be available) on-board - things like panadol, bandaids, etc.
By the time we did this, it was time to go back to the ship and get ready to leave.
Later in the afternoon we got a disappointing broadcast from the captain - we won't be stopping in the Faroes because of the weather.  The stop in the Faroes isn't the issue, we could stop there without trouble.  However, what's left of Hurricane Leslie is currenty heading straight for Iceland.  If we don't get there before the hurricane, we won't be able to dock there - in fact if we stop at the Faroes we will not only miss Iceland but we'd also miss Newfoundland because we'd have to go a long way south from the Faroes before we could head west again.
So, it's disappointing, but no cruise line will ever guarantee that you'll get to see all the advertised ports, and missing the Faroes is a much "less worse" option than missing Iceland and Newfoundland.
We went to the Windjammer restaurant for dinner; basically just a buffet with a pretty good range of options.
Needless to say, I crashed straight after dinner, again....
BTW, there definitely are other Australians on this cruise - on the excursion yesterday some people were discussing the AFL finals in great detail  :-)