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  :-)