Missbrightstar

Day 6 - Akureyri cont'd

After the trip we strolled back to the ship, lunch in cafe promenade then a mooch around the ship

More ship pics

Day 6 - Akureyri

We had room service again for breakfast and set off for our third and final whale watching trip. It was about a 10-15 min walk from the docked ship which was fine with us but not those with mobility problems especially as the trip was deemed as 'easy'. Managed to get seats on the open deck which was good as it was a long trip out on the fjord. The captain was unsure if we would see anything and given we'd been out for an hour I was starting to lose hope. Eventually the captain heard there was a humpback out near another whale watching boat so we continued with a warning that by the time we got there we might not have much time to spend there.

In the distance as we approached it turned out there were two humpbacks which ended up swimming around the boat - words cannot describe how spectacular and amazing this was....

This is the strawberry lava flow

When we got there at 11 pm

There was a white tent set up to the left of the line with hot chocolate. They were not handing it out, you had to have someone in your group go in and get it.

What a good idea - but it wasn't set up between 830-930 [emoji20]

Did you grab a cup of hot chocolate in the tent they had set up on the pier? I thought that was a nice touch.

No they weren't giving anything out whilst we were queuing [emoji20]

Day 5/6!

We retired to our cabins just after midnight and for some bizarre reason I decided to go out onto the balcony where I saw a weird white band in the sky. We got dressed and headed upto deck 12 - we spent the next hour with a lovely guy called Greg from New York watching the northern lights until they suddenly disappeared... amazing

Day 5 - evening

We ate in the MDR, quiz in the Imperial Lounge at 8, Lyric Theatre at 9pm for the show which was Zoe Tyler from Loose Women (excellent singer) and then the 70's party on the Royal promenade. We had an excellent evening and everyone was up for a good time - Cuddy made the 70's party!

I'm somewhere on there lol - it was repeated on the tv

Day 5 - continued

We ate in the MDR for lunch. Variety of salad, cottage pie, curry, roast pork, cajun chicken etc etc

We spent the afternoon exploring and watching the sail away

Day 5 - Reykjavic until 2pm

We were up and out for our next whale watching trip at 815 so we ordered toast, juice, fruit and pastries for breakfast.

It was the same trip as the day before just a different time of day. We saw even more minke whales and also white beaked dolphins who were swimming around the boat

Room service

Day 4 ended with a very long queue (about an hour) in the cold to get back on the ship. I got a sandwich from room service for tea and retired to bed!

I've just come off Adventure with this package and they have between 8-10 cartons of mixer which they blend with ice and they were lovely. I didn't enjoy the lava flow drinks as I don't like coconut.

My faves were strawberry, wildberry and mango. The mojito was also good

Virgin strawberry daiquiri

Virgin mango

The trip was good - lots of sightings of minke whales.

However I promise the whale pictures do get better as we did two more trips - I'm just keeping you im suspense!!

The system for going on RCI trips worked well. The pre booked tickets were delivered to our cabin on day 2 and it had the meeting point which for us was the Lyric Theatre apart from Studio B once. Only annoyance was fellow passengers shoving past to rush to the bus! No need at all - you'd think the coach was going to depart without us. In reykjavik it was a good 10 min was from the gangway to the waiting coaches which was fine with us but a bit misleading for my mum and aunt the next day on an 'easy' tour with limited walking advertised. We assumed this was because there was another ship in the dock next to the terminal

Get ready to be bored with pics of whales!! The boat was about a 5-10 min coach drive and you had the option to wear the bright red head to toe outfit but we were already prepared with warm clothes and even though we were out from 430-830 it was just nice and not too cold

Day 4 - arrival in Reykjavik at 1.30pm

The morning was spent with breakfast in cafe promenade, watching my dad (62 year old) rock climbing and then playing mini golf before our whale watching trip at 4pm

What was your itinerary? Hope you can post lots of photos - thanks

This was our route map. We had an overnight in Reykjavik

Oh wow, didn't know there was a jewellery workshop! Was there a charge for this? Did you get to keep all the stuff afterwards?

 

Will definitely have to keep my eye out for workshops as I love crafty things!

Hi there was no charge for this one and yes we brought the kit away after. They also did scrapbooking and card making but we were busy doing something else - one of them did have a small charge

Evening

Mdr for evening meal, quiz at 8 in the Imperial Lounge followed by the main show in the Lyric Theatre featuring Louise Dearman straight from Wicked in londons west end. She was incredible. Next was the logo and advert quiz in the imperial lounge - as you may have gathered we love quizzes!

We went in the casino for a short while but the stench of smoke was making my throat sore. I asked two members of staff where the non smoking area was and I got a vague answer and point of the arm to the area near schooner bar but people were smoking there. To be honest no matter whether you were in the casino or entrance to the bars at either end you could smell the smoke and the next morning the smell from our clothes had made our cabin smell. Seriously other than 1 rude member of staff and the casino we had nothing at all to complain about

Heading back to our room we found Bobby Davro doing an impromptu set at the piano in schooner bar with the residenr pianist Tony B - he did an amazing version of candle in the wind by Elton John as a tribute to Princess Diana. He also got Louise up to sing as well which was amazing!

Day 3 - at sea

We ate in the MDR for breakfast buffet every day apart from on trip days where we ordered room service. We don't like the hurriedness of buffets first thing on a morning and found the mdr better for us

Round 2 of the progressive quiz was next but we didn't score very well! Next up was a lecture on Reykjavik by Dr Alan Fisher in the Lyric Theatre. It was informative but we found his accent to be very droning

Lunch: two of us went to cafe promenade (chicken roti!!) And 2 went to the wind jammer. We played bingo which was $33/$23 I think depending if you got 4 or 6 tickets. We decided not to play again as too expensive for such a short activity. 4 games - first playing for a line, second playing for 2 lines then the final two tickets each playing for a house. I only needed one number for $350 but the whole thing only took about 30 mins. We said we'd rather spend our money elsewhere

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching people spending crazy amounts of money in the art auction, watching dolphins from our balconies and grabbing a chicken roti sandwich from Cafe Promenade! Delicious! We got ready for formal night - we wore trousers with a smart blouse and my dad shirt trousers and tie and were worried we might be underdressed but this was not the case. Everyone looked smart and I would say at least 40% weren't wearing tuxedos/long dresses

Food was yummy - lobster bisque, fillet of beef then chocolate souffle. Here we learned a tip from a fellow diner about ordering the sherbert (uk = sorbet) alongside your dessert which was a lovely refreshing end to our meals!

Bobby Davro was the headline act in the Lyric Theatre and we loved him. He was very funny.

Day 2 cont'd

We decided to take part in the progressive quiz which was a good choice as it was a really good laugh. Hosted by Cuddy in the Imperial Lounge on deck 5 meant you could carry pastries and hot chocolate along to enjoy whilst we worked our brains!

The cruise critic meet and mingle was at 11.30 in Jesters and was a good laugh and lots of royal caribbean freebies in the raffle. They also provided complimentary soft drinks and a buffet which was a nice touch. Fruit punch for me!

We then attended the jewellery making workshop in the Blue Moon lounge on deck 14 which was the only time on the entire cruise where we came across an obnoxious member of staff called Sam who was part of the Cruise Director staff. She was downright rude and her attitude stank. At no point during the hour was any advice given on how to do anything but luckily I knew the basics. An older lady joined me as you needed to work in pairs and even I was baffled about the instructions so we asked her what to do. Ahe knelt down as if to help but then really aggressively said she didn't have time to spend 15 minutes with us as she had 20 other people to deal with! At no point did we ask for 15 minutes. After getting no help she moved to the next table and snapped at them too. We managed to make a necklace each as I knew what to do and the lady went away super happy saying I should have been running the class!

Day 2 - at sea

We ordered room service for breakfast which came bang on 9am and tipped a couple of dollars. Really enjoyed the room service throughout the cruise and it always arrived on time

The rest of the day was spent exploring, unpacking and chilling out.

We had asked for a table of 4 for 6pm dining and it wasn't until we arrived at the dining room we made a rookie mistake and realised the dining table number was on our seapass and we had 2 different tables. Turns out the dining reservations hadn't been linked and we were on two tables of 6. There was nothing we could do for the first 3 nights so we sat on a table of 10 who all turned out to be lovely. We got a message in our cabin on day 4 to say they had a table for 6 with just us four on.

Here are some more pics:

Crab starter with lobster

Chicken curry (all of the indian food was delicious)

Hi yes there was a kettle, milk, tea, coffee and sugar available. The leaflet we got upon boarding said 130 then an announce was made. Our luggage arrived about 430pm

Our cabin:

We were in 8224 and 8226 (category D2 superior ocean view balcony). We had booked guaranteed balcony cabins and we were thrilled with the location and room itself. Nice sized shower with a hard cubicle, lots of storage space and nice size dressing table. Only negative was the glass table which was more of a hinderence.

Room pics