emeraldcity

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We paid the $72 each for the two of us and when I was sitting in traffic just before the terminal there was a taxi next to me that had the rate of 125 Euros painted on the side for the same service.

They saved the best for the last. I hadn't research Prins Christian Sund, so I didn't have any preconceived notions. It was a discovery at every turn. From the moment my roommate whipped the curtains aside to display the view till the time we left the sund (about 8 hours later), it was majestic ... stunning ... awesome. It was the highlight of the cruise. And after so much rain and fog on this trip, we were finally blessed with a clear sunny day. Perfect for taking those pictures. This experience alone is worth every dime we spent to get here.

The scheduled itinerary was to have us at sea for one day (Sunday) at this point, followed by a cruise through Prins Christian Sund on Monday and then port calls on Tuesday and Wednesday. We were soon to learn that there would be some changes due to weather and icebergs. We ended up with two sea days, a port call on Tuesday and the Sund on Wednesday. Since none of my group had tours booked, we didn't have any re-arranging to do. And we are big fans of sea days, so we enjoyed the bonus day on board. We went to bed to the sound of the foghorn, we rolled over in the middle of the night to the sound of the foghorn, we woke up to the sound of the foghorn. The fog lifted from time to time, and then descended again. Taking a stroll on the outer decks held little appeal, but we found plenty to do inside. Doreen had packed Rummikub and we spent many afternoons playing that. It was a bit challenging to locate a table of adequate size, but we made do with tiny bar tables pushed together, if necessary. And there were trivia games to test our knowledge with. It is interesting to note that the Voyager had no prizes to award. Apparently Royal Caribbean has run out of keychains. I know that is hard to believe, but there you have it. Despite the advertised lack of prizes, they still packed the room for trivia games. There was also the He said/She said game every sea day in the Star Lounge. This pitted the ladies against the guys, with a certificate to be awarded to all members of the winning team ... more on that later. When we finally got a chance to step foot on Greenland soil, it was in the colorful town of Qaqortoq. Frankly, the number one topic the previous day was how to pronounce Qatortoq. We came up with something we think was pretty close, but I was careful not to test it on the locals. I'm sure they get plenty of chuckles from the various attempts they overhear. This was a "wander the town" kind of stop. There were carvings in the stone as you made your way out of the port area. And there was a big plastic boot that just screamed to be part of a photo shoot. I couldn't help notice that a large number of apartments had their windows cracked open. Apparently, it must have been a rather warm day by Greenland standards. There was a limited amount of shopping and the stores were doing a brisk business. From what I could see, much of what was for sale was made locally ... but that's just a guess. As for me, I got a genuine piece of Greenland for my souvenir. I found a great piece of granite lying just below the big plastic boot. It even matches my new bathroom countertop. And I have no idea where my countertop came from, but I clearly have enough evidence now to declare it "probably" came from Greenland. Of course, someone is bound to post that there are no quarries in Greenland and ruin my fun. And that stone stairway nestled in the grass ... doesn't it just beg to be climbed?

Best? Miami for the sail-away experience. You feel like the whole city is helping you celebrate your sail-away as they wave at you from the causeway. First runner-up is definitely Sydney.

If it's a quantum class ship, you might want to think twice about choosing a balcony guarantee. We got 6186 on the Odyssey. The price difference was considerable, so I accept this was the result and we didn't let it spoil our vacation.

I used Royal Excursions. I looked at private ones and they were scheduled to return us rather close to sailing time. It wasn't worth the risk.

Day 2 in Reykjavik was to be our Hop-on/Hop-off day to explore the city. Armed with the information that the buses run every 20-30 minutes, we set off down the pier to find the stop where we would catch the bus. It is not very well marked. This is one of those times when you have to be willing to ask for directions ... and I'm a girl; I don't have a problem doing that. In any event, our bus showed up about 20 minutes after we found the stop and we hopped on. The grand plan was to take the bus to Stop 9 (the iconic church), and then walk back down through the town doing some shopping and exploring and perhaps getting something to eat ... on the way to Stop 7. We would then take the bus back to the ship getting a chance to see the rest of the city and listen to the recorded tour. Since the ship was Stop 16, we figured as long as we got a bus shortly after 3:00 we'd easily be back before the 4:30 all-aboard. I'd seen plenty of pictures of the church so the exterior loses a bit of the impact when you've done a bit too much planning. But the inside was a real find. Simplistic and Peaceful. I was suitably impressed. I'm not posting a picture of that ... I don't want to spoil it for you. I was quite taken by the statue of Leif Ericsson ... very well done. So then we wandered down toward Stop 7, poking our nose in some shops and leaving some money behind. Eventually we arrived at Stop 7 before 3:00 and waited for our bus. By 3:20 we were still waiting, and stress was starting to become part of the experience. We huddled and decided to see if we could get a taxi. The nearby police station was our target and Doreen volunteered to play the damsel-in-distress to get them to call us 2 taxies. They grudgingly agreed and four of us crowded into the first one, while the fifth member of our party agreed to share his taxi with 3 women who had joined us by this time (they also had planned on taking the Hop-on bus back to the ship). As our taxi pulled away at 3:40, I looked back at the bus stop where several other cruisers were still waiting and wondered how long they'd hold out before they decided it was time to walk. Sorry about all that boring detail, but I want to make others aware that counting on that bus may not be in your best interest. So we got back in time and got several more photos as the ship pulled away. Next stop -- Greenland.

Our next stop was the geyser area. I had been warned there was no guarantee the main geyser would spout any higher than a few feet, but it put on a relatively impressive show and everyone was suitable impressed. Sorry I can't provide any pictures of the great moment. I had equipped myself with a portable charger for my phone but left the charger cord back in the cabin. No one around me on the bus had one for an iPhone ... or else they just weren't feeling particularly neighborly. In any event, I decided to conserve my remaining power for our last stop. After all, I've seen geysers before, but I've never stood on the edge of a tectonic plate -- that was the picture I needed to take home with me. We headed for our last stop while the sun was slowly setting behind the overcast that had traded places with the periodic rain all day. Fortunately, dusk lingers at this latitude and we arrived at our destination with plenty of light left to explore this marvel. I took quite a few pictures of the edge of the cliff and the cracks made by the forces of the plate movements ... but they don't tell much of a story. They are simply little squares of a vast panorama. You have to stand in that spot and visually absorb the entire vista left and right to get a sense of the amazing piece of this planet that you have the privilege to visit. It really can't be described. The only picture that makes any sense is the one right behind the edge of the cliff where there is a huge cleft in the rock and everyone took turns getting their picture taken there. Our time there was brief, but to me it was the best stop of the day. Perhaps it was even my favorite place in Iceland. It was a unique experience for me and I still marvel whenever I look back and remember those moments. Of course, the other iconic thing to do in Reykjavik is the Blue Lagoon. Two members of our party did do an excursion that same time to go there and they said it was a wonderful experience. One of them was pretty hesitant about going in the first place but he reported back that he's so glad he did and he really enjoyed it. We headed back to Reykjavik and arrived back at the ship sometime after 9:00. Mind you, there were 5 buses doing the Golden Circle and a great number of buses doing other excursions. Our Blue Lagoon folks got back shortly after we did. And Royal Caribbean made sure we were taken care of. As we got off the buses into the cold, there was a table set up before the gangway serving hot chocolate. An officer was announcing that the Windjammer would be open until. "Until what?" we asked. "Until..." he replied. The security scanning set-up was located inside a bit so that people weren't standing on the gangway in the lousy weather waiting for people to get through screening. We dumped out coats in the cabin and went up to get something to eat ... and found that it wasn't a partial buffet awaiting us. The entire Windjammer was stocked with a wide variety of dinner offerings and plenty of desserts. We thanked every member of the crew we saw up there ... repeatedly. They don't get paid extra when they have to give up their free evening or their chance to go to bed early since they have to be up before dawn.

The ship arrived in Reykjavik at 2:00 in the afternoon, by which time vast hoards of passengers were trying to all get into the Royal Theater at the same time. I really question the sanity of the excursion gurus for setting up so many excursions with identical departure times. Obviously they can't get all of us off at the same time. And since we arrived during a unrelenting downpour, the decision was made to pull the buses up closer ... which meant they could only board 5 buses at a time. My excursion was supposed to depart at 2:30. We finally got called about 4:00. We were thanked repeatedly for our patience and told we would be compensated. I'm not sure what they meant by compensation, but I was pretty sure we were being served empty promises. I did ask about 3:30 if the Windjammer would be open when our 5 hour tour got back, because we were certainly going to miss our dinner time. Of course, nobody knew. (Windjammer closing time on the Voyager was 8:30.) Our group was set to do the iconic Golden Circle Tour. Once our number was called, we headed out into the pouring rain and hustled to the waiting buses. Then off we went through countryside consisting of rolling hills and very little vertical vegetation. The first stop was the Gollfoss Waterfall. This one was not a roadside attraction. There was a considerable downhill walk against a very stiff headwind to get down to the point where you could view the water falling into the gorge. A better view was undoubtedly had by taking the stairway down into the gorge, but I opted for the clifftop view, a couple quick pictures and then the tailwind pushing me back up that walkway to the nice warm, windless gift shop. I didn't buy anything, but I pretended I might, to recover from the bit of adventure I'd just experienced. Our guide insisted it wasn't windy that day. I compare that nonsense to the guy who drives a top-down convertible down the freeway on a 50-degree day.

There was no wait to get the cable car up. Mind you, we let the vast hoards rush off the ship first and leisurely disembarked about 3 hours after arriving off Santorini.

Thank you. I'll see if I can figure out how to do that. I got a guy who's pretty tech savvy.

This was the night I saw a green glimmer that was the northern lights ... sort of. I've seen some truly amazing pictures of the northern lights, but they didn't perform for me. I even suited up in my warmest gear and headed out to the bow when the night was clear and Doreen's app said we were in a prime location to see them. We didn't see them. We heard of others who were more fortunate, but their odds probably improved once I went back inside.

OK. Moving on. The last stop was the lava labyrinth. Completely unique, as far as I am concerned. I've walked across lava fields before but nothing like this, where towers of jagged lava are all around you as you walk the path that leads through the labyrinth. Then it was time to head back ... past the roadside waterfall, over the mountains and down to the ship. And she set sail at dusk ... and dusk seemed to last a really long time in Iceland.

Yeah. I don't think that worked either. I'm open to advice on how to post a video.

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I tried posting the video of the waterfall. I don't think it worked.

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There are a large number of shore excursions to choose from so you have to choose carefully. I sorted through the options with my key objective in mind. I wanted to see waterfalls and geothermal activity. There are so few places in the world that have mineral springs and bubbling mud and streams of steam escaping from the ground. I've been to Yellowstone and I knew this wasn't going to be on that scale, but I knew it would be amazing in it's own right and I wanted to experience those sights. So I selected the Jewels of the North excursion. And yes, one can also choose to book something with a private company, but my appetite for that sort of thing has suffered considerably in the past couple of years. If you book it with Royal Caribbean and there's a cancellation, they handle the refunds effortlessly. So we set off from the ship and circled around to the other side of the fjord, offering us some pretty decent photos of the ship docked in Akureryi. We headed inland to our first stop -- Goddfoss Waterfall. It's an amazing thing that nature situated the waterfall right by the main road, so you can actually see it from the bus, but they stopped anyway and let us out to venture closer for pictures. There were a number of angles for those who wanted to get closer, but I was happy to experience the incredible force of the water from the easiest vantage point. I'll try to post a video, since a simple screen grab of a waterfall doesn't do it justice. You have to hear the rushing water and feel the force of the current as it rushes over the brink. Our next stop was at a lake that was nice, but not worth the experience of having to deal with the midges that are attracted to that water. I had read the warnings that a face net was a good idea as the midges were bothersome. But I reasoned that it was so late in the season, that they should be done spawning and bothering people. Besides, I had so many other things to pack, did I really want to buy something else on Amazon.com? Yeah, the net would have been a plus here. But even if I had the face net, I think I would have voted to give this stop a pass. Our next stop was on the other side of the lake. They took us to a restaurant for a snack, which was a sandwich and something to drink. This restaurant boast floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a view of the lake ... without the midges. So again, they could have skipped the midges experience and just brought us here. Unless of course, the intent is to insure we get the full experience of what life is like for those who live near a lake in Iceland. Our next stop was the geothermal area ... and that calls for another video. I saw the pictures beforehand when choosing my shore excursion in the comfort of my house, but those pictures didn't have the impact of standing on the edge of the thin crust of ground that covered the hot steam rising from deep in the earth. I do apologize that I can't also deliver the scents that go along with the video. To get the full effect you need to crack open a dozen rotten eggs and scatter them across your desk before you run the video.

In order to get to Akureyri, Iceland, we had to cross the Arctic Circle. This is, of course, an occasion that needs to be marked with a certain amount of tomfoolery. Hence, there is the Blue Nose Ceremony. King Neptune shows up to officiate at the rites of passage ... and a hapless junior officer is chosen as the sacrificial lamb for all of us. His gleeful fellow officers seize him and toss him into the pool and then all who choose can crowd forward to have blue paint swabbed on their nose. I do not do blue paint ... I simply photograph people who do blue paint. You will note that King Neptune is appropriately dressed for the weather and his lovely young assistant is not. I hope she got paid more than he did.

I'm not certain, but friends of mine walked off and made it to the airport in enough time to change their Delta flight to one that left before 11:00. That exceeds my comfort zone, but they pulled it off.

One final photo ... as we sailed away from Norway and into the North Sea, I caught this one.

This isn't so much a review, as it is an introspective look back at one of the most unique itineraries I've ever taken. Your mileage may vary. I joined a group of cruise friends (we initially met on the Brilliance Spring TA in 2016). Most of us hadn't seen each other in three years and as amazing as this trip was, the best part was being reunited with my friends after such a long time. We arrived in Copenhagen three days early from our respective corners of the world and managed to get in a number of major attractions before boarding day. We did the hop-on/hop-off bus one day and visited Rosenborg Castle at one of the stops. I had missed out on doing that my previous visit and it was on my hit list. It didn't exactly deliver the "wow" I was expecting ... I think because it's decorated in such dark colors. But I suppose it was all the rage in it's day. I was surprised at how close they let you get to the crown jewels. I actually slapped my phone right up against the glass for a photo and nobody rushed up and bundled me off to a police van. We took one of the canal boat tours and had lunch at one of the open air eateries in Nyhavn. Since the boat tour provides for views of the famous Little Mermaid from the back, we also managed to check her out by land from the front (this is a Hop-on/Hop-off stop). We also visited Tivoli Gardens. It was nice, but I'm not sure it was worth the hype. As you can see, we didn't stray much from the beaten path (except maybe that evening we headed down a series of side streets to find that Thai Restaurant on Google Maps). And, of course we visited the iconic spot all Copenhagen Royal Caribbean cruisers visit ... the Pharmacia for our covid tests. Tests and Passports in hand, we boarded the Voyager of the Seas on September 4th and set sail for Kristiansand, Norway. This wasn't my first time in this port and I had done the "wander the town" thing last time. If this is the sort of thing others like, I can recommend Ravnedalen Park, which is within walking distance of the port. This time I wanted to see something more of Norway, so I joined Doreen and we set off on a RCI Excursion to Setesdal Mineral Park. An hour's drive through some stunning scenery brought us to a deserted parking lot. I was certain they had closed for the season from the looks of it. But the guide led us around back and they were expecting us ... all 26 of us. We had the place to ourselves. What an incredible find! An old feldspar mine has been converted into a museum of crystalline minerals from all over the world. They used mine cars as display cases in some places. Old mining machinery was still scattered about with display cases placed between them. The delicate nature of some of the crystals blew me away. How did they transport them without breaking the fibers? There were 5 different rooms in the mine to explore and I could have spent more time, but one doesn't want to be the last person on the bus. Ours was an afternoon tour and we returned to the ship just before sail-away. They were apparently counting us as we got off the bus "Yeah. That's all 26 of them. Now we just have to wait for the two from the airport."