The final leg of our European journey started in Southampton, England, where we boarded the beautiful Norwegian Star for our tour of Scotland, Norway, and Iceland. As we understand it from the crew on the ship, the Norwegian Star was built for Asian audiences, and as a result has some unique design features. We found the layout and decorations of our room and the entire ship to be lovely - particularly the opera house-style main theater, definitely the most beautiful we've seen.
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| The decorated part of the outside of the ship |
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| Our stateroom - Aaron successfully bid to get us an upgrade to a balcony room! |
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| The ornate entrance to the theater - unfortunately we couldn't really capture the grandeur of the theater itself in a photo |
Most of our ports on this cruise were tender ports, and we discovered that at least this ship (not sure if it is common across Norwegian's fleet) uses its own lifeboats as tender boats! This was our first time ever entering a lifeboat on a cruise, and it was interesting to see what it was like.
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| Entering the lifeboat from the ship |
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| The helmsman of the lifeboat sat in the bulge at the top; if this were an emergency, they would fold down the platform behind him to create additional seating |
Some last comments about the ship before we move on to the destinations...as I mentioned, the ship was lovely, and the dining venues were decent and food good, but the rest of the ship-based experience we felt was kind of meh. Our stateroom attendant was one of the worst we've had (a shock after our amazing one on Princess!), showing up late every day to clean our room, somehow always managing to be IN our room when we came back to it, and generally having a bad attitude toward helping us with things we needed. The cruise director was absolutely the worst we've had - as far as we can tell, she did the bare minimum for her job. She was cheerful but she didn't do a daily show and put minimal effort into the game shows she was hosting. We also felt nickel and dimed everywhere we went - which I suppose makes sense given that Norwegian tends to be cheaper and offers this 'free at sea' package to all guests, which means they have to be making money somewhere else!
Our first port of call was Newhaven, for Edinburgh. We'd already been to Edinburgh a couple times, so we decided to do our own thing and explore outside the city a bit. The highlight of this was a trip to Cramond Island, the causeway to which is only exposed for 4 hours centered on low tide. Fortunately for us, low tide occurred right after our ship anchored, so we were able to take a bus out to the beach and walk across the causeway to the island! Neat!
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| Walking along the causeway to the island. The large concrete bits to the right are what remains of an anti-torpedo boat wall from World War II. |
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| Standing on the island looking across the old WWII fortifications and the causeway to the mainland in the distance. |
We finished up at Cramond Island with plenty of time before the ship departed, so we took a bus into the center of Edinburgh and visited a few sites we hadn't seen before - the National Museum of Scotland, the Scottish National Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery. All were great! They weren't the equal of their counterparts in London, but still reminiscent of those in London and very well done.
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| The National Museum had a viewing area on its roof, from which you had a great view of Edinburgh Castle. |
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| Aaron was very excited about this meteorite that they allowed you to touch! |
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| The National Museum was home to the taxidermized Dolly - the first mammal to be cloned from adult cells. |
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| My favorite painting at the National Gallery - the picture doesn't do it justice, but the stag looked amazingly 3D when you saw it in person. |
Our second port was Invergordon, for Inverness. I had been to Inverness before but Aaron had only driven through on his way to a business trip. We took the bus into Inverness and then on to Urquhart Castle, which I had seen as a child. It was SO different! They've added a visitor center, informative signs, and walking paths. It is a popular tourist destination now, rather than a hidden gem on the roadside. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this, and our purchased bus tickets did not allow enough time to explore all the new information as deeply as we would have liked, but we still enjoyed the visit.
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| Aaron 'swimming' in Loch Ness, as he calls it whenever he touches the water. |
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| An overview of Urquhart Castle |
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| Back in Invergordon - the whole downtown had buildings with beautiful and huge painted murals |
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| Invergordon's real claim to fame seems to be as a construction/ repair center for oil rigs - we think these were bases for oil rigs all lined up. If you zoom in close you can see a 2-story building in the middle of the front of the structures, to give you an idea of scale! |
Next up: Lerwick, Scotland! Here we took our only guided tour on this cruise - a visit to Scalloway Castle and Museum and a Shetland Pony farm! We ended the tour with plenty of time to tour Lerwick itself, where we saw all the sights - Fort Charlotte, the Shetland Museum, and Clickimin Broch.
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| Leaving with the tour group was interesting - they routed us through the bowels of the ship to board our tender boat |
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| Overview of Scalloway - the whole island a series of rolling green hills with the occasional house. |
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| Scalloway Castle - closed for renovation |
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| Shetland Ponies!! They were quite friendly and came right up to the fence. |
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| Clickimin Broch - they don't know for sure how this was used or why it was built, but it was certainly fun to climb all over and explore! |
At this point our only-slightly-chilly explorations ended and we headed to the lands of cold wetness. Our first stop in Norway was in Bergen, where the highlight of the town seemed to be the funicular railroad to the top of Mt. Floyen. The area at the top of the mountain had all sorts of entertainment - a troll forest, playground for the kids, gift shop and cafe, and then a huge network of trails that appeared to go all over the mountain range. We took the trail to a couple of lakes in the mountains but didn't go too far as it was cold and raining. We did get far enough away to enjoy the absolutely beautiful scenery away from the main crowds.
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| A troll greeted us at the top of the funicular |
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| One of the amazing views at the top of the mountain |
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| Aaron 'swimming' in one of the lakes again |
Unfortunately, all the cold and rain at this stop did a number on Aaron's immune system and he succumbed to a cold (we did test, it wasn't COVID!). He didn't get off the ship again until we disembarked in Reykjavik, so you'll have to suffer through my photos for the rest of this post! Our next stop was Alesund, Norway, where I hiked to the Aksla Viewpoint. It wasn't nearly so high as Mt. Floyen or San Giovanni in Kotor, but still had nice view of what fjords there were (we discovered we really needed to be further north to see the Norwegian fjords in all their glory).
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| The Askla Viewpoint is visible at the top of the mountain, and you can see the zig-zag trail I took up. We took this photo from the ship right before it left, when the weather finally cleared - when I went out it was overcast and rainy. |
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| View of the ship and surrounding area from the viewpoint |
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| This is apparently an iconic row of buildings in Alesund - it appeared on many postcards and pins. |
Next stop: Iceland! The sailing from Norway to Iceland was quite rough - according to the crew this was not unusual. We could hear the anchors slamming in their housing as water gushed in and out, they put out the vomit bags, and the fog in the morning was so thick the captain had to sound the fog horn as we sailed along. Fortunately neither of us felt nauseous during the transit. We stopped at three towns on the northern side of Iceland - first up: Seydisfjordur! We saw SO many 'tiny' waterfalls as we sailed in and out of the Icelandic fjords - much more of the fjord experience we had hoped for in Norway.
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| This waterfall was visible from the ship, and was so much larger in person! You can see some people in the background. |
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| The Tvisongur 'sound sculpture,' in which you could theoretically experience a traditional 5-tone harmony. I think you really needed 5 people for the full experience. |
Next up: Akureyri, whose main claim to fame was a fancy church on a hill with great views. I also walked to the botanical gardens, where I learned more about the blue flower that grew ALL over the hills in Iceland, and took a very adventurous hike through the wilderness to the original site of Nonni's house - this took me past a cemetery, which was interesting in and of itself, looking at naming conventions (-son or -dottir appended to a father or mother's forename, respectively, to create the son's or daughter's surname, respectively).
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| Part of the amazing approach to Akureyri |
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| Apparently the locals feel this is their most iconic building (it is one of the oldest) - it was on the only postcard I could find of Akureyri itself. |
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| The Nootka lupin, which grows over all the hills we saw in Iceland |
Our final stop before disembarkation was Isafjordur. This town was TINY, but surrounded by beauty. The main attraction here was the troll's seat, where legend has it that a troll sat down on the mountain (creating the depression), with her feet in the water (creating the peninsula holding the town and the deep water around it).
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| Attempting a selfie with the troll's seat in the background |
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| The towns we visited in Iceland were full of houses covered with this corrugated metal siding - due to fear of fire. |
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| We flew home on a PLAY flight from the Reykjavik aiport, and it flew over Greenland! Our first ever view of the island. |
And that sums up our grand European adventure! We had an amazing time despite the setbacks from COVID, and Aaron is all ready to go back. We saw so many new places this trip, and we know there are so many more still to be seen. For the moment though we're looking forward to getting back to a few more WARM cruises - this last one was so cold!
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