Ísafjörður
This morning, the view from the stateroom balcony was pretty dramatic
Reminder that you can click any image to view it complete on your screen without scrolling
The low-hanging shelf of clouds made it seem darker than usual, especially the water, which looked black rather than blue.
As we arrived into the fishing town of Ísafjörður, (as close as I can spell the pronunciation: EE-sah-fyoor-durr … although when pronounced by a native Icelander, it’s more like EE-sah-mumble-mumble-mumble)
We boarded the bus at 8:45 for a little 2-hour tour of the local area. First stop was a maritime museum in the nearby village of Bolungarvik. The guide said that everything in the town revolves around fishing and that if you talk to two people in town, there’s a 95% chance at least one of them will talk about fish.
The maritime museum was housed in some grass-roof shacks
The busload of shipmates all gathered around a Gorton’s fisherman-type dude in period costume explain about the fishing trade in town.
Notice that I’m not down there with them. As we approached the place in the bus, I caught a glimpse of a photo opportunity and I ditched the group and ran up the hill toward the lighthouse and got this shot:
I’ll take that over fishing history from the year 900-1900 any day!
Then we piled back on the bus and headed into town for some local music by these two fine folks
I really, really enjoyed their singing. It was all traditional Icelandic folk songs and there was one song in particular that I told Rob would make a great handbell piece. He agreed, so I went up to the lady after the show and asked her to type the name of it, since it was all “mumble mumble mumble” to me. I’m glad she typed it in for me, because there’s no way in hell I’d have known to look up “Sjómannavalsinn”
I hope I can work it out into a handbell arrangement!
From there, we went back into town and over to the Skutulsfjörður waterfall
You need to look at the trees to either side to appreciate the scale. It’s gorgeous.
I sprinted up a kinda-trail thru the trees to get a closer shot:
I say “sprinted” because we had to be back on the bus quickly… but the “sprint” was mostly vertical! The view from up there justified my tiredness and short-of-breath-ness.
And look what else happened while we were on the tour: blue skies!
What a spectacular setting for a little town
They DO have to be mindful of avalanches, though, as you can imagine.
Note the fence breakers installed on this slope:
After the tour, we had lunch on the ship: Danish open-faced sandwiches, and steak tartare.
It was all good, but the star of the show was the Suksessterte (the one in the middle). We had to look up a recipe, it was so good.
Then off to the town for a walkabout. It’s a cute little town with relatively modern-looking buildings like the movie theatre…
…and buildings from the early 1900s like this bookstore
…and lots of cute little houses from the 1800s
ot sure what year this duplex was built, but those front doors are super-strange.
The charming look of the town must take second seat behind the geography, though.
Back on board, there was a “blue nose ceremony” which is done when the ship crosses into the Arctic Circle. There are three steps:
1. Get some arctic water poured on your head
2. Have some blue whipped cream dolloped on your nose
3. Take a shot of aquavit
It was silly fun
We opted for room service for dinner rather than going out. Hot dog, Mac-n-cheese, pear and prosciutto salad, smoked salmon. It was good.
Two interesting things off the balcony of our cabin as we got back into open seas… the first was a pod of orcas.
Unfortunately, when I first saw them, I grabbed the camera and ran out onto the balcony and tried to get shots - including one where one baby orca actually jumped out of the water a bit… but the memory card wasn’t in my camera. It was in my laptop, as I’d already started writing this post. So the one fin in the pic above is all you’ll get, sorry.
The other neat thing we saw was a ribbon sunset (my term). The cloud bank had sunk almost to the water, but left just a hairline crack for the sunset to show throut. It stayed there for hours. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I snapped the pic when a Princess cruise liner was going past.
After dinner, we checked out some of the music offerings - one was not great, another was really good but he was playing in a bar where the patrons were talking over him, then lastly we caught that same singer again in the quiet space near the front of the ship. Much better - but my favourite music today was still the two Icelandic singers in Bolungarvik.
And that’s it for today. Brand new town tomorrow.