September 8 - Wine in Nova Scotia?

Today we tied up in Halifax, Nova Scotia along with the Celebrity Silhouette and, later in the day, an NCLship.  The downtown Halifax area was hopping.  I had booked a five-hour wine-tasting tour mainly because I was intrigued by the idea that Nova Scotia had a wine industry.  I learned a lot about geography that I didn’t know before so that made the tour a positive experience.  Along the way our guide Terry showed us on a map that the Annapolis Valley  area of Nova Scotia, which is where the vineyards are located, is at the same latitude as the Champagne region in France and the Willamette Valley area of Oregon.  Because of the Gulf Stream influence on Nova Scotia they have a fairly long growing season. So voilà, you have a wine industry.

Our nearly hour-long bus ride took us along some of the arms of the Bay of Fundy which has the highest tidal range in the world averaging around 50 feet.  Incredibly the tidal flow twice daily consists of about 70 billion cubic feet of water flowing in and out of the Bay.  As we rode along in the morning I could see what looked like large streams full to the tops of the banks along their edges.  In the afternoon as we drove back to Halifax those same streams were vast ditches of reddish mud. 

I didn't get a photo of the full streams because I was on the wrong side of the bus, but in this photo you can see that big ditch full of mud beyond the grass and road.

The countryside was very green unlike some of the places in Ireland and Scotland I visited earlier during this cruise.  Apparently, this area has not experienced the severe heat and drought that much of western Europe has this summer.  We arrived at our first vineyard, Benjamin Bridge in the Gaspereau Valley just outside of Wolfville, Nova Scotia.  The setting of the tasting room was lovely.  It must be truly beautiful when the leaves have begun to turn, but we were way too early for that.   We had an opportunity to try three wines there.  The first was their sparkling wine, Benjamin Bridge.  It is a brut wine and I thought it was way too dry and acidic.  I’m not an oenophile so I don’t know about lots of things to do with notes etc., but I found it almost to be mouth-puckering.  We then tried two white wines, the second sweeter than the first.  I thought they were almost sickening sweet.  Perhaps you can tell that I didn’t care for any of these three.  There was a wine shop of course, but I didn’t feel any compulsion to buy anything.  I should note that the last of the three wines we tasted was called Tidal Bay.  Apparently, this region has an appellation which means it’s  legally defined and geographically protected.  When I stopped in Bordeaux earlier this year I learned about appellations then because they have one too.  My understanding is there are strict regulations about what grape varieties must be used and about the production methods and standards. That may be so but I still didn’t care for the wine because the whites were way too sweet and the sparkling was much too acidic for my taste.

I did find one thing amusing.  There is a solo traveler woman who professes to be a great wine expert (in other words she’s very pretentious).  When I tasted one of the sweet white wines the minute I raised the glass to my nose I got an overwhelming whiff of lavender.  I said something to the lady and she told me in a very snooty way that I must be wrong because there was no lavender around here.  Well, before we left I had an opportunity to walk around and get a little closer look at some of the vines.  Faith and begorrah, as the Irish would say, what did I see but a couple of big bushes of lavender! My nose isn’t completely useless.

I'm pretty sure that big bush next to the pink flowers is lavender and there were others nearby. So much for the snooty lady!

From Benjamin Bridge we drove through the valley to another larger vineyard, Luckett Vineyards.  This one was a bigger operation with a large tasting room and a bistro.  We had a lunch of panini sandwiches, salad and tofu (no, I didn’t eat any of that) while we tasted three Luckett wines.  I have no idea what the names were because there were no bottles on the table and the vineyard lady talked so fast I couldn’t follow what she was saying.  Once again I was unimpressed.  There was some kind of a red which was sort of okay but the two white were again like syrup.  This vineyard did have something unique about it.  The vineyard was started by an Englishman named Pete Luckett who bought close to 100 acres here in 2000 and began growing produce.  When winemaking began to develop in the valley, he sought out a winemaker who could help him to begin growing grapes and producing wine.  He missed his home country and so he bought a red telephone box from England and had it plopped down in the middle of the vineyard.  It’s actually connected to a phone line and people can use the toll-free number to call anywhere in the world without charge.

Isn't this countryside pretty?

Some happy looking vines

This was the room where we had our lunch and tasting at Luckett Vineyards.

I liked this mosaic on the wall there.

Red Phone Booth in the middle of the vineyard.

The wine business in Nova Scotia is relatively new, no more than around 30 years I think, and perhaps it will improve.  But for now I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it in a store.  Despite the disappointment in the wine, it was a lovely day.  On the way back to Halifax our guide Terry played some traditional music from the area which brings me to a couple of history lessons we got. 

In 1763 at the conclusion of the Seven Years War between Britain and France, Canada was ceded to the British.  The British forcibly removed French settlers from much of Canada to the Maritimes including Nova Scotia.  These people were not well received here and eventually they resettled themselves sailing down the coast of the US to Louisiana which was at that time still a French possession.  They became Cajuns with a heritage that includes some of the music and traditions of the original French expelled from British Canada.

The second history lesson we learned was about the great Halifax explosion.  It occurred during WW I.  Halifax was an important port from which provisions and ammunition were shipped from North America to the forces fighting in Europe.  On the morning of December 6, 1917, a French munitions carrier named the Mont Blanc was involved in a minor collision with a Belgian relief ship called the S.S. Imo.  The incident was caused by a combination of mistakes, but the upshot was that the Mont Blanc caught fire and exploded.  It carried nearly 3000 metric tons of explosives along with benzol which is also explosive.  The explosion was the largest man-made one to occur on Earth until the Hiroshima bomb in 1945.  The confirmed deaths were nearly 1800 with an additional 9000 injuries.  Every window in the city of Halifax was blown out and a square mile of the city was flattened. A tsunami resulted creating damage in neighboring communities.  While much aid began to pour in, the first and largest amount came from the city of Boston and to this day Halifax sends Boston a 50 to 80 foot large live Christmas tree every year by the end of November to express the gratitude for the help Boston provided.

And that’s today’s history lesson.

September 7 - At sea again

As I look back on what I’ve written in the last couple of weeks, this has been a pretty unexciting cruise, yet I’ve been having a good time. We sailed from Sydney last evening after two days tied up at the dock.  The first night and day the captain had to keep the thrusters on continuously to keep the ship against the pier.  Had he not done that the lines might have snapped; the wind was that ferocious.  We learned that Cape Breton, which is where Sydney is located, had about eight inches of rain in less than 24 hours which is why all the tours were canceled.  Roads were flooded, trees were downed by gale force winds, and it was apparently their version of a good old-fashioned  nor’easter.  A few intrepid people went ashore briefly and came back absolutely soaked and well buffeted by the wind.  No one I know attempted to go.

Today we’re on our way to Halifax, Nova Scotia and the seas have been relatively calm and we saw a strange sight in the partly cloudy skies – the sun!  We hadn’t seen that for a while and we were all nearly blinded by the light.  We have the usual sea day lectures, games, and opportunities to just laze the day away.   Hopefully the weather will be nice tomorrow because I am scheduled to go on a tour to a couple of vineyards there.

I can tell that the cruise is coming to the end.  People are talking about packing and post-cruise plans.  People are keeping the Future Cruise Consultant busy purchasing future cruise credits which entitle them to get a discount even if they wait until later to book another voyage.  We still have a couple of my favorite showtime events coming up.  One is a new one to me.  Tomorrow evening there will be a Seabourn Dancing with the Stripes show.  It’s their version of Dancing with the Stars and four brave (maybe foolish?) passengers volunteered to partner with an officer and learn a dance routine.  I had lunch today with one of the volunteers and he showed me a few bruises on his arms that he managed to acquire during rehearsals.  The other event will be the Crew Talent Show which is always very enjoyable.  It never ceases to amaze me of the talent some of the people who work very hard behind the scenes have.  I think all of us passengers look forward to that show.

I’m sitting now in the Observation Bar where it’s afternoon tea time.  I come to sit by a window, have a cup or two of Earl Grey and listen to the quiet music being played.  Today one of the very talented guitarists is playing softly in the background.  There is a funny group that meets up here during teatime.  In the official program it’s called “Ross’ (he’s our very gay – he makes no bones about it – cruise director) Needlepoint Get Together.”  I have heard some of the people who go call it alternatively the “Stitch and Bitch” or “Knit and Natter” group.

Well, I’ve rambled on enough for today.  We have our last formal night tonight and my friends and I decided we didn’t feel like having the froufrou menu always served in the restaurant on those nights.  We were very pleased that in the alternative restaurant we can instead enjoy fried chicken and what the chef calls “comfort food.”

September 5 - Sydney, Nova Scotia

Well, these have been an uneventful few days and there hasn’t been much to write about.  On September 3, Thursday we were in Gaspé, Quebec.  I had no tour planned because all of those involved hikes which are never part of my agenda anymore. I instead planned to go ashore and walk around in the little town. I got on the tender (we’ve had lots of tender ports on this cruise) and rode to the little dock. As I stepped on land, the skies parted and the rain began.  I made a u-turn and got back on the tender and was a round-tripper. My friends all stayed onboard as well, but I heard later from other people I know that while the rain did eventually abate, there was little to see in the town.

These are two photos I grabbed from the internet to show what I should have seen in Gaspé, but it wasn't meant to be.

Late in the afternoon the Captain came on the PA system and announced that because a big weather system was moving across eastern Canada, we would be missing our next port, Iles de la Madeleine, and sailing directly to Sydney, Nova Scotia, arriving the night before our scheduled arrival and spending two days there.  The sea day on the 4th was cloudy, windy and spitting rain some of the time, not conducive to any outdoor activities.  We had trivia; the bridge players played bridge and the rest of us either went to lectures or lazed around.

We arrived at Sydney on the evening of the 4th late in the evening and docked.  This morning I awoke to a full-blown gale.  The flags on the building next to the pier are standing straight out and the rain periodically comes down in sheets.  When I left my cabin there was a notification in the letter box by my door that all tours today (the 5th) and tomorrow have been canceled.  The staff scrambled to get a few activities organized but pretty much the day is just a day to loll around and do nothing at all. Unfortunately, because the weather is so inclement that no one can be in any of the outside venues, the lounges are all pretty full.  Finding a quiet space to sit isn’t easy.  I discovered that the Club where I spend my evenings listening to the bands was essentially empty and I parked myself there to check e-mails and news on line.  All was well until the Cruise Director scheduled a line-dancing class here.  I’m not doing the line dancing but I am being entertained watching the dancers and listening to a bunch of yee-haws periodically.

Sydney on a better day than we're having

This is apparently the world's largest fiddle and it's located somewhere on the harbor front  in Sydney, but I sure can't see it with today's weather conditions.

So, tomorrow we’re scheduled to be docked here still and hopefully there will be more scheduled events to keep all of us occupied.

 

September 1 - Another catch-up day

 Once again I’ve fallen behind which I have to confess is entirely due to laziness on my part.  I can easily identify with a sloth, the critter that moves slowly and spends most of its time hanging upside down from a tree. So once again this is a compendium of things I’ve written along the way but never got around to finishing and posting contemporaneously.

Yesterday evening (August 29) we set sail across the Labrador Sea after spending the last two days in Nanortalik and Qaqortoq, Greenland.  We had a mixed bag weather-wise with a nice day in the former and a pretty cold and raw day in the latter.  I have been to both last year around the same time and I can attest that there isn’t a great deal in either place.

Nanortalik is the southernmost town in Greenland and has a population of around 1100 people. Because of its location it was one of the first places settled by the Norse in their explorations in this part of the world.  Last year I went ashore briefly and found nothing open.  This year I didn’t do that.  Some friends did take a short walking tour, the highlight of which turned out unexpectedly to be a funeral.  As probably happens in many small communities, everyone in the town turned out for the service, the flags were at half-staff and many things (as few as there are) were closed.  A few people went on a tour in a RIB boat to see icebergs and whatever wildlife made appearances.  They saw more of the former than the latter.  

These photos are courtesy of a friend who went ashore and is clearly a much better photographer than I am.

Greenlanders like colorful houses which probably brighten up their long winter days and nights.

On August 29 we anchored off Qaqortoq, the fourth largest town in Greenland with a population of approximately 3300.  When I was here last year I was intending to go ashore but I encountered several friends who had done so and been attacked by swarms of midges and other no-see-ums so I stayed on the ship.  This time I was fully intending to go and see what there was to see.  When I stepped out onto the deck there was a raw wind blowing and it was spitting rain, so once again I chose to stay on the ship.  I guess I’m truly becoming one of the people I always wondered about who never go ashore and just keep on sailing. Anyway, there were lots of things to keep me occupied on board.  I have gotten a few photos from friends who braved the weather so I can remember what the place looks like just in case I never come back here again.

This is Qaqortoq

I did learn a few interesting things about these last two communities from a friend who is originally from Denmark who went ashore in both places.  Everything the people here use has to be shipped in from someplace else.  The exceptions are fish and other seafood and a few potatoes and rhubarb. The latter two are evidently about the only crops that can be grown in the limited growing season.  My Danish friend Susan told me that she went into what was supposed to be a grocery store in both Nanortalik and Qaqortoq and she was amazed at what she found.  She said things in Nanortalik cost twice as much as the same products in Qaqortoq.  In the latter she actually found some items which cost less than what she would pay for them in Denmark.  We both found that strange and speculated that the Danish government must be subsidizing prices in some way.

As I wrote at the beginning of this entry upon leaving we began crossing the Labrador Sea on our way to our first Canadian port on the island of Newfoundland.  We had moderate seas with a little rocking along the way, but nothing bad.  Once again the two days were packed with talks, games and shows.  We have a speaker onboard who has been on some of my previous cruises and who is quite interesting.  He’s a retired Maj. General from the army and talks about current world events.  I enjoyed his talks in the past so I’ve been going to those.  So far he’s talked about the war in Ukraine and the war with Iran.  Although I can’t really say he’s said anything that I haven’t already read or heard on the news, it has been good to hear the facts put together in a cohesive fashion instead of just getting bits and pieces.  My friends and I have invited him to dine with us in a couple of nights and we’re looking forward to that.  One evening when I was sitting up in the Observation Bar before going to a show he came and sat next to me and it was interesting talking with him one on one.  He told me that he has to be very careful to be neutral and apolitical in his presentations to be sure he doesn’t offend any passengers.  He said on one cruise he had given a talk on China and its intentions in the South China Sea.  Apparently there were two Chinese passengers affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party on who took offense at something he said and filed a complaint. I can imagine that for someone speaking about world affairs with an audience from many different countries it must be like walking on a tightrope to be sure no feathers are ruffled.

Anyway, today we made it to Newfoundland and here I was supposed to go on a tour to what is supposed to be the only undisputed site of the Norse presence in North America long before Columbus came.  I was looking forward to it, but as sometimes happens it was not meant to be.  Yesterday the captain announced that due to wind conditions we were having to change our port of call to someplace further away.  That meant that the total of three hours of bus rides to get to the site would now be four.  That meant we would only have one hour to visit the place.  I decided to opt out.  As it turns out when we arrived at our alternate anchorage off the town of St. Anthony we have had gale force winds off and on all day so tendering has been suspended several times, leaving people ashore waiting for an hour or two to get back.  It made the tour problematic.  My friends and I had planned to go ashore and walk around the little town, but the prospect of being ashore with no way to get back for an hour or two was unappealing.  Instead we’ve had yet another sea day.

These two photos are from the Seabourn website of what I should have been seeing today.  Sorry Katie.  I'll have try again another year.

Well, I’ve  written enough for now and I shall upload this for the record.  It’s pretty boring, I know, but that’s life sometimes.

August 27 - Following the route of Leif Eriksson

I’ve been AWOL for a few days.  I can only say that it’s because I’ve been having way too much fun.  I did write a little every day but never finished it so here’s a compilation of disjointed reflections on what’s been happening.

Talk about a miserable day – weatherwise I mean – that’s what we have today (August 24) in Akureyri here on the north coast of Iceland. I’m sitting in Seabourn Square and I can barely see the land and we’re docked.

After our rainy and dreary day in Reykjavik we had a truly gorgeous day yesterday in Ísafjörður (August 23).  The scenery there is spectacular, as that little town is nestled at the end of a fjord around which there are towering mountains.  Unlike the fjords in Norway these hillsides are mostly treeless and instead are covered with what I think tundra must look like – low grasses and moss, none of which is a very lush green.

The Ovation backed by one of the fjord walls.

I went ashore with a friend and we walked to a nearby cluster of wooden buildings which turned out to be a small museum, the ticket office and gift shop for the museum,  and a local takeout café.  The café was doing booming business.  I’ve observed in my travels that when the ship docks, staff who can get a little time off are eager to go ashore and, among other things, eat some non-ship food and bring back things like chips and pringles.  I can understand that because I have found when I’ve been on for a while I crave something different on land too.

The little cluster of buildings at the beginning of the town

I just liked this boat sitting out of the water

We talked to some folks we knew who had gone in the museum and they said it was very small and contained mainly exhibits showing very mundane things one would find in a kitchen and house in the past two centuries.  We decided not to spend the $15 per ticket and instead browsed in the gift shop where we found some local books and knickknacks to buy.  So, we supported the local economy a little.  That brings up something worth mentioning.  Prices are very high in Iceland.  It stands to reason, I guess, because most everything has to be shipped into the country.  Most surprising to me were the prices of some wooden things I saw, but I guess it’s because there’s so little wood here.

After spending a little time in the shop we walked down to the adjacent boat yard which had a few boats that been hauled out of the water for unknown reasons. None looked especially seaworthy. I know I wouldn’t want to go out on them. On the walk both to and from the town we passed a white and tan chubby cat sitting on the walkway.  He had a collar and a tag and certainly looked well-fed and cared for.  I guess he must be the town greeter.

A well-fed Icelandic cat for all the cat lovers out there

Overnight we sailed along the north coast of Iceland to Akureyri where as I began this entry, the weather was pretty miserable. I spent the day hanging out on the ship, talking to friends, playing trivia, going to a couple of lectures, and, if I must confess, napping. If Al is watching me from above he must be snickering.  I used to give him a very hard time when he wanted to take a nap in the afternoon.  I can remember telling him that napping was a stupid thing to do in the middle of the day.  I’ve discovered the joys of napping now.  Does that make me old?

The weather cleared up as we sailed away from Akureyri, our last stop here in Iceland.  Now we’re on our way to Greenland sailing through the area known as the Denmark Strait.  I was always a big fan of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October and this part of the ocean was the location of much of that book.  I can imagine that as we sail along atop the waves, somewhere down below Captain Ramius and the Red October are moving along unseen and unheard, trying to evade detection by the USS Dallas and destruction by the Russian sub Konovalov.

Of course it cleared off as we left Akureyri and the scenery was quite beautiful.

We passed this iceberg along the way.

We also had a couple of spectacular sunsets along the way.

After two quiet days at sea during which I could be as busy, or not, as I liked we have arrived at Prince Christian Sund along the southernmost coast of Greenland. Last night I arranged a dinner party with friends to celebrate Leif Eriksson’s birthday.  Now I have no idea when he was born, but it seemed like a good excuse for having a party.  I asked the Chef for a couple of special menu items including a birthday cake decorated with the words “Happy Birthday Leif.”  That caused something very funny to happen.  The guest services manager told me at the dinner that she had gotten a call from someone on the staff saying they couldn’t find a cabin number for “Mr. Leif” and they needed to know in order to decorate his cabin for his birthday.  We all had a good laugh about that.

Today we’re just cruising through the Sund, which is essentially a fjord.  On either side there are steep rocky mountains with very little vegetation.  There are waterfalls cascading down from glaciers higher up that we often cannot see.  I wish I could figure out how to post videos here so you could hear the rush of the water as it tumbles down as we glide noiselessly past.  Every now and then we pass a cleft in the rocks where a glacier is coming down to the sea.  It’s a very dramatic, but very inhospitable looking, land.

Pretty impressive glacier

These mountains are so old but they haven't been rounded out at the top. Instead they're very spiky and sharp looking which makes them even more dramatic I think.

I want to write a little about the entertainment we’ve been having on the ship.  In Akureyri we picked up several new guest entertainers and they have been spectacular. We have a Brazilian guitarist Diego Figuerido who I have heard on previous cruises.  He plays acoustic guitar and is wonderful.  As a Brazilian he plays bossa novas and sambas of course, but the other night he played Malagueña, one of my absolute favorite guitar pieces,  and  I was in heaven.  Another night we had an entertainer who played the vibraphone, an electronic xylophone which can be made to sound like 30 or 40 different instruments. He also plays an instrument called a Theremin, an invention of a Russian nuclear physicist.  I can’t explain it, but you don’t touch the machine. It has antennas and picks up electro-magnetic pulses from your hands.  Google it if you want to learn more.  It was fascinating; it makes sounds that you hear in sci-fi movies and, in fact, was first used in the very old movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

I’m back after a light lunch, and I’m now sitting in the Observation Bar which has a 270° view of the Sund we’re gliding through.  I can only repeat that the scenery is so spectacular. Only about one-fifth of Greenland is exposed bedrock; the rest is covered in ice.  This area around the southeastern end has some of the oldest rock on the planet.  It’s a type of rock called gneiss and some of what we’re seeing as we sail by is at least 3600 million years old!  Think of that.  The landscape is the result of volcanic eruptions, continental drift, ice ages and glacial erosion. The rock walls of the Sund show layer upon layer of rock which represents some geologic or seismic event.  It’s actually awe-inspiring.

I think I’ve said enough for today.  I shall try to be a better diarist in the days to come but sometimes the best of intentions falls by the wayside, especially when I’m having fun or distracted by conversations with friends. For now I hope all is well at home and not too terribly hot.  At about 47° we don’t have to worry about a heat wave here.

August 22 - At sea, Heimaey and Reykjavik

From the Faroes we sailed westward on our transatlantic course.  After a sea day we anchored off the coast of Heimaey, Westman Island.  I was there in June while on the Ovation for my spring cruise and I also had been there last August.  The island is very small (only 5.2 sq. mi.) and the airport and 9-hole golf course and club cover most of the flat land.  It is the largest of the Westman islands and the only populated one with a population of about 4500. It may be short on people, but it more than makes up for that in puffins. In the summer months there are approximately 8 million puffins who come here every year to breed and feed.

It’s a volcanic island and when I came last August I toured and wrote about the nearly catastrophic eruption which occurred in January 1973.  Just to recap and refresh my memory,  in that month the volcano blew and the lava flow destroyed half the town.  The island’s inhabitants mainly rely on fishing and as luck would have it there was a gale at sea which had prevented the fishing fleet from going out.  Most of the islanders were evacuated on the boats and 300 brave men volunteered to stay behind to try to stop the lava from closing the mouth of the harbor. Had that happened Heimaey would have become uninhabitable because the sole source of making a living (fishing) would be gone. With the help of massive pumps provided by the US Navy, those 300 men used cold sea water, something that apparently had not been tried before, to cool and solidify the leading edge of the fiery flow.  Their efforts paid off and the harbor was saved.

Since I’d seen the sights on previous visits I stayed on board and had a nice sea day. We were anchored by some very dramatic cliffs. Actually most of the perimeter of the island is a series of cliffs so I'm uploading some photos from this and my other visits here.  Because I think they're so cute I'm adding a couple of photos from last year of pufflings and puffins. 

Look at all that black lava in the foreground

Hawaii's black sand beaches have stiff competition here except it's too cold to swim

The coast is pretty dramatic!

Baby puffins, pufflings, routinely wind up stranded on land here before they have fledged and can fly. The islanders pick them up, tag them and place them back in the sea which is where they float around until they can fly. That's evidently the normal cycle of a young puffin.

They are pretty cute!

Today we docked in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.  This was the end of the cruise for the majority of my fellow passengers. Only 155 of us stayed on for the next leg which ends in New York.  It was a truly miserable day weather wise, cold, windy and raining. Adding to that today was Iceland’s biggest festival day with a marathon, half marathon, 5K run etc. and thus roads were blocked off.  I didn’t have a tour booked because I’ve done most of what was offered and after looking outside my friends and I decided to park ourselves in Seabourn Square and have a relaxing day enjoying each other’s company.  Around noon the new passengers started boarding for the next segment and we watched them getting acquainted with the ship.  One of our group who had not been here before took the all-day tour and came back drenched.  She is an eternally optimistic and cheerful person so she made the best of it and was glad she went.

Tonight we celebrated that lovely lady’s birthday.  We had a special dinner and cake and did a lot of laughing so it was a good night.  I confess that it was a little bittersweet for me because on this date, which was also a Saturday, 56 years ago I married my husband. I’ve been wishing all day that he was here with me.

When we set sail this evening the captain announced that we would be experiencing some rough weather tonight and he was right on the money.  We’re doing a considerable amount of rocking and rolling which makes walking lots of fun.  We all look like we’ve had way too much to drink.  I think the forecast for tomorrow is for more of what we’ve had today so I may have yet another sea day in port.  We’ll be in Ísafjöður at the northwest corner of Iceland and I was there in June too and have seen the sights to be seen.  I’ll see what the morning brings.

August 19 - Tórshavn, Faroe Islands

 After a lovely and relaxing day at sea we docked this morning in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands.  The Faroes are an archipelago consisting of 17 islands, 15 of which are populated, most very sparsely.  The total population is only about 55,000. Tórshavn lies at 62° N 7°W, so not quite in the Arctic Circle but close enough that in the summer it’s never totally dark and winter nights are very long.  The Faroes are an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. While Frederik X of Denmark is their titular head of state, the Faroese are essentially self-governing.  Over the years there have been efforts to secede from Denmark which are so far unsuccessful.  I found it interesting that even though Denmark is part of the EU, Faroes aren’t.  Therefore they are not subject to the same rules regarding things like fishing that the Irish are.  Following Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014 when the EU placed embargos on trade with that country, the Faroes negotiated deals with Putin, and Russia was one of the Faroes biggest importers of fish from the islands.  That arrangement evidently ended when Russia invaded Ukraine and has put a real dent in their trade.

Evidence has been found of settlement on the islands dating back to as early as the mid 4th century. I didn’t know this, but apparently Scandinavians didn’t begin using sails on their boats until around the mid-8th century.  Archaeologists believe the earlier settlers to have been people from Ireland and Scotland which are closer.  I learned a bunch of random facts from our very interesting guide Jakob, a retired chemical engineer, and which I want to remember if they ever come up in a trivia game so here goes.  The Faroes’ weather is affected by the Gulf Stream (that old Gulf Stream affects a large part of the Earth).  Because of it the average year-round temperature is 48° F.  The lowest ever recorded is -11° F.  Tórshavn gets rain about 250 days per year.  The climate is classified as sub-polar.  This was one of the most interesting facts he told us.  The Faroes have one of the highest birth rates in the world.  It’s about 2.6 children per couple whereas ours in the US is down to less than 2.

Enough data, what did I do in the Faroes?  I took what was described as a panoramic drive through the city and countryside.  It was absolutely stunning!  Tórshavn, the capital, has a population of about 22,000 in the city and its immediate surroundings.  In the downtown area near the waterfront the architecture looks very much like that I’ve seen in other Scandinavian cities. There are row houses with steep pitched roofs and many painted with bright colors.  As we drove out of the city we began to see houses with thatched roofs.  Jakob explained that while those roofs are quite a bit more expensive than tile ones, they provide better insulation than tiles and they are much quieter than tiles.

Downtown To2rshavn

Outside the city housing was more this pre-fab modular stuff 

A view of Tórshavn

They have a big football stadium

Tórshavn is on the island of Streymoy and as we drove out into the countryside the volcanic origins of the island group became evident.  Apparently a series of three eruptive events created the island.  The landscape consists of steep mountains interspersed with deep fjords (or sunds as they are called in Danish).  As I looked at the mountains I drove by I could see three distinct layers or terraces of very black basalt rocks covered to some extent by grasses and moss.  In places not covered by grass I could see vertical columns where erosion has caused some of the lava and basalt to crumble and begin to wash away.  Here and there were clefts caused by the frequent rain which formed waterfalls.  These looked really dramatic to me because the rock walls of the falls are very black basalt.  The countryside was dotted with sheep, many of them also black, grazing on the steep hillsides.  We stopped at a couple of overlooks where we could take some photos.  Down at the shoreline there were a few little villages at the edge of a fjord.  Near one such village there was a small sandy beach which Jakob called the Faroes “Copacabana.”

"Copacabana" Faroes version

At another viewpoint we stopped just above a very large group of thatched roof buildings.  These turned out to be the islands' prison.  The Faroes have a very low crime rate and what few criminals they have are sent to this place which didn’t even have a fence topped with barbed wire around it.  Jakob said there’s no place for the prisoners to go anyway.

That's the prison from afar

The prison up close

Baa, baa, black sheep

Surprisingly, to me anyway, salmon were not native to the Faroes originally, but some entrepreneurs brought in salmon eggs, built salmon ladders for the fish to swim upstream and spawn at the appropriate time and now there is a thriving salmon fishing industry.

Along our drive we passed a very large basalt rock quarry and atop one of the mountains we saw some big radar domes which are apparently a big US/NATO station, part of an early warning system monitoring traffic in the ocean between Scandinavia and Iceland.  For all of us fans of Hunt for Red October I think that must be the zone where the Soviet subs made their way from polar ports into the Atlantic.  In the book it was called"Red Route One."

After a nice ride we made it back to the port just before it was time to sail.  I really liked this place!  I had expected to see a flat island covered with tundra permafrost.  Instead, it was a place with dramatic landscape, green with the marvelous contrast of dark black rocks.  I forgot to mention that except for a few in the city there are absolutely no trees. Because of the lack of wood, fish and meat are aged by hanging and drying or by smoking over, wait for this, dried manure or peat.  I did taste some locally bought smoked salmon and it was really very good.

In summary, I found the Faroes fascinating.  I think it’s a hard place to get to except by ship, but I would come here again.  Next we have a day at sea and then we’ll be in Iceland.  So bye for now.