Geo: 44.6462, -63.5739We have an excursion planned for today. Joining us will be the two Traveling Sues and Joni and her husband. All of us are Cruise Critic members with Joni actually making the arrangements for all of us. After breakfast, we make our way forward for disembarkation at 8am. Something happens and we're delayed for about 15 minutes. We exit the gangway and meet Alphonse, holding a sign that says "Joni". That must be us. Within a few minutes all of us are here and Alphonse directs us to his van. As we leave the pier, his first comments are of the Halifax explosion of 1917. We were familiar with this catastrophe through Barbara's presentation yesterday. The Halifax Explosion occurred when a Belgian relief vessel and a French munitions carrier collided in Halifax Harbor during ... read more

Geo: 47.5767, -52.7011We're not scheduled to arrive in St John's until noon and we dock right at the pier in town. There's no rush getting off today so after breakfast, I work on the blog and we let those in a big hurry exit the ship first. When the rush is over, we leisurely disembark our ship and walk into town. There's not much here. I looks to us like any other small city. We walk two block into town, turn right two blocks, another right and we're back at the ship. Mom checked about a few shops but there's not much to see there. We hear of a pathway that leads to Signal Hill, the location where Marconi sent the first transatlantic wireless signal but, seeing the location far up on a hill quite some ... read more

Geo: 60.1453, -45.2571We are in no rush to go ashore today as we have ample time to see this small town. I guess we didn't learn much from yesterday's mishap of arriving too late. It's no coincidence that Nanortalik, Greenland's southernmost town founded in 1797, means the "place of bears". In Nanortalik polar bears sometimes pass by on the field ice from East Greenland in the spring. Of course, there's a main street in Nanortalik which is the focus of activity in the town of 1300. We had no problem finding it since it's the first street we came to when exiting the wharf. We walked down to the supermarket to visit the local “board”, where fishermen and hunters sell the day's catch. As usual, we arrived a little too late to see anything of interest ... read more

Geo: 61.2428, -41.5253Ahh. An extra hour of sleep this morning. We are cruising into the Prince Christian Sound which will take us from the North Atlantic to the Labrador Sea on the west coast of Greenland. It's a fjord that cuts between the southern tip of Greenland and islands south of Greenland. It is full of waterfalls, narrow waterways passing between tall mountains whose sheer cliffs rise thousands of feet from sea level to above the clouds, glaciers calving into the sea and icebergs floating along with our ship. We are scheduled to enter the sound around 9am and we're told that there's lots of things to see while we cruise. It will take all day to go through. We're up at the Lido for breakfast looking for a seat but it's packed. There is someone ... read more

Geo: 64.1353, -21.8952Today is our second day in Reykjavik and we are touring the southern part of Iceland. We had made no plans for the day. Karen didn't want to go into the Blue Lagoon, a heated pool in Reykjavik noted for its healing qualities and other tours we had considered would not be completed before our departure time of 4:30pm. I figured we would just either hang out on the boat or take a three hour tour of the city by bus. A couple of days ago, one of our travelers from Cruise Critic found a van tour that would return us in time so, at the last minute, we signed up. We meet on deck 3 at 6:45am. There are 7 of us. Three couples and a single school teacher. Our driver tells us ... read more