Transatlantic Journal – Entry Tertiary

Transatlantic Journal – Entry Tertiary

With the easternmost part of our journey behind us, we continued sailing westward toward Iceland. But first we must describe the Chef’s Table that occurred the night we sailed out of Torshavn.

Chef’s Table

While it’s not advertised anywhere, I had read on CruiseCritic.com that Princess was offering an excellent Chef’s Table on each voyage for $95/person. When we boarded, I called dining reservations and we got put on the list. A day later we received a notice that we were to report to the dining room in the morning to sign a document indicating we had no food allergies or were ill. Once that was signed, we awaited further instructions, which came two days later.

[Dinner details here] – once Allan fills in this section ;-)

2 September - Day at Sea

We recovered from the Chef’s Table by sleeping in on this day at sea. See the previous entry in this journal for a description of our typical day at sea.

3 September – Akureyri, Iceland

Akureyri (which according to the Lonely Planet guide means “meadow sand-spit”) sits about midway down the wide Eyafjördur, Iceland’s longest fjord in the top central part of country. As clouds obscured most of the tops of the surrounding hills, we silently sailed into town, docking at around 7:00AM. Yippee – no tenders required here!

Today was to be the first of two back-to-back ship-organized excursions, so we gathered with the hundreds of others in the Princess Theater and waited our turn to leave in our assigned group. Happily, we were with Mario and Beat, so at least we got to sit together on the bus and have a gay old time.

Our guide was a delightful woman who also worked for the Icelandic Tourist Board, so her English was quite good. The driver, Axel, was typical Scandinavian handsome (at least I thought so). Our bus headed eastward across the fjord making a brief stop on the hillside across from the town, getting a great view of the town and our ship, seemingly from another world, docked next to it. I was surprised by how large Akureyri is, not to mention a sizeable town center, all neat and tidy as is the fashion in this part of the world.

While there were dramatic volcanic hills, I suppose they might be tall enough to be low mountains, all around, it was the fertile valleys that surprised me most. You would look across the valley and see farms and if nothing else, at least some vegetation covering the ground. The hills would have little, if any growth, but were often covered with small waterfalls. Again: all and all, a surprise.