It’s probably a first world complaint, but coming home certainly seems harder than leaving. Both directions took roughly the same amount of time. Eastbound had two plane changes, westbound only one. So why did the latter wear us down so much?

We started the day with a 5:30 AM wake up call to get ready for our scheduled time leaving the ship of 7:30 AM. We boarded the bus for the airport and arrived there at about 8:45, in plenty of time for a 4:30 PM flight. But wait…Iceland Air would not check in our luggage for a late flight until 1 PM, leaving us to hang out in the ticketing area for four hours in a metal chair (we were lucky to find a seat, there was a limited supply and there were more than a few of us in the same situation).

Afternoon came, and with our luggage checked in we headed for security, then to passport control, then to our gate. But, oh wait again, the gates in this airport have nearly no seating areas. So we spent the next two hours wandering around; we looked through the duty-free shops and a bookstore. Ah at last, boarding time came and we took off for Seattle, arriving there about 6 PM PDT after an eight hour flight.

But we weren’t done…we had to collect our luggage in order to clear customs, but the bags took an hour to arrive on the carousel. Then it was off through customs, and to an Alaska Air counter where they were having computer problems. They could print luggage tags, but not boarding passes and the folks in front of us in line needed both. Finally with the luggage checked in again we cleared TSA and were reminded why we dislike SeaTac airport so much…it’s a blessed long ways from the international gates to the north remote terminal our Alaska flight was scheduled for.

Two subway rides later we were on the plane, and finally reached our front porch at about midnight MDT. Our sleep cycles are still adjusting (I woke up this morning at 4 AM!). Complaining aside, we had a wonderful time on this trip. Fortunately our next adventure stays in the mountain time zone…we’ll see you again here in July!

We’ve never gotten ourselves adjusted to the time zone changes we’ve endured on this trip; over the 11 days of the trip we’ve had 5 time zone changes. We keep waking up at 4 AM or so and finding ourselves unable to get back to sleep. Unhelpfully, once we got to the second stop in Norway it stopped getting dark at night. Fortunately our cabin has pretty good blackout shades.

We have an account rep at NCL who does a great job of booking our trips; in this trip’s case she done the cruise herself and shared her notes for this day’s travels. Our goal was to drive the Golden Circle using a rental car rather than a tour bus. Neither of us has ever driven further away from the US border than Vancouver, BC…adventure!

A short cab ride took us to the car rental shop downtown (more about the cabbie in a bit), then we hit the road. This trip is a bit of a “greatest hits” tour, with a waterfall, volcanic activity, and a geology lesson thrown in.

The latter came first. Thingvellir National Park sits on top of a rift canyon, created by the meeting place of the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates. These plates are separating by 2 cm per year, and cut across the island diagonally. Given enough time the island will split itself in two. Fortunately we will not be here long enough to see this happen. It’s also this thin spot in the earth’s crust that creates all the island’s volcanic activity.

The second stop was at the Geysir geothermal area. You’ll never guess what is there! The geyser first noticed here doesn’t go off anymore, but another geyser goes off about every five minutes. It’s a good show, and like a comment earlier in the trip you get a lot closer to it than Yellowstone would ever allow.

The last big stop is at Gullfoss waterfall, and big is a great way to describe it. A local woman 100 years ago or so saved the waterfall from being turned into a hydroelectric project.

Our last stop was at a promontory recommended by our NCL rep, just west of Vik. It takes a really steep road to access, and the view from the top was scenic. Once again our weather was great, except that at the top the wind was howling something fierce.

We returned the rental car, and Leila gave our cab driver a call. We learned that he is originally from Syria, and came to Iceland to keep his daughters safe from the civil war that has caused so much destruction there. He works driving tour buses, and as a cab driver when he’s not in a bus. He’s a hard working man, caring for his family.

It will be an early morning tomorrow as we leave the ship for the airport…more then.

It’s going to start sounding like a broken record, but it’s another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Isafjordur is a nice little town on the banks of, you guessed it, a fjord. It’s a beautiful place.

Today’s excursion is a bus ride with just two stops; first stop at the Dynjandi waterfall, and then second in a fishing village. But first a tunnel story. Our bus took us through a 6 KM long tunnel, but that isn’t the remarkable part. First, you don’t often see a tunnel with an intersection in the middle, with not so much as a stop sign. Second, once you get past the intersection the tunnel becomes a one lane tunnel with two way traffic. The outbound direction has frequent turnout lanes and traffic is required to give way at these spots. Very spooky, glad we weren’t driving.

I’ll leave a picture of the waterfall below and move onto the fishing village. The commercial fishermen there trade their catches internationally; the cod and herring are either frozen or dried. One traditional way of drying fish involves just hanging them out to dry on a rack protected by a wood slat booth. Our guide demonstrated this by taking a dried fish and using a mallet to separate the meat from the skin. We were told this is a very popular way to snack while watching TV; the sample we got was tasty.

This day’s guide was an interesting character; she is originally from Hungary, and while she is a tour guide for now she is nearly done becoming a commercial pilot. She had some stories to tell, including the difficult approach to the Isafjordur airport (navigating your way past mountains, make a u-turn over the fjord, and line up for the runway in one maneuver. Tricky sounding).

This trip is almost over, with just one port stop left. We land in Reykjavik tomorrow, and head for home the following day. More then…

It’s at this point in the trip that this writer’s limited language skills fall apart. I know about 200 words of German and maybe 100 of French (maybe even more words in English!) and can generally figure what’s a verb and what’s a noun and am able to count to ten. There are enough common word roots between them that you can muddle through. But just look at the place name in the title above…so many vowels and consonants all in the wrong places. Iceland is an adventure all of its own.

It should have been seasonably cold in Akureyri, but our good weather trend continued…it even extended to reasonably calm seas yesterday as we crossed the North Atlantic. We’re now as far north as we’ve ever been, above the 66th parallel. This day’s excursion was via a tour bus to see the north Iceland countryside.

Iceland truly is a land of fire and ice. We could see the snow not too far above us and could see lava flows and the like everywhere. Some of it looked familiar. We stopped at an area of volcanic features like mud pots; they were similar to Yellowstone, but Iceland lets you get a lot closer. The tour guide talked about lava tubes, but we’ve walked through the Ape Caves enough that we know about those.

One new thing: our stop near a lake (Myvatn) that had been formed by a lava flow. Well, more than just one new thing: first, there was an intriguing lava labyrinth that the tour guide walked through with some of the group. Second, the lake came equipped with millions of freshly hatched midges…you couldn’t walk outside without having a swarm of them surrounding you. The fish in the lake surely don’t go hungry.

All of the mountains built up by volcanos leave mountain snow nowhere to go, meaning the island has some tremendous waterfalls in the spring. We stopped at Godafoss, a great body of rushing water. One of the themes of this trip certainly is water in large quantities going somewhere in a hurry.

Fun facts: Iceland has just one native mammal, the arctic fox. A kid 100 years old must have been reading ads in the back of a comic book and saw a get rich scheme about minks…ordered some, and you can guess the result. What happens when an animal escapes into a climate where they have no predators? Second: Akureyri is a long, long drive from Reykjavik. The airport here has some international flights; according to our tour guide it’s cheaper to fly to London Gatwick airport then on to Reykjavik than to fly there directly. Tomorrow we move to the NW corner of the island, a town called Isfjordur. More then…

Happy Constitution Day, y’all! We arrived here on Norway’s version of July 4th, and the day did not disappoint. Norway is an ancient place, but yet not an old country having gained its independence in 1906. The country celebrates with parades and with parties, and we got to see just a bit of it.

We should start with this: the excursion we had booked was cancelled; our thought is that it couldn’t happen due to all the closed streets and shops. NCL had an excursion that took you to the parade (but not just to it, but to march in it!) but that had only one available space. So, we just walked off the shop to see what was happening.

And oh, what happenings! The crowds were in their Sunday best outfits, so many men in suits. Many women were in period dresses with so much hand embroidery; one person we talked said the dresses ran about $7,000, another said that was way low. Even the kids were dressed up. There were bands marching, some were community bands, others were school groups. Norwegian flags were everywhere. Every so often something like a cannon blast would go off, shaking the buildings.

We didn’t do any real exploring here due to the crowds, but had a wonderful time people watching and admiring their patriotism. The weather again was wonderful, with just a little breeze to make it cooler than we were ready for.

Tomorrow is our last sea day of the trip, then Monday we arrive in Iceland. The extended forecast before we left Nampa had been for high 40’s to low 50’s ; Monday’s forecast now is for 72 degrees. We didn’t pack for that! More later…

The fjords are wonderful, to begin with. It’s almost as if they are carved through the mountains by the finger of God rather than glaciers. We are here in spring, so the waterfalls are plentiful and a bright white color befitting their origin in the snow banks not very far above. Add to that increasing daylight hours as we move north, we were up at 5 AM watching the scenery go by as our ship slowly moved towards its destination, Geiranger.

NCL gave us a long day here as we don’t have far to go tomorrow. Our excursion did not start until after lunch time, giving us the chance to leave the ship and just walk around a little. Geiranger is a small village of about 250 year-round residents that become 2000 or so in the summer. Our ship’s 3100 passengers increased the head count a bit. Clearly it’s a popular place with Norwegians as well as cruise lines; we saw three campgrounds full of RV’s. More than a little like Skagway, Alaska, the town consists mostly of a group of tourist shops and a few houses. Access to town is either by water ferry or by road over the mountains; the closest town with a hospital is 2.5 hours away…the doctor comes into town one day a week…schedule your broken bones carefully!

The day’s excursion was a bus ride up the windiest road you’ve ever seen…9-10% grades with switchbacks too numerous to count. The road takes you from sea level to the top of a snow-covered mountain at about 5,000 feet of elevation. You look straight down at the town, our ship, and the fjord; the other direction shows mountains as far as the eye can see. Greg was thankful he was not navigating this road in our motorhome, but more than a few brave drivers were doing just that.

Our guide shared several things a government possessing the balance sheet of an oil producing nation can do for their residents. The one we enjoyed the most: winters are very dark in the fjords and the population is prone to depression. Doctors are allowed to write a prescription, not for anti-depressants, but for a vacation near the Mediterranean for as much as two weeks on the government’s dime. Where was that solution when we were working?

We were told that the Norwegian government may ban cruise ship travel in Geiranger Fjord in order to protect that waterway. We are thankful we were able to visit. Tomorrow is a short cruise to Alesund, where will get to the city celebrating Norway’s Constitution Day, the anniversary of the country’s final independence from first Denmark, then Sweden. More then…

After a restful day at sea we enter the middle section of our adventure, visiting Bergen. Our shore excursion started bright and early at 7 AM; it was a walking tour of Bergen’s city center, followed by a trip up a mountain via funicular.

These visits keep reminding us how young our hometowns are and old cities in Europe are. Bergen served as a major trade point during the Middle Ages and some its streets are now as they were then. Visually Bergen is best known for a row of wooden buildings that originally served as trading points…except that the originals burnt down about 300 years ago and were nearly immediately rebuilt. So, old buildings that replaced even older buildings are older than any structures in the Pacific NW.

Our guide told us that Bergen receives about 260 days of rain per year (making us feel right at home!); we are feeling blessed in that the weather this week has been unseasonably wonderful…celar skies and fine temperatures. The flowers planted downtown were very pretty, and the views from the top of the mountain were splendid.

It’s at places like this that make Greg start shopping for books; he realizes that he knows not nearly enough about the Middle Ages or about the Hanseatic League. Sadly the books here are written in Norwegian; that will have to wait for home.

The view from the top of the funicular was well worth the ride. There were also some nice hiking trails up there, one that led to a pretty lake and another that led to more than a few carved trolls. Trolls are everywhere, including all the gift shops.

One sad note from our perspective: our guide took us by several large churches. He noted that a recent survey showed that while the vast majority of the population has been confirmed in the church, 67% consider themselves unchurched. Old churches now, as often as not, serve as concert venues or museums (at least according to him).

Closing notes: we were told that Norwegians eat more frozen pizzas per capita than anyone else. I’ll let you sort that out. Our guide had us marching along pretty briskly on the way back to the ship, preventing from trying the reindeer hotdogs a vendor was selling. At least we got in our 20,000 steps.

Tomorrow our ship sails up a fjord to the town of Geiranger, where we’ll get to sleep in a little and then take a bus ride up a mountain…more then.

Officially this is our second visit to Amsterdam on this trip, but a five hour stay in the Amsterdam airport doesn’t seem very representative. The airport was a very busy place, but so is the city. Our ship docked near Central Station…lots of people, lots of trains, and Greg thinks maybe millions of bikes (maybe only thousands, but there were a lot!).

Our excursion today took us to a touristy place outside of the city. They had a number of working windmills that had been rescued from other places and brought to this park. The windmill we toured is a working sawmill. They have a small log pond out back and an ingenious setup inside…wind power drives both the multiple blades that cut the log into planks and the carriage the pulls the log into the blade. this is not to say no manual labor is needed; they use a block and tackle to lift the log into the carriage, and use wooden levers to get the log lined up properly.

We also saw in another building a demonstration of how wooden shoes are made, although with modern equipment. The craftsman worked very quickly, using a lathe with a jig to form the outside, then a tool and jig to hollow out the inside of the shoe. The wood is green at this point, so it still needs to dry and be sanded and painted.

The ship left port during dinner time rush hour. We stayed up to watch it transit the locks that control the depth of the canals. It’s always impressive to watch the captain maneuver the ship into such a small space. That took us into the North Sea; day five will be a sea day and day six will be our first day in Norway. See you then…

The comment yesterday about sunscreen might have been premature; today was an absolutely glorious day (the locals said we should feel blessed…we’d normally have gotten wet), and learned a lot about medieval trade and about why the residents of Flanders have a warm spot in their hearts for the Canadians…

We very much enjoyed a good night’s sleep onboard the Prima, and as always had fun watching the ship come into port. We tied up in an industrial port not too far outside Bruges; the port’s main business is as Europe’s hub for the import and export of cars and trucks. There were miles and miles (this writer is not quite going metric) of cars parked waiting to go somewhere.

Our excursion today took us into the middle of Bruges. The city dates back into the Middle Ages, where it served as a major trade point, joining north, south and east trade…fabric, spices, lumber. 50,000 people lived here back in the day, at least until the bottom fell out of that trade; the channel connecting the city to the sea silted in, politics played a role, and the shipping route moved to Antwerp. The population was cut in half overnight.

Despite any number of wars, whether religious or geopolitical, Bruges survived. Today it is a major tourist destination for Europe and an UNESCO Heritage site. We saw a number of ancient buildings and walked about 3.5 miles over cobblestone streets and squares.

We had 2 hours of free time here and we used it well. We enjoyed a boat ride in the city’s canal system (14 KM of canals in total, we didn’t see them all), enjoyed a Belgian waffle, bought some Belgian chocolate, and Greg had a Belgian beer (a local Tripple, it was good).

Interesting notes: there is a brewery downtown that uses an underground pipe to carry their beer a couple of miles away to their bottling plant. In the Middle Ages beer was healthier to drink than water; many homes had beer piped into their basements directly. Secondly, we saw an old Catholic hospital that dated back to the plagues of the Middle Ages; it had a back door opening into the canal so that Black Death victims could be delivered to the hospital discretely.

As for the Canadians…they liberated this part of Flanders in both World Wars, making them favorites of the locals.

It’s time once again to see the world, as we start the first of three adventures in 2025. This trip takes us on a cruise from England to Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, and Iceland. It does not appear that we will need any sunscreen, but having said that it’s a lovely morning here in Southampton. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Days one and two were long travel days; we left Boise Friday at about 2:30 MDT, changed planes in Minneapolis and left there at 9:30 PM CDT, arriving in Amsterdam on Saturday at 12:30 PM CEST, then one more plane change towards Southampton, arriving there at 5:30 PM BST. All went well, but we were pretty tired when we got here.

Our hotel is the White Star, an old hotel near the waterfront that has been very nicely remodeled. the main floor has a restaurant and pub that were absolutely hopping on a Saturday night. Our room was on the third floor of a building with no elevator, so a little bit of lugging bags up narrow stairs was required. We split an order of fish and chips and Greg had a pint of cask ale; both were very good. Then it was off to bed.

This morning found us feeling much better after a good night’s sleep. Our room included breakfast in the restaurant; we shared an English breakfast and each had a cup of very good coffee. Later we will get over to the cruise terminal to truly start our trip. Tomorrow’s first stop is in Belgium, and will be taking a tour of the city of Bruges. More then…