Whitney has decided to step back from blogging for a bit, so I (Howard) will be stepping in to share some thoughts and photos on our travels. There won’t be as much history or details, but hopefully it still makes for a pleasant short break in your day. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment area below if you have anything you’d like me to include in the future.
We’ve taken to using repositioning cruises to move between continents to avoid the long-haul flights when possible, and for the 3rd year in a row we used this method to return to North America. This time it was a Princess Cruise (the first time we’ve tried that line) out of Southampton, UK, with planned stops in Scotland (1), Iceland (3), and the Canadian Maritimes (3), before finishing up in Boston. As seems to happen quite often these days with cruises, there were some changes to the itinerary just before the final payment was required, with the biggest one being the elimination of the Scottish port. We had the option to cancel the cruise, but since this was primarily a transportation method for us we decided to go ahead with it.
As a side note, cruises are a bit of a different calculation for us nomadic types. For most people, a cruise vacation is an additional cost on top of the expense of owning a home or paying rent, which requires saving up extra money. However, for us, it’s just another accommodation, but one that includes the transportation and food in a lump sum. We compare the total cost of a cruise against what we’d pay to stay in an Airbnb for the same number of days, plus the cost of food/restaurants, plus what it would cost us to fly to the location we’re moving to. If the cruise is less than that, we’ll definitely take the cruise! This cruise was slightly more, but we looked at that extra fee as paying for a holiday because we get to visit new places like we normally do, but we don’t need to cook or do any of the logistics figuring out how to travel and find accommodations/supermarkets/metro in each city. Cruising truly is how nomadic travellers take a vacation.
As mentioned, this cruise was our first on Princess. We don’t have an allegiance to a specific cruise line – booking with whoever has the best itinerary and price for where we want to go – and had often heard that Princess had good food. If you read our report on the April MSC cruise from Argentina to the UK, we had suffered through 22 days where the food was almost tasteless, with a limited selection, so we were really looking forward to putting the reviews to the test. Within a half hour of boarding we found ourselves in the buffet, and I’m happy to report the reports were true! The food was flavorful, with so many good options that it was hard to decide what to fit on the plate. We enjoyed the two weeks of eating our way across the Atlantic.
We’re glad the itinerary for this cruise took us back to Iceland, because our trip last year was early in the season when the vegetation hadn’t yet greened up after the long winter. This time, the landscape was bright green and beautiful! Here are some of the highlights of our cruise:
Reykjavík, Iceland
We visited Reykjavík last year for 2 days, enjoying the sights on the “Golden Circle”, so this year we walked into town and enjoyed a day of wandering.
Ísafjörður, Iceland
The picture above shows the town of Ísafjörður, with a plateau on the far side of the fjord that has a dip on the right that’s called “the troll seat” (just above the cruise ship on the right in the picture). Legend has it that a giant troll was rushing home across the plateau to avoid being turned to stone by the morning sunlight. After her panicked run, she sheltered in the shadows of the cliffs and soaked her aching feet in the fjord. The sloshing of her feet created the Ísafjörður harbour, and the weight of her backside created the depression (seat).
A panoramic view from our cabin of the plateau across the fjord from Ísafjörður, where you can see the “troll seat” dip on the right side of the high plateau
Grundarfjörður, Iceland
Grundarfjörður is a small town with limited things to do, but it has amazing scenery around the bay.
One of the tenders returning to our ship that was anchored in the bay
Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
Despite being Canadian we had never been to the Maritimes on the east coast, so this was a great opportunity to get a taste of the area.
Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada
In Sydney we rented a car and drove to the two major sites in the area: Lunenburg and Peggy’s Cove.
Up next: Our stops in Boston and Washington, DC
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