Sunny Day In Grundarfjordur (Grundarfjörður)

For our next port in Iceland, we chose to walk to a nearby waterfall that we'd read about rather than taking a shore excursion.  

After our long tour day in Reykjavik and an extensive excursion scheduled for our next port, Akureyri, we appreciated the concept of a slower paced day.

Princess offers a handful of guided excursions from the port in Grundarfjordur, with the top recommendation being the Best of Snæfellsnes Peninsula at $254.95 per passenger.

Other tours cost almost that much, so we were never really tempted.

Had we been cruising with Regent Seven Seas, which includes unlimited excursions, or Viking Ocean Cruises, with one introductory excursion per port, we would certainly have taken advantage of those offerings, assuming the ships called on this port.

Then again, those more deluxe cruise lines obviously cost considerably more than mainstream Princess Cruises. As the late Milton Friedman famously stated, "There is no such thing as free lunch."

We started the day with bran muffins and cappuccinos at the International Cafe.  With 7 AM arrival time in port, we could have also selected a Princess Egg Muffins with no additional charge at that little cafe in the atrium.  We enjoyed those delicious McDonalds-inspired creations in a couple of other early morning ports, but on this particular day we went up to the buffet for omelets, fresh fruit, potatoes, etc.

Incidentally, while we love our animal proteins, I should note that all restaurants including the International Cafe has vegan and vegetarian choices, including Avocado Toast.  There's also a decent selection of gluten-free foods, though I understand for people with Celiacs that being on the proper plate may not mean they are picked up with a dedicated utensil.

An advantage of cruising on the same line a lot of times is the preferred tender access, so as usual we were on the first tender boat heading ashore.

The short, pleasant tender boat ride on a gorgeous sunny day brought us to the little town.  It was larger than Seydisfjordur, which we had visited on a different cruise, but it still is not a place where you would be likely to spend much time.

There's not much chance of getting lost.

We followed signs toward the Visitor's Center, which we somehow missed.

I stand corrected.

Without trying, we spotted the Orca Statue that we'd heard about in a port talk onboard but didn't take a photo.  The artwork signifies the fact that whales can be spotted here in season.

We turned right when we saw an old lady sitting at a fold-out table selling a few items in a mini-yard sale.

No, I wouldn't count on that landmark being there should you come.

We meandered through a small neighborhood, finally finding our way to the main road leading out to the waterfall.

As we walked the coast, we could always see what I thought at first to be a volcano island, but Julie, having actually looked at the map, immediately knew it to be the peninsula with Mount Kirkjufell, or "Church Mountain," perched on it.  It simply looks very different depending on the angle from which we looked at it.

Along the way, the waterfalls beckoned us visually from afar, if we zeroed in on them.

The route really was very simple, but we had hoped to find an alternative to walking on what for Iceland was a busy two-lane highway for at least part of the walk.

To be clear, this road was not one that a fast-food chain would target as a source of business.

Maybe a hundred cars per hour on this busy day with a large cruise ship in port.

Not enough cars to disturb the beautiful Icelandic horses in their pasture beside the road.

All in all, it was a very pleasant walk out to the falls.

Kirkjufellsfoss is gorgeous. 

 

It's a series of three waterfalls.

Mount Kirkjufell makes a dramatic backdrop.

We return knowing that we were correct in assuming this site is the reason Princess chose this port, and on a cruise where it is easy to spend hundreds of dollars on shore excursions, it is always nice to have awesome natural wonders easily accessible.

Click to see short Grundarfjordur Waterfall video one.

Click to see short Grundarfjordur Waterfall video two.

The distance to these marvelous cascades are about two miles each way from the tender port.

Would it be wonderful to seek panoramic views from Mount Kirkjufell or take a guided excursion?  

Probably.

But sometimes less is more.  We were elated by our easy day in Grundarfjordur.

For foodies who take advantage of every port to try local cuisine, there are purportedly good restaurant choices available.

On this sunny day, Julie and I snagged seats at the top of the tender boat for the short ride to Caribbean Princess for lunch. 

Notwithstanding Friedman's adage about free lunches, we enjoyed a terrific lunch, which if not free was, like breakfast and dinner, already included in our cruise fare.

Once again, we lavished in lovely views from the ship on a sunny afternoon in Iceland.  Never underestimate the value of these sea views of lovely ports.

On this particular afternoon, we took advantage of the perfect temperature on our balcony.  

In a photo Julie captured the book I found in the ship's library, If You Would Have Told Me.  By the way, if you ever wonder how I remember different details of a trip weeks or months later when writing my blog, it often comes back to photos taken on the voyage.

It seems like I always find an interesting biography that I read on a cruise.  This time, it was the autobiography of John Stamos.

As the book's title alludes, if you would have told me I'd be reading a book about John Stamos on this cruise, I'd never have believed you.

I was not, as you may logically infer, a big fan of his TV show Full House, although I had watched a few episodes over the years.  I picked out the book because I had met him once, and he seemed to be a nice guy.

Working behind the desk at my suntan salon in Anaheim, Stamos came in with a friend to use tanning beds.  The friend had a playful look about him as he asked, "Don't you know who this is?"

"No."

"This is the famous actor, John Stamos."

"Oh, nice to meet you.  You'll need to fill out these questionnaires."

I still had no idea who he was, but I figured the friend was trying to score free tanning sessions, which wasn't going to happen on my watch.

Anyway, they had no cash, so John wrote a personal check.  I noted the address was in a neighborhood that wasn't far away.

After the tanning sessions ended, they sort of paused by the door, John Stamos smiled bemusedly looking to see if I knew who he was.  This was pre-internet, so unless he had been in the edition of Forbes Magazine that I happened to be reading, the answer would have still been no.

Here's a photo approaching the waterfalls.

My cousin Bonnie came in a couple of hours later to relieve me.  When I pulled the check from the till to take to put in the floor safe, I asked her if she knew who John Stamos was.

"Oh my gosh, was JOHN STAMOS HERE!?!!!"

"Yeah, you know him?"

"He's Blackie!  On General Hospital.  He's in all the fan magazines."

If you choose to just look at the pretty photos, I understand.

So anyway, seeing his face on a book cover aboard Caribbean Princess reminded me of that day, so I checked out his book.  What was it doing in the limited selection of that cruise ship library?  It might have to do with his ex-wife Rebecca Romijn cohosting The Real Love Boat with her new husband.  Just a guess.

In his autobiography, John talked about going to Disneyland with his friend --- the friend with him at the suntan salon? --- while in high school to meet girls.  That reminded me of similar adventures at Disneyland on weekend nights that I had with my friends Chris and Kevin.

Stamos wrote that he always wanted to be a celebrity, and on more than one occasion, his friend would pretend to recognize him as an actor in a Disney movie to impress some girls they admired from afar.  My friends and I did stuff just as goofy.  I enjoyed thinking about my own past while reading about his.

Seeing photos of waterfalls is better than me describing them.

It was an enjoyable read, cover to cover, because as odd as it seems, I could relate to a lot of his experiences and aspirations. One other note is that Stamos said he made the second worst movie in history (right behind Showgirls) at what must have been about the time I met him.

Upon returning home, I found that movie, which co-stars Gene Simmons of KISS, available for free viewing on youtube.  Never Too Young to Die is so bad that you might find it as amusing as I did, so I linked it for you to view, should that interest you..

I read a few chapters on the balcony that day before taking an afternoon nap.

As we cruised from Grundarfjordur, we enjoyed our usual cruise ship evening of happy hour, live music in small venues, gourmet, multi-course dinner and a big show in the Princess Theater. 

Life is always good, but taking a cruise makes that all the more obvious.

More of Julie's Photos

More of Wes's Photos

Counting Sheep in Skjolden

I like to find a unique experience or iconic location in each cruise port visited so similar destinations don't bleed together in my memories. For Skjolden, that landmark appeared as soon as the ship pulled up to the dock.

Next to the pier, sheep moseyed across the green hillside below a red farmhouse and barn.  The rural scene is a far cry from industrial ports on the fringe of a city where large ships often port.

Had we still been in bed, we could have literally counted sheep looking through our balcony glass doors to go back to sleep.

But we were wide awake, bundled up warmly against the brisk morning and anxious to go ashore to explore beautiful Norway.

The village of Skjolden has a population of 200, so 3400 passengers on Sky Princess dwarfed their numbers despite being the only ship visiting.  Even if every resident was a taxi driver, there wouldn't have been enough cars to drive all of the passengers around.

While some cruisers had secured shore excursions in advance, Julie and I had read long before boarding the cruise that waterfalls could be found alongside the road within a couple miles of the village.

Indeed, we found several towering waterfalls by simply following the two-lane road leading out of town.

For scale, please note that I am standing to the right side of the stream a few hundred yards in front of the waterfall.  It would be easy to not notice me there in the picture.

We had actually been sailing past waterfalls for hours, having entered the world's longest navigable fjord well before going to bed on our second full day at sea..

Sognefjord is 126 miles long, and at the very end is Skjolden, our first port of call in Norway.

According to the Princess Patter, Sognefjord was an important trade route for Vikings 1200 years ago, when Skjolden was part of the small kingdom of Sygnafylki.

I could visualize the village ruled by the brutal but visionary alpha-male Ragnar Lothbrok of Vikings TV fame being situated in a similar location.  While the show is historic fiction, Ragnar is believed to be a real historic figure.

Unfortunately, the cultural presentations on board barely mentioned Vikings or other historical figures from the region like Leif Ericson, instead covering only tangentially related subjects like the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, which while interesting would have been more suitable for cruises almost anywhere else in the world.

The historian scheduled her talk about Vikings for the following cruise, apparently because she was on the full 21-day cruise that would return to Norway.  It would have been better for those on that longer voyage to have been exposed twice to Vikings lore than for our sailing to miss out entirely on what I would call an essential part of the picture.

This is where I would normally do my own research, following bread crumbs of information shared by the onboard historian, but there really were none.  I decided to just skip trying to do intensive research from scratch, just going with what I already knew, essentially.

A big problem is that in Viking sagas, it is impossible to separate true history from legend after centuries of time have blurred stories were first shared as oral traditions to illiterate people.

Suffice it to say that in the PBS series Vikings --- which I would say falls into Viking Saga traditions in this blurring of fact and fiction --- Ragnar's brother Rollo seems destined to be a weak link but turns out to be a mythic hero himself, so it is a nice character arc.

The most probable scenario of history, however, is that not only were Ragnar and Rollo not brothers, but they were probably not related and in fact never met. 

The real Rollo, however, did by strength claim a huge swath of territory and a royal title by invading France.  He was the first Duke of Normandy. making the most of the land he was granted. He was the great-great-great-grandfather of William the Conqueror, who brought Norman rule to England.

Queen Victoria of England was purportedly a distant relative, and her nine children went on to marry royalty in other countries around Europe so that in the 19th Century, we might say the Vikings, if not specifically Rollo, were the ancestors of most European royalty.  World War I began as something of an ego battle between royal cousins over who had the greatest military might.

In any case, our highly entertaining port guide Julio informed a full Princess Theater and anyone who watched his presentation on TV live or in reruns about the potential to walk to waterfalls, so with few alternatives for those who had not locked in a shore excursion, we knew that as the day warmed, the road to the waterfalls might become crowded.

Because we got an early start, the hordes did not appear on the roads until after we were well on our way back to the ship.

The small village was filled with Princess guests when we briefly stopped there on our way back to the ship.  To be clear, this village is much smaller than the fictional Kattegat from the TV series Vikings.

After a late lunch, we were ready for an afternoon nap, but little lambs on the hillside were not nearly so lethargic as we felt after our long waterfalls hike.

They raced back and forth playfully.

I must confess that it had turned out to be a gorgeous sunny afternoon, so we took advantage of the relative warmth to head up to the sun deck and stretch out on lounge chairs with ocean views instead of counting sheep to fall asleep in the room.

Or did we do both?

You don't have to be constantly on the run to enjoy a port day.

As the pictures and videos attest, however, the waterfalls and other scenery were lovely and well worth the long walk, which turned out to cover more miles than we expected.

According to Julie's iPhone, we walked almost 10 miles altogether, and throughout that time we were either approaching waterfalls and arriving at waterfalls.

Cruising from Skjolden through Norway's longest fjord over the course of a long evening of daylight was also a treat, reminiscent of river cruising on the Rhine or Danube as we passed lovely hillsides and villages, but of course much different with waterfalls and farms instead of castles and vineyards.

Something of interest to many people considering a trip to Norway and Iceland are the Northern Lights.

A couple of days earlier, when Sky Princess began cruising from England toward Norway, the Captain had come over the public speakers to say that in the event of sighting Northern Lights, he would make a ship-wide announcement, including within our stateroom.

He apologized in advance if we were rudely awakened, but I assume everyone was happy to know we wouldn't miss Aurora Borealis should it appear.

No, that wouldn't be likely at our latitude, because we would approach but not enter the Arctic Region 20 degrees from the Magnetic North Pole.  However, within the last year, temporary geomagnetic storms have made Northern Lights visible in Montana and other states that are well south of where we cruised in Norway.  

Perhaps a bigger issue is that the Northern Lights are most visible against a dark night sky, and we only had about four hours of darkness per night.  The sun set about 11:30 PM and rose again around 3:30 AM.

It became the norm for us to go to bed for the night while it was still light outside, despite attending live music events around the ship until 11 PM.  Fortunately, we had thick curtains closed in front of our balcony sliding glass doors, so we weren't awakened by sunrise light.

If seeing the Northern Lights is high on your bucket list, take a cruise in winter rather than between spring and summer, and take a cruise that goes further north, such as on one of Viking's In Search of Northern Lights itineraries.

While we hoped to get lucky, we weren't terribly disappointed when Aurora Borealis did not put on a show for us.  It's important to set expectations realistically when traveling but be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.  Having that announcement by the Captain allowed us to sleep soundly, knowing if the unlikely Northern Lights appeared, we would be awakened to see them.

You don't need Northern Lights to love Norway.  Cruising through the Fjords of Norway on long evenings of spring through fall is a real treat in its own right.

More of Julie's Photos

5:30 AM, Cruising Toward Skjolden

More of Wes's Photos

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