And our First Port of Call
After a quiet morning walking around our local downtown section of Reykjavik, we headed for the ship! The Viking Neptune is considered, and falls into, the ‘Small Ship” category when it comes to cruise vessels. She is still plenty large enough to accommodate 930 passengers. Weighing in at about 49,000 GRT (Gross Registered Tons) and 735 feet long, she is quite a bit smaller than what we usually sail on. The smallest Princess vessels, the Island, and the Coral, are almost 1000 feet long and weigh in at 91,000 GRT and will hold twice as many passengers. But bigger is not necessarily better as smaller ships can access ports that either are off-limits to larger ones, or they would need to tender in to shore.
First, let’s look around Reykjavik!
It is a Lutheran church and those columns on either side are meant to be reminiscent of the many basalt columns that are found in Iceland. They also conveniently resemble the pipes of an organ which there happens to be inside!
(with a seagull on his head)
It seems that proximity to ocean air works well for flowers, just walk around
Beach Haven for proof of that!
Back to the ship……
Embarking only 930 passengers is far easier to do than the larger vessels and it shows. The entire process took about seven minutes! (of course, so much of the important stuff is done ‘online’ nowadays). The Neptune is only three years old and definitely not in need of any refurbishment any time soon. As you may imagine, Viking takes very good care of their vessels. Interestingly, all of their ‘Ocean Ships’ are built exactly with the same specifications and layout. The only differences would be style and décor, and then of course, age.
I would say that our stateroom is about average for a cruise ship, except for the bathroom. Here that category of ‘average’ goes off the scale! The storage for items is notably more than others and the shower may be twice the size!
One overnight and we arrived in our first Port, that of Isafjordur. It’s way up on top of Iceland, rather remote as you may imagine and its sole reason for existence is fishing. Its name does not include the word fjord for nothing as it sits nicely down in one of those deep, protective geological marine devices!
It’s crazy how the Cruise Industry morphs local economies, for good or bad……. only the locals can decide. Isafjordur began accepting cruise excursions around 36 years ago in the early 1990’s. Nothing was official until 1994 when a local tour operator opened up shop and prior to the Covid Stall, almost 100,000 passengers per year had made their way into town. While we were there an additional two ships were berthed and I counted a total of seven buses at the waterfalls that we visited.
The other Viking ship is on a cruise that keeps it sailing around Iceland, calling on ports like this one, for its duration.
Yes, it’s narrow.
Yes, it’s two-way.
No……vehicles cannot pass each other.
So, there are numerous pull-offs cut into the opposite side of the road for vehicles to hastily pull into and allow the oncoming vehicle to drive by.
In all fairness we were there on a Sunday, so most things were closed.
They didn’t have much to say…. but were as cute as all get-out!
You may have ascertained by now that foss added to anything means ‘falls’
I stayed behind to take this photo and make sure that the bus did not leave early.
it Iooks to me that they are trying to get the kids to hang around and become fishermen?
That’s it for now, two days of “Day’s at Sea” coming up…… it’ll give me a chance to catch up on all of this!
One reply on “Embarkation!”
It looks like the whole town is huddled on the shore but it is obvious there is no room for expansion up the mountain.
The tunnel system up there is outrageous.