We were planning on going to Rome in June, 2020 to do a Norwegian cruise on the western side of Italy and other ports. Covid cancelled that cruise. Norwegian offered us a full refund of the Italian cruise, but also offered us a lot of incentives if we didn’t take a refund.
So we booked this same Iceland-Greenland cruise in June, 2021. But Covid persisted and that cruise was canceled.
With the Covid vaccination restrictions lifted for air travel and Norwegian cruising, we booked this same Iceland-Greenland cruise for June 2023.
Took off from Denver 6/20/23 and landed in Reyjavek, Iceland on our anniversary, 6/21/2023.
Icelandic Air has a direct flight from Denver to Reykjavik, Iceland. This is our plane we took. We left Denver on June 20, and arrived in Iceland on June 21, our 48-th wedding anniversary.
It was a 45-minute bus ride from the airport in Keflavik to downtown Reykjavik. They dropped us off at our hotel. These are a few of the things we saw during this bus ride.
We stayed at this Hilton. There was a restaurant next door that we had a tasty pizza for lunch.
Our room was very nice.
This is the view out our fourth floor window.
Across the street what a United States Embassy for Iceland. I work with a friend who was an Beirut Embassy guard while in the Marine Corps. I sent him this picture.
We bought a power converter to change the European electricity to USA electricity. We were tired, so I closed the blinds and started the noise maker to relax for a few minutes. A short time later, I smelled something electrical burning. Then the noise maker stopped. There were no lights in our room. Opening the blinds, the noise makes was smoking.
I couldn’t find a circuit breaker box in our room. I went down to the front desk, explained what happened and asked if the circuit breaker could be reset in our room. He said he just got a call that someone’s TV just went out. I think I tripped the circuits for our entire wing of the hotel.
Later the front desk man came into our room to inspect what had happened. The electrical burning smell was still strong and he agreed that this was the culprit that caused the win to lose power.
Back in Colorado, I took the noise maker apart and indeed, it had gotten hot and melted the coils.
Above picture from InternetWe should have booked a tour to go to the southern coast to see the island with lots of Puffin birds on it later in the day. I didn’t think that it stayed light here until midnight, since it is so far north and close to the Artic Circle. We want to come back someday and this will be the first tour we book.
Above picture from InternetBarbara did book at tour for June 22 to tour the famous sites on the Golden Circle route. This is a map of the tour. The tour went from Reykjavik on the upper right blue line. To Gullfoss Falls and then back down the lower blue line. When we got to the yellow road that went from the lower blue line back to Reykjavik, we went that direction.
Barbara had bought the Blue Lagoon add-on to this tour, which is the black circle on the lower left blue line with the word Spa seen. We went back to the main bus station and got on another bus that took us to the Blue Lagoon and back.
Thingvellir National Park is an area where two tectonic plates, the Eurasian plate (on the right of this picture) and the North American plate (on the left of this picture) are separating at a rate of 2 cm per year, 1 cm in each direction. There is a sidewalk that allows you to walk between these two tectonic plates. Very cool!
Above picture from InternetThis picture illustrates the tectonic plates in Iceland.
This lava cooled in a very unique pattern.
This valley was all made by this tectonic fault line.
These flowers are called Lupins. They are a native plant in Alaska and were brought to Iceland to help control erosion in areas where nothing else would grow. Lupins help stabilize the soil and enrich it for other plants to eventually grow.
Lupins liked Iceland so much, they spread everywhere. The fields of Lupins are beautiful with these purple flowers, but they have become invasive, strangling the other native plants that were growing there. They are so prolific in Iceland that now they are impossible to get rid of.
One tour guide said that once the soil is enriched by these Lupins, they will die off and let other plants take hold. Another tour guide disputed this claim.
Above picture from InternetRegardless, they are beautiful to look at when there are a lot of them together.
Our next stop on this tour was to the Haukadalur geothermal region. Here they had bubbling hot water pots and a nice geyser that erupted about every 7 minutes. This area was small, but the entirety of Iceland is one huge geothermal place.
Then we drove onto Gullfoss Falls. The entire countryside was green and lush.
The Gullfoss Falls were incredible. The grey water is indicative of a melting glacier fed river.
There were a lot of steps to get from the parking lot to be closer to the falls. We did a lot of steps but not all of them to get over to where you could stand in the mist of the falls.
There were these motorhomes everywhere. Barbara did a bit of investigation on the internet and you can rent these to drive around Iceland. There are plenty of places to park these for a night. If we return to Iceland, we will rent one of these and tour the island.
This is a picture of the glacier that is melting that created the river for Gollfoss Falls.
This is a power generation plant where they are using the steam directly from the ground to make electricity. I never saw above ground power lines the entire time we were in Iceland. They make 17% of the country's electricity this way. Almost all of the rest of the electricity generation is made with hydro-electric generation power plants.
This is the Blue Lagoon Hot Springs Spa. It was nice. The day was cold but the water was warm. There was a brisk wind coming from the other side of this picture. Barbara and I found this brown recycling bins (across and to the left) that blocked the wind and the hot water was being fed into the pool at. It was nice. We got a free drink at the bar, which is the building to the right in this picture.
This Spa was really nicely. You could get into the water inside the changing room area and you could keep your shoulders under water the entire time you were outside. At one point, it rained ice pellets on us.
The water was definitely blue here.
On June 23, it was time to head to the dock and board our cruise ship, named the Norwegian Star. From our hotel window, you could see our cruise ship off in the distance, just above the buildings.
This is the atrium area of the ship. The yellow lights in the back are underneath balconies from each deck of the ship. You could go out on them and look down onto the atrium. There are 4 elevators, two on each side of the balconies that we used to get between floors.
A wider view of the atrium area. This is where the Starbucks was. We had a few drinks from them.
The stained glass ceiling was beautiful.
This is our room on the ship.
This is the view of the Reykjavik port from our balcony.
We were on the Norwegian Star on a previous cruise. They completely refurbished the ship. We noticed that the auditorium was basically the same as we remembered it.
On June 24, we arrived at our first port after leaving Reykjavik. Our cruise ship was so large, that at almost all the ports, our ship stayed in the deeper water and they used the rescue boats of the ship to tender us to the port.
We are heading down to the tender boat. They can hold over 60 people at a time.
This port was so foggy and the tender boats didn't have any radar to see the short, that a pilot boat (the one in the center of this picture) were needed to guide the tender boats safely to shore and then back to the ship on the return ride.
We wore our masks a lot to ensure we didn't catch anything. I did catch a bit of a cough later on that went away after a day of relaxing in the room.
They had these lifted trucks to take people inland on tours they could purchase. We just walked around this port to see what was there.
This is a featured attraction of this port. This building was very old.
We followed the street, seen to the left of the building, for about a mile. We say a lot of ducks with babies in the ocean there. It was misting on us most of the time we walked around.
The port was small and there was barely enough room for our tender boats to dock.
These young people were selling pretty local rocks. They were saving money to go to Disneyland in Florida sometime in the near future.
If you bought several rocks, which we did, you got to pick another one for free. I taught the young lady in the back, left, the USA term BOGO, Buy One, Get One. She loved it and I heard her reciting this BOGO term to new people approaching their stand as we walked away.
I took a picture of this cruise ship from another line from our balcony. When we were being tendered from the shore to our ship, this ship appeared out of the fog. Someone said "There is the Titianic". It was funny because it appeared as if it were a ghost ship.
There were several boats like this that came near our ship at several ports.
This boat came near and I observed a person transfer from the boat to our ship through an open door at the waterline. I've heard that ports require a local pilot to be on the bridge as the ship leaves the harbor area.
On the way to Akureyri, Iceland, we were north of the Artic Circle. This is the first time I've been this far north on the Earth.
Our next stop was Akureyri, Iceland on June 25.
I took a snapshot from my phone of the sunset and sunrise time in Akureyri on June 26. The sun was only below the horizon for almost 2 hours. It never got that dark. On June 21, the sun would have been below the horizon for only a few minutes at this port sinece it is just below the Arctic Circle.
All the traffic lights in this town had the red light changed to a heart. This was done during the Covid lockdown to help cheer up the people. Now the red heart promotes heart health.
This was the only cruise excursion we booked on this cruise. I got a great picture of the Norwegian Star from across the bay.
The country side was lush green. These yellow, Meadow Buttercup flowers were found in many fields.
Our first stop was here at the Godafoss Falls.
Godafoss Falls is also called the Falls of the Gods. This name came about because during the Crusades, when the UK was making countries Christian, then came to Iceland. At that time, the Iceland people worshipped their own religion. In seeing what had happened to the people of other countries that opposed the Crusades, Iceland adopted the Christian religion without bloodshed. They did get the waiver that people could worship the old religion in their own homes if they wished.
It was said that the local king of this region, in an effort to promote Christianity and not cause any bloodshed, tossed all his Norse God statues into these falls to hide them from the Crusading army. Hence the name, Falls of the Gods.
Picture of the lower falls.
The next stop was at this place.
These craters were called Pseudo Craters. They were formed when there was a glacier over this entire area. But lava was seeping close to the surface because of the constant volcanic activity that was occurring. The heat of the rising lava melted the glacier from underneath. The cold water would seep into cracks, come into contact with this hot, molten lava and explode, leaving these Pseudo Craters.
This entire area fascinated my interests in this kind of activity.
The country is setup for tourism. This is our tour bus. During the tourist activities during the day, there were no semi-trucks on the roads. They would start their deliveries after the tours ended. This kept the roads clear of these bigger trucks, so these big busses could easily navigate the roads.
At the next stop, this entire area was once a gigantic lava tube. We were able to walk amongst the supports that kept the roof supported while the lava flows through the tube. It was a large, awesome area to think of the amount of once flowed through this area.
This sign talking about the area gives a better picture of what this place is like. My pictures from at the bottom of the tube didn't do the size of this thing justice.
When the lava eventually quit flowing in the tube, the roof of the tube could not support its own weight and it collapsed. This formation was near the top of the lava tube. You can see the lava running down the sides of this roof support before it cooled and solidified. Walking in this tube area and exploring it was another cool aspect of this trip.
This is one of the largest cinder cones in the world.
From this side, you can see to caldera lower on this side than the other side.
Another geothermal electricity generation plant.
This area had some more geothermal items at the surface. This was the only place where the smell of sulfur was noticeable. In Yellowstone National Park, the smell of sulfur is everywhere.
These boiling mud pots were cool.
This is a featured item in this town. This church has a cool design.
On our way to the next port, I caught the first-quarter moon over the shore of Iceland.
These maps were on our room's TV. There was a channel that showed were the ship was. This shows where our next port is on the Icelamd map.
We visited this town on June 26. We were tendered to the short and walked around.
They were raising something in these rings. The small boat was moving from ring to ring as I watched.
As we left this port, I got a closer look at these things.
I like getting a picture of the wake of every cruise ship I'm on. Here is the wake of this ship.
This shows the route of the ship. Where the arrow is under the Labrador Sea is where we encountered the first large icebergs in the sea.
On June 28, we were to visit the port of Nanortalik, Greenland.
These bigger icebergs were in the ocean outside the port. The port was very foggy and we were told there were more of these size of icebergs in the port itself. The Captain decided it was too dangerous to try to enter the port and tender us to shore, so we had to skip this port.
On June 29, we woke up in the port of Paamiut, Greenland.
The view from our balcony showed many Titanic size icebergs just outside the harbor. They were moving from left to right. These chunks of ice stretched from the left horizon to the right horizon. A nice surprise and very impressive.
A panorama of the town of Paamuit from near where the dock is.
I liked the windows of this building.
This is their church.
This yellow building is one of the oldest buildings and one of the original ones in this town.
A reindeer skull and antlers.
We were tendered to this port also. It was a drizzly day here.
This port was small. Our tender bounced off the other boats anchored in this tiny harbor. Our driver did a good job, but the rough seas jostled us into them.
This is a picture of us approaching the Norwegian Star from our tender. It was taken through the dirty window of the tender. It is one of the better pictures I took of our ship.
When we are ready to leave port, they hoist the tender boats out of the water...
...and stowed them hanging above Deck 7.
As we left this port, we got near the icebergs. They were still a ways off and I had to use the zoom feature of my camera to capture them. Our ship stayed clear of them.
This set of icebergs were way off in the distance. We did get closer and with the zoom on my camera, I captured these beautiful views of the Titanic size icebergs.
This one looked like a submarine. I jested to Barbara that this is how our US Navy is disguising our subs so the Russians won't detect them.
This was a beautiful one that was off in the distamcve as the ship passed it.
I liked how the orientation of our view of these ship sinking monsters changed as we passed by them.
A beautifully colored one that was close to the ship.
More beautifully colored ones on the way to our next port.
On June 30, we arrived at our last new port of the cruise. Nuuk is the capital of Greenland.
We got to dock so we could use the ramp to exit and re-board the ship.
Downtown was over a mile away. To the left of this picture, climbing up the bedrock, are stairs going up. Lots of stairs. We were not going to walk downtown until someone said the yellow busses (at bottom of picture) were shuttles that would take us downtown and back.
Every place we were on this cruise there were sky cranes visible. We were told that there was a 10-year waiting list for people to get their own apartments. The building during the summer was evident everywhere we went.
This entrance was a combination of quartz and basalt rocks. It was very rough and hard to walk on. This was the entrance to one of the few touristy gift shops on the entire cruise. We did purchase a lot of items from this shop.
The town was nestled on the coast and the mountains rose just on the other side of the town.
They love their donuts and pastries in this town. This display was at the local grocery store.
Greenland's bedrock seems to be a limestone as compared to Iceland's bedrock being basalt in origin.
Heading back to Reykjavik.
I was amazed how our wake calmed the rough ocean. I did enjoy the physics of this.
The only ship to pass us during this entire cruise.
As we left Nuuk, Greenland and headed back to Reykjavik, we saw more fantastic icebergs.
The next two days we were at sea. We played bingo every day.
Barbara almost won the final blackout game.
A Greenland glacier as seen way off in the distance.
This is where the ship was when I took the previous glacier picture.
The last sunset from the ship. The next morning we were to be back in port at Reykjavik.
Waking up the next morning and we were docked in port. The water was very calm.
Another cruise ship is visible on the bow camera that is displayed on our room TV.
This is the boat and refueling barge to add fuel to the ship for the next cruise. The amount of fuel is measured in TORS.
Colorful scenery on the way to the airport from the port.
It was said this is the largest glacier in Iceland. This was very far away and I used the zoom feature to get this picture out the bus window.
Trolls are a legend of the land. A lot of hunks of lava that are scattered among the Iceland landscape are said to be trolls in hiding. This is a picture of a large troll in the airport.
I noticed we were going to fly over the Greenland coast on the way home. This is the display on the back of the seat in front of me.
The following views are from almost 34,000 feet.
Glacier ice in the water around Greenland.
The amount of ice seen from the glaciers is fantastic. There is a lot. This explains where the large icebergs were coming from that I saw at Paamiut, Greenland
This video is long, but it is impressive. Notice the glacier that appears at about 45 seconds in the video. You see all the tributaries of the main ice flow that are merging into the glacier. This explains all the variations that one can see in a glacier at sea level.
This view from almost 34,000 feet explains the different colors and textures of the Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay, Alaska (pictured above). This is caused by the different glacier flows that are merged together far above the ocean as this ice flows downhill.
The amount of glacier ice in Glacier Bay, Alaska (pictured above) doesn't compare to the ice in the water around the Greenland glaciers.
