I took a time lapse this morning for part of the sail in, but the clouds were a bit low.
This morning I decided to have a breakfast burrito for breakfast.
There were a couple of ships docked (Viking and Tui). Before I got off the ship you could see the mountains in the distance with snow on them.
I also found the front of the ship on top of the bridge where you could actually take pictures without being completely behind glass. Up near the anchor they even had a new set of propellers.
The meeting time for my tour was a bit later today, it was 10:30 AM for a tour that started at 11:30 AM.
While waiting for the tender I found this navigational chart for the pilots…
I got ashore around 11:38 AM and took a couple of photos of the ship.
The bus finally left around 11:50 AM.
One of the interesting things is that some of the stop lights in town have been changed to a heart shape.I wasn’t able to get a very good photo of it, but you can see it.
The bus went around to the other side of the fjord and I took some photos of the ships.
The bus bypassed the toll tunnel because the road was more scenic (and no toll was required).
I took some photos of the scenery and some of the Icelandic horses.
The first stop was Godafoss waterfall. We didn’t have a tremendous amount of time, but I was able to walk down closer to the base of the falls, take some photos and videos then go back up and walk to the top near the waterfall and take more photos and videos.
A partial rainbow did show up and I got some of it on video.
On the way back I took some photos of the rapids downstream of the waterfall and there was an interesting arch near the water.
A couple of more pictures enroute to to the next stop.
The next stop was Skútustaðagígar near lake Mývatn. It was an area where there were fake craters. Essentially they are areas where a steam explosion occurred due to the lava which created features that looked like a crater even though they do not have a source of magma like craters that have had eruptions.
It was a nice scenic walk and the lake Mývatn was also nice.
While on the way to the next stop the lake was mirror-like. I managed to get a few photos.
The next stop was both a bathroom stop and another interesting area where steam vents created volcanic rock towers. There was a charge of 200 Icelandic Krona for the bathroom, but the tour guide passed out pre-paid tickets.
The guide walked us over to an area with a small cave, some volcanic rock towers that looked like trolls kissing.
And then finally we walked to another area with a huge lava tunnel.
The next stop was lunch at the Icelandair Hotel Myvatn. Soup was potato and leek and the fish today was Arctic Char, which looks like salmon, but is apparently caught in lake Myvatn.
We continued the tour and obviously were near the geothermal area as you can see the steam in the pictures below.
The next stop was Námafjall Hverir Viewpoint, which had (sulfur) steam vents and mud pots. It was interesting. Pictures are really difficult to show boiling water, so I did take a few videos.
I took some more photos of the scenery on the way back to the ship, including the Godafoss waterfall.
There was one photo stop before arriving at the pier overlooking the city.
I took a few more pictures of the ship from the bus on the way back.
The bus arrived a few minutes before the deadline and we were quickly back on the ship.
Today’s towel animal:
The ship however was not quickly on it’s way. For some reason the tours ran late and there was still a very long queue for tenders after 8 PM. The ship finally left around 9 PM.
I had dinner in the main dining room. I had smoked salmon for the starter and blackened tilapia for the main. The tilapia was so fishy I couldn;t eat it. I ate the green beans. For dessert I had the hazelnut & peanut cake which sounded better than it was.
I had set up the time lapse cameras before going to dinner. The one on the starboard side ran out of battery just before exiting the fjord. I know because I checked on it just as we were leaving and I saw it still running. I took a couple of photos while I was outside.
I listened to some music in the Red Frog Pub.
I caught the sun set at around midnight. It seemed like it took forever for the sun to drop below the horizon.
I took a picture of the TV showing the ship’s latitude inside the arctic circle. (It was after 1 AM). As you can see it still wasn’t dark – you could still see the ocean in front of the ship.
Today’s timeline:
