Yesterday was a sea day. We were traversing the North Sea, which is known for having very rough seas in a storm. The captain decided to leave our previous port early and put the pedal to the metal. (So to speak. Passenger ships aren’t all that fast.) It worked. We got into port before the storm caught up with us. Today we had mild temperatures and plenty of sun.

A hundred bikes?

Rotterdam likes bikes. We saw several places that had a huge number of bikes, probably close to 100. There are two sets of street crossing signals — one for pedestrians, one for bikes. Attention! Use the appropriate signal. Streets have at least three lanes: one for cars, one for bikes, and one for pedestrians. It is not advisable to be in the wrong lane. I purchased a coffee cup that said Amsterdam, bike capitol of the world. I didn’t realize I had the wrong city until later.

Attention! This signal is for cyclists

Rotterdam was almost totally destroyed by German bombing. Only three buildings survived. One of the three is the church. You can find a picture of the exterior on the web site. (Follow the link, as always.) We didn’t go inside the church because admission was way too high. Rotterdam is a pretty city. You can also see a most impressive draw bridge, a modern iconic bridge, and kaleidoscope.

Undamaged by German bombing

There were two strange buildings next to each other. One unfortunately had all the windows installed upside down. How sad for the inhabitants. But that was nothing compared to the cube houses. One cube house is used as a tourist attraction. What a horrible house! Stairs were very difficult to use. Handrails weren’t always available. Just getting groceries upstairs would be quite difficult. Rooms were small. There were few windows. These houses are the opposite of open and sunny. They claim that all the houses are inhabited.

Upside down window building, Cube houses

I agree with the statue of the monkey we saw in the house. What were they thinking?

What were they thinking?

There is a lot to do in Rotterdam. We barely scratched the surface. Tomorrow is another sea day.

Impressive drawbridge

Iconic bridge

Fun kaleidoscope (donations accepted)

Bonus: The real money for this city is in the petroleum distribution hub. These tanks go on for literally miles. Amazing.

With a population of over 20,000, Akureyri felt like a real city. We took an excursion that led us out of the city. Our first stop was the Laufas museum. In the 1800s, people lived in turf houses. Laufas is an example of a turf house for a wealthy family. These houses use stone and wood for their structural strength. They use turf to insulate the roof and walls. As you can see in the picture, the house looks quite attractive from the outside. The inside is a different story. They are small, have a low ceiling, and are exceedingly dark. Once inside, you can move from unit to unit using small doorways. (No doors, just a small opening in the interior wall.) The effect is to create a cramped labyrinth of interior space.

Our next visit was to one of the top sites in Iceland, the Godafoss Waterfalls. In the year 1,000 AD, the chieftain symbolically threw his pagan idols into the waterfall, marking the country’s peaceful transition to Christianity. It’s certainly an impressive site.

Our last stop was a botanical garden. There were numerous flowering plants in full bloom. It was a delightful site.

Today and tomorrow are sea days. The crew are becoming very imaginative in inventing entertainments. Today we have a “theft”. We are invited to be detectives, looking for who stole the jewelry.

With over 2,500 citizens, Ísafjörður is one of the larger cities in Iceland. We took a bus ride to Súðavík, a small hamlet that has a very sad recent history. at 6:30 AM on January 16, 1995 an avalanche did great damage to the hamlet, killing 8 people. That, coupled with another fatal avalanche later on that year, caused officials to take protective measures. These measures varied from planting pine trees to building avalanche dams. In Súðavík, officials decided a more practical approach was to give citizens the money to rebuild their houses, moving the hamlet down the road a bit. Standing there looking at site and the mountain behind, I could see how an avalanche might happen. This picture doesn’t show it very well because it doesn’t show the slope of the area.

Avalanche site

Then I was struck by a more profound thought. The avalanche site became a park, which is a normal reaction. But the contents of the park were disturbing. The vertical posts are just driftwood. The number of posts has nothing to do with the number of people who died or were injured. There is a playground just to the right. It was installed by a mother who lost her child to cancer. There is a large placard just to the left of a tough looking man. The placard has no English, The tour guide said the man appears to be a detective in the police department. I won’t speculate on why there is no public memorial. If you wish, you can learn more here.

From there, we went to the hamlet church where we heard the most popular lullaby in Iceland. It’s about a family of outlaws being chased by authorities. The mother doesn’t want her baby to have this life, so she throws the baby into a waterfall. What a strange part of the world.

Melancholy music

Finally we got to the highlight of the trip — a rescue center for artic foxes. It has only two foxes that were raised by humans. They couldn’t be set free in the wild because they don’t have the hunting skills to survive.

Artic Fox

Here’s hoping our next stop will be more upbeat.

Today was a sea day, and it was anything but boring. The storm let up in the wee hours this morning. The captain left the protection of the leeward side of the mountain and aimed for Prince Christian Sound. This passage features tall mountains on both sides of the ship, diving into the water, seemingly offering less space than the ship can safely travel through.

There’s no way I can make my camera show how dramatic the landscape is, but here are three feeble attempts.

Tomorrow is also a sea day. It promises to be much less interesting as we make our way towards Iceland.

Granite mountains crowd the channel. This shot shows a river cascading down the side of the mountain.

I thought this glacier was impressive, until I saw an entire wall of ice.

There’s no way over, under, around, or through this wall of ice. The captain stayed here for 20 minutes or so to allow all passengers to get their pictures. He had to turn the boat around and backtrack to re-enter the passage.

Today we visited another 1,000 person town. It was 40 degrees and raining. We had an excursion to ride with the icebergs! The only time we spent in town was the 15-minute walk from our tender port to the ice boats. I confirmed that my smart phone does quite well in the rain. We were quite lucky to be able to take the tour. The ship arrived early and left even earlier. Many of the crew worked through the night to get everything ready for these last-minute changes. Even so, many of the later tours were cancelled. The reason for the schedule changes was an approaching storm. We spent the morning tendering to shore. Then we hightailed it to the leeward side of the mountain to shelter from the storm. The captain plans to shelter overnight, then resume or cruising tomorrow morning.

We had no idea what our boat ride would be. As it happens, we rode in an open boat. Some others rode in a covered boat. We were very happy to be exposed because it gave us a much better view of the ice. Danita was even able to touch the ice. It could have been a miserable time, but the crew had wet suits for us. We took off our boots, put on the wet suit, and replaced our boots. I won’t say we were comfortable, but we were all in good spirits and having a great time.

No more talking. The day was all about the ice. I’ll put several picks on the website. As always, click the link at the top of the page if you want to see more pics.

Below: These little icebergs are sometimes called growlers, from the noise they make when air escapes from the bottom of the ice.

It turns out we were lucky about the black flies two days ago. One passenger got bit over 50 times. We continued our black fly luck yesterday. We saw a few, but they were lethargic and not biting. Paamiut is an Inuit town of about 1,000 residents. If you come, you will see that every building hosts several families. The bright colors indicate what the residents of that building do for a living. I don’t know what happens if the husband is a plumber and the wife a government official. I suspect everybody knows what they each do without the color coded residences. The buildings I saw housed several families. I did not see a stand-alone building all for just one family.

There’s not a lot to do. They decided not to open the museum. The church was having a funeral. It’s an interesting looking building.

The third thing to do is to go to the top of the rock and look over the entire town. The first picture came from the lookout. Getting to the overlook involves walking on a boardwalk that is part throughway and part private. One of the buildings I walked along has a resident that needs a wheel chair. The ramp they installed is not ADA compliant, but it does the job.

There are few more pics on the internet. To see them, click the photo link at the top of this message. One of them is an overlook of the bay, including our fog-enshrouded ship and a well known wreck.

Today we are at Red Bay, Newfoundland – population 142.

We had excellent weather — cool with light showers. This is excellent weather because if it is sunny and warm, the black flies come out. We were prepared with nets and Deet, but we didn’t need them. The picture is an exaggeration.

Back in the day, Basque whalers used this area to process whale oil. It was a large operation, with at least 19 sites. Much later, it had a fishing industry. Today, it’s all past tense. The major activity is tourism.

Tomorrow is a sea day. Saturday we are scheduled to arrive in Greenland at Paamiut. We met a couple who are on this tour for the 4th time. So far, they have not had weather good enough to allow the tenders to operate. Not to worry. This isn’t the only port we will visit in Greenland. We have also met people who have visited Paamiut, including our captain.

The cities in this part of the world are small by my standards, but they are nice none the less. Corner Brook is large enough to have a Walmart. Can anybody aspire to more? We didn’t visit the Walmart, but we did take a very nice nature trail walk. We had perfect weather.

The city has a small museum. My eye caught a 1936 Atwater Kent radio. In the 1930s, they were the radios you wanted. The information placard indicated this was one of the last radios they made. They were forced out of business by a pending labor strike. This is the kind of information that makes me wish I knew more. What were the other problems Atwater Kent was facing? It’s quite rare for a pending strike to force a healthy company to shut down. I also read that it had “a 3 band set with shallow tuning known as a fan dial”. That would be fun to look up.

I also saw this 1908 one speed pedal bike. The top horizontal tube supports a toolbox. (Point of interest, this is exactly where many new E-bikes put the battery.) Did it have a freewheel? Did it have coaster brakes? I don’t know. Here’s another interesting topic for a cold winter’s evening.

We closed out our visit with this kitschy train ride. The totally unexpected bonus was the offer to stop half way through the way and pet a Newfoundland dog. A few people took them up on the offer. The train reserves a few empty seats so they can pick the folks up on the next ride. Where else can you find a train ride with a feature as cool as that?

Yesterday was a sea day. Shortly after dinner, the captain announced we would have a strong wind overnight. He said he might not be able to tie up to the dock. His alternate plan was to anchor in the bay and use tenders. Sure enough, all was calm until about 3 AM. It was the Wind of Hell. Howling sounds were heard throughout the ship. All exterior doors were locked shut. In spite of the wind, the sea was relatively calm. Ship motion was nominal. Fortunately, the wind let up at about 6 AM. We were able to tie up to the dock.

We were in Sidney, Nova Scotia. Our main activity was a bus ride to the hamlet of Baddeck to see the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. We all know that Bell taught deaf people how to talk (including Hellen Keller). And he invented the telephone. What I didn’t know is that after he was filthy rich, he formed a research company to do cool stuff. For example, Edison’s first phonograph was not useful. Audio quality was terrible. The cylinders failed after a few plays. Bell’s company invented the Gramaphone, which was far superior. It didn’t take Edison long to copy Bell’s improvements, making his system almost as good. For many long years, “Gramophone” was associated with superior audio quality. Bell also puttered around with airplanes, achieving the first flight in Canada. Bell’s “Silver Dart” looked a lot like the “Wright Flyer”.

The exhibit showing what phones looked like over the years was fun to look at.

Even more fun was the exhibit designed to teach children how to use a dial phone.

I hope all are well.

Our first stop was Portland Maine. Dani and Gayle drove down to meet us. We enjoyed a historic touristy train ride. We had lobster for lunch, then gelato for desert. We got back to the ship just in time to avoid a summer squall.