On Tuesday we arrived in the sunny town of Cobh in Ireland. We have visited this port on many occasions both on cruise ships and the old Swansea-Cork ferry when visiting Lorna and family in Ireland. As always it was very welcoming with the buskers in the street heralding our visit with various Irish melodies.
Cobh has two very good museums celebrating migration and the Titanic respectively and we have visited both on previous trips, so today we had a leisurely stroll through the town. We took in the sights of the colourful houses which are dominated by the mighty St Colman’s cathedral on the hill behind. We stopped briefly in the local Central store to stock up on some Tayto crisps for Lorna (her favourite), before having a light snack of a scone before reboarding the ship. The scones were massive (even bigger than yours Diarra!!) and covered in icing sugar, which I managed to get all over me.
From Cobh to our first stop in Iceland, Akureyri, takes two days at sea during which time we have been entertained by the superb crew onboard Caribbean Princess. The quality of entertainment on the ship so far has been first class from a classical string duo (my granddaughter’s favourites) to the colourful and loud production shows. You can walk through the ship in an evening and move from one style of entertainment to another throughout the journey.
The first day at sea was surprisingly warm with many people up on the decks taking in the sun whilst watching the Olympics on the big screen. As we moved further north on the second sea day the temperature dropped a little and the air became a little more damp. Our clocks moved back an hour last night to bring us in line with Icelandic time and therefore we looked forward to an extra hour of sleep. However from about 1pm the ships foghorn sounded at regular intervals as the visibility outside dropped disturbing my beauty sleep.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise when we opened our curtains to see that the fog has predominantly lifted to give us a lovely view of our sail-in to Akureyri harbour.
Akureyri sits at the end of a 37 mile fjord which has an unpronounceable name and is Iceland’s second largest city even though it has a population of less than 20,000 people. Today that number was swelled by around an extra 3000 passengers from our ship, many of which made their way down the main shopping street in the town.
In fact you never know who you might meet as you walk through the town.
Many of our fellow passenger queued up to have their photos taken in the I Love Akureyri heart and we were no exception.
We even managed to get our Granddaughter to take part.
The beautiful church in the background was unfortunately closed due to a funeral so Sylvia and I spent a delightful hour or so in a local art gallery. A mixture of unusual and modern art from young local and International artists. Even the rubbish bin outside the galley was decorated in some local knitted art.
After visiting several souvenir shops and buying some local products we slowly made our way back to the ship. Sylvia stopping on the way to chat to a local.
This apparently was a statue of Wilamena Lever, who was the first Icelandic woman to vote way back in 1863.
One last photo opportunity was taken before returning to the ship.
Tonight we set sail for our next Icelandic stop of Isafjordur.
they were bigger but were they better?
I think that I prefer yours!!