Travel | Jim & Kathleen Travel

Incredible Iceland— Akureyri-Day 2

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 22, 2019 | Uncategorized

I was glad we had come back a little early from our first day tour so I could be up at what would be dawn at home (5:30 am) to see old town Akureyri and I got lucky and had a great walk. I didn’t get rained on but the by the time I got back it had really started coming down. I will leave it at that and you can see what I saw in my photos. Later on, some of the group went into town but Kathleen was wiped out so we stayed on board and the whole gang was back for a late lunch at The Porch (a Reflection alternative seafood restaurant) and it was wonderful. A great lunch. Some super fresh seafood and some of the best sangria I have ever had. Drank way too much of it. We sailed out late in the day and it was a beautiful sail out up the fjord. This was followed by two sea days before we would dock in Cobh, Ireland. More about that coming on Sunday.

But it has cool doors

Reflection in Akureyri

Straight on at Reflection

A very cool sculpture that would have looked better in sunshine

Found this great statue in old town Akureyri

The harbor in Akureyri

Another boat on the shore in old town Akureyri

Old town Akureyri at 5:30 am

This is the oldest house in Akureyri. It dates to the late 1700s

We couldn’t believe these people were going whale watching like this. It was freezing!

Akureyri has a big church as well but not as big as Reykjavik

And this one

And a red and white boat

Here’s the 10:45 from Reykjavik

Our crazy gang having lunch at The Porch

And this family of swans

I got off the ship to mail some postcards and found these trolls

This ship is a Ponant Cruise ship. They are a French cruise line that sails small (100-200 people) cruise ships.

The Akureyri Airport was right off our verandah

When I prepare, I am not messing around. I find the right places, the right people, and the right environment. Iceland is one of those places. —Conor McGregor

Incredible Iceland— Akureyri-Day 1

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 20, 2019 | Uncategorized

After what seemed like a very short night we sailed down an incredible fjord into Akureyri, Iceland’s most important northern city. It’s small town (a population of only around 27,000) but it is the gateway to some pretty amazing natural wonders. The day started with beautiful weather and the sail-in made for some great photos.

I almost forgot to mention that before we got to Akureyri the captain of Reflection decided to make us all what my friend Bob (a long-time Navy guy) calls “Bluenose Sailors” which I am sure means we have been inside the Arctic Circle. He sailed the entire ship north of where he needed to so we could say we had been inside the Arctic Circle. What a guy! We even got a certificate. Kind of the like the one we got when we crossed the Equator many years ago on our SouthEast Asia cruise.

Sailing into Akureyri takes you up a long fjord that has amazing views

Eyjafjörður fjord

Then we saw whales

Whales

And more whales

Eyjafjörður fjord

You know how I love pilot boats

Along Eyjafjörður fjord

Pilot boat!

Goodbye pilot boat

Our first glimpse of Akureyri

Akureyri

A beautiful waterfall

We were met by our guide Auðun of No.17 Tours. He had been recommended by the god of shore excursions, my buddy Mike Preisman. Mike had used the services of Auðun a few years ago on their Icelandic cruise and had spoken highly of him. He was right. I should point out that Auðun told us his company used to be Taxi 17 because when it wasn’t touring season, he would drive a taxi but now the government says he is too old to do that. He can drive a bus, a truck and a tour van but at 76 he can’t drive a taxi. Who would have thought. He is an amazing guy who really knew the area he was showing us. Plus he had some great stories from his 27 years as the skipper of a fishing trawler.

We set out a little earlier in Akureyri as the ship was docked and let us off by 10:30. Auðun was ready for us and we were off to see the northern waterfalls, stand with both my feet in different continents and see some other amazing geological wonders as well as two versions of the Blue Lagoon. And we finally got to see puffins. We had missed them before on previous trips to places where they live but this time we got to see a bunch. Check out the photos for all the sights we saw.

Even though we had gone out earlier than we had in Reykjavik, the weather had turned both cold and gray and by the time we had seen the puffins and the waterfalls, we were wiped out so we asked Auðun to just head us home and we were off to the ship were we pretty much caught a late dinner and collapsed. But we did have a super day and the Icelandic landscape is even more amazing up north.

The brand new 9K tunnel that saved us more than 20 minutes more than the tours used to take.

Godafoss

Sorry, I just couldn’t stop taking pics of Godafoss

On the way to the Lake Myvatn area

These two mountains stand next to each other, one peaked and one with a flat top

Couldn’t resist this shot

Dimmuborgir an area of lava

The right side of this photo is in North America, the left in Europe. I stood with my foot on each one.

A smaller and cleaner northern version of the Blue Lagoon

Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe

Dettifoss

The other end of Dettifoss

A very cool horseshoe falls

Dettifoss

Puffins on the northern coast

More puffins

And more puffins

Northern Coast house

One more Blue Lagoon wanna be, the best yet!

I still don’t know why, exactly, but I do think people can have a spiritual connection to landscape, and I certainly did in Iceland. —Hannah Kent

Incredible Iceland— Reykjavik-Day 2

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 18, 2019 | Uncategorized

Most everyone else in our party slept in a little bit after getting back at almost midnight from our Golden Circle tour with Birkir. I on the other hand, love it when a ship overnights in a port so that I can get up early the next day and walk through the city. (One of my best photo walks ever was in Québec last October when we overnighted on Summit). More and more cruise lines are doing this (overnighting in cities) and you can get off and on whenever you want all night long. This was a good day to do that but I really missed that early morning golden light I had when we were in Edinburgh and Dublin.

I got up at 5:00 am and headed out to walk the seaside walkway into downtown Reykjavik but the light outside was already like 10:30 in the morning as you can see from my pics. I got some decent stuff and then headed back to the ship to shower and meet Kathleen and others in our group to take a taxi back into downtown to see some more of the city. My pics and their captions will pretty much tell the tale on that. Don’t forget to click on the first one and view them as a slide show. And if you want to see more, check them out on Flickr by clicking here.

We were back on the ship by 2:00 pm and Reflection set sail for Akureyri at 3:00. It was a pretty great day considering how little sleep was involved. Thursday, I will post all about our travels in Akureyri, in the north. And we cross the Arctic Circle!

Hallgrímskirkja—this church dominates the Reykjavik skyline

Sun Voyager—Huge 1990 stainless-steel sculpture of a boat by Jón Gunnar Árnason, set on granite beside the sea.

Reykjavik’s version of the bridge in Paris

The green lock kind of drew my lens like a magnet

Harpa Concert Hall

Noticed this ship coming in. Not sure what it was.

Turned out to be a small cruise ship. We met some people who were onboard later at coffee.

Sun Voyager from a different angle

A sculpture along the walkway. Looked different on every side

See what I mean?

Viking Sky coming into the harbor. This is the ship that had the engine failiure earlier this year.

The Hofdi House built in 1909, the home of Icelandic poet Einar Benediktsson also hosted an iconic political summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbatsjov

The lupine was everywhere and in full bloom

The end of my walk. Almost back to the ship.

Out later with Kathleen saw this photo shoot in front of Hallgrímskirkja

Hallgrímskirkja up close

Inside Hallgrímskirkja we found a small chamber orchestra rehearsing

Inside Hallgrímskirkja Cassie and Jamie look at the ceiling of this magnificent church

Above the altar in Hallgrímskirkja

I love taking photos of artists as work.

Such great expressions

See what I mean

Outside of Hallgrímskirkja is this incredible statue of Leif Erickson

Kathleen found a friend. Hey, I have to take these tourist photos once in a while.

Great street decoration

This is a real place. Seriously.

I never did find out who these statues represent.

A closeup of Harpa Concert Hall to end our stay. We went inside but the photos didn’t come out as well as I would have liked.

Coming soon to a travel blog near you

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 15, 2019 | Uncategorized

So our trip is done and we are recovering from 27 hours spent in airports and airplanes to get home. Today is all about laundry and resting up. Not a great trip home due to so many things. Among them were weather (Denver airport closed for a time as we were attempting to land so we got to circle for a while), late flights and construction at airports made this a really long day.

I wasn’t going to add this but I want to see it in print so feel free to skip it. This is what our travel home day was like.

Woke up at 3:15 am onboard Celebrity Reflection (As usual, couldn’t sleep).
Left Reflection at 6:45 am (early).
Arrived at Dublin Airport at 7:35.
Sat in shared business class lounge with Bob and Holly until our flight to London Heathrow left at 10:50 am.
Arrived London Heathrow, Terminal 5 at 12:20 pm.
Transferred to London Heathrow Terminal 3 for flight to Denver. Took the better part of an hour.
Sat in British Terminal 3 Business lounge until 2:40 when we boarded our flight to Denver.
Arrived in Denver at 6:15 pm Denver time after circling due to weather.
Stood in line for almost an hour at Customs in Denver as all inbound flights had been held for weather and then all arrived at the same time. It was a bloody zoo.
Due to the fact that we could not get a Business Class award flight direct to Seattle we flew to Denver (instead of home to Seattle) we had to now check all our luggage back in for a short flight to Seattle (that we paid for…in coach) that was supposed to leave at 7:35 pm.
Due to all the late arrivals, our flight didn’t leave until 9:06 pm.
Arrived in Seattle at 10:55 pm.
After getting our luggage we grabbed a Lyft and wound up getting home at 11:45.

So that was our day. Too long. And all to get award seats from BA via Alaska Miles. Which will bring me to a future post on finding award seats in the near future. I promise.

And now to the reason for this post. The schedule of what is to come this week. My plan is to post Iceland day 1 tomorrow afternoon, Iceland day 2 on Tuesday, Iceland day 3 and 4 on Friday. Hope that keeps you all up to date without overwhelming anyone with too much to read.

Technology doesn’t address everything – for example, air travel still sucks. —Brad Feld

Blustery Belfast

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 15, 2019 | Uncategorized

Sitting in the Club World Lounge in Terminal 3, Heathrow, I think I have enough time to upload Belfast (their WiFi is pretty good and it is already written). We shall see. It was the next stop after we boarded in Dublin where I left off (other my WOW Iceland post and my Woeful WiFi post).

We awoke on our first day after leaving Dublin to a truly blustery day in Belfast. Due to tides we weren’t able to dock until almost 11:00 am. As soon as we were able, we walked four of our party who had never been to Belfast before out to a private excursion I had arranged through Tours by Locals that would take them to up the Antrim Coast to Giant’s Causeway. We had done this on a previous visit to Belfast and we along with four others in our group who had been here before decided to forego that and pay a visit to the Titanic Experience.

I fully realize that visiting a museum dedicated to a cruise ship that sank by hitting an iceberg while on a cruise seems to be tempting fate but we went anyway. If you are in Belfast, this is a must-see. They have done an excellent job of detailing pretty much everything about the Titanic, its building, the times it was built in and so much more. Not only are there a number of excellent exhibits, there is even a ride. Who knew? We were pretty surprised. It was a great tour and worth the money and time.

Our original plans after the Titanic experience had been to jump on the HoHo bus but since it was pouring rain, we crammed ourselves into a taxi and headed back to the ship. All and all, a pretty decent day.

Remember, you can click the first photo to see the pics larger and as a slide show.

Post note: Wasn’t able to upload everything in the lounge. Finishing up at home with my usual AWESOME WiFi. Exhausted but more about that later.