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Today we arrived at our second Icelandic port, Isafjordur.

The ship was supposed to tie up alongside the quay, but due to some issue with ongoing dredging operations – as reported by the Captain the night before – we had to drop anchor in the bay and be shipped ashore by tender boat. The captain did point out that he was not happy with the arrangement and had conveyed his dissatisfaction with the port authorities, but unfortunately there was nothing that he could do about it. To be clear; tender boat transfer isn’t a great hardship, but it does add some degree of lag to the day… its far easier when you can just walk down the gangway onto dry land.

There was a large, nearly-4000-passenger cruise ship – the MSC Praziosa – in port and two other, smaller ships (one of which was the National Geographic Explorer), which meant that the town was rather overrun by tourists, or it seemed that way to me, particularly considering how small the place was.

Low cloud clung to the steep mountainsides and occasionally it would drizzle, so for most of the time we couldn’t see the tops (although they did start to clear later on), and we had to put on our waterproofs more than once.

We didn’t really have much of a plan. Having taken the tender boat ashore, we meandered around the town in a somewhat lazy fashion, until finally making the decision to follow some of the many visitors up one of the footpaths that wound their way up the lower slopes. For lunch, we bought bananas and a packet of milk chocolate HobNobs from a local Netto supermarket and headed for the hill. A well-built path took us some way up, giving us good views. We would definitely have climbed higher if it hadn’t been for the low cloud… maybe next time. There’s really not a lot of point climbing high if all you’re going to see is the inside of a cloud. Instead, we settled for the modest view of the town and harbour below, and a perch on a rock to eat our impromptu lunch before heading back down again.

Tracey has developed rather a bad cold, making the thought of eating in The Grill something of a trial, so we did something that we’ve never done before… we ordered our dinner from Room Service. One positive knock-on effect of this was that we could carry on looking for whales from the balcony. It also meant that we didn’t have to dress for dinner.

Peter Woolley

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