Iceland Intensive Cruise

  A rainy morning for our last day in Reykjavik. We had a relaxed breakfast at our hotel. The breakfast room is on the top floor of the hotel, and has a great view of the harbour. The Centerhotel Arnarhvoll has been a very convenient location, right across the street from Harpa Center. Rooms are fairly basic, but clean and comfortable and a good size. The rain stopped and we went for a short walk. Today there are 2 large and 3 small cruise ships in! There are 2 harbour locations, the larger one that we were at about 3 km from center of town, and the small one right in town. Only very small cruise ships can use that one - under 200 passengers probably. After check-out we caught the shuttle bus to the airport bus. The airport is about a 45 minute drive out of town. We allowed extra time at the airport as I remembered how chaotic it was last time. Luckily this time as we were flying Saga Class on Icelandair we were able to get priority in some of the lines, and access to the Lounge wh...

The forecast for today doesn't look too, good, and sure enough it starts to rain as we're waiting for our tour bus. We waited for about 20 minutes, then phoned the tour company. They didn't have our correct pickup, but then came to collect us. Several other passengers being picked up at the cruise had issues , so we were a bit late starting. It didn't affect the day though. We were on a small group tour through East West Tours, and it was very good with a fantastic tour guide. 17 people total. First stop at Thingvellir National Park, in the rift valley where the North America and European plates meet. The lake is the largest in Iceland, and it's also the site of the ancient Viking parliaments. It's a very pretty area, with good paths to walk around on. Luckily the rain had stopped by this point. I was here in 2017, and it's certainly a lot busier now. Next we drove through a farming area with mostly dairy farms. We stopped at one that has well known organic ...

 We woke up early, before our alarm and decided we might as well get up. We needed to be out of our cabin by 8am, and off the ship by 9am. Breakfast in the dining room was until 8:30, so we decided to go there and have a leisurely breakfast. Hardly anyone there, I guess they all went to the buffet. We're in no hurry to get off, as we won't be able to get into our hotel room until afternoon.  The information that Azamara gave us about transportation from the ship was very confusing. They had said that the port shuttle and taxis wouldn't be available from our dock and that unless we wanted to walk for over a mile the only option was their shuttle that went at an ungodly hour. As there was no way we were going to do that, we figured out our own way. And because we were there the day before we were able to check things out easily. There was a local bus stop about a 5 minute walk from the ship, a bus went every 1/2 hour and took us with-in a block of our hotel. So very easy. It ...

 There is a change in the weather overnight. From calm and mainly sunny to windy and mix of cloud/rain/sun. We wanted a fairly early start, so up at 7am and T to breakfast. Because the rain was lingering we delayed our departure slightly. The shuttle buses in this port are a bit confusing. There is some construction, so a lot of temporary arrangements. For today at least it's quite straight forward. A shuttle bus to take us to Harpa Center. Because it's Sunday morning it's very quiet in town. We had a walk through the old harbour, and the old town, then along Langevager street, the main shopping street and up to the church. No lineups, so we went up the tower. Great views from here. Then down from here to the small lake and around and down back to the old town. We bought our bus passes, 6000 ISL for a 10 ticket pass, about 6CAD. We went for a coffee and looked at a schedule. Figured out bus # to go to Perlan and back. Very smooth once you know the route numbers. We walked a...