Fjords and Kilts and Hot Springs, Day 9 -- Akureyri, Iceland

Day 9 -- Akureyri Mostly cloudy, high of 50

Up early to work out, as usual, and then back to the room for a small breakfast. It was way too cold to eat on the verandah, so we stayed in the room and looked out the window as we approached land. I have no notes at all about what did that morning, so unfortunately, I have no idea what kind of activities were going on around the ship. Around 11:15, we entered the fjord that leads to Akureyri's port. The voyage in the fjord took took 30-40 minutes, and the scenery was amazing. It reminded me a lot of our Alaska cruise as the ship approached Tracy Arm Glacier. The difference (to me) was that there were a lot fewer trees than in Alaska, leaving more open space. (In fact, on our tour later in the day, the guide mentioned that tree farming is one of the faster-growing industries in the region.) But the terrain seemed very similar. We stood up on Deck 10 for most of the approach, but it was very crowded; so we spent the last 10 minutes or so on our verandah and watched the docking from there.











And Commodore Tom bringing through the fjord (I shot this from my verandah):



We docked just before noon, but our excursion didn't leave until about 1, so I went to Lumiere's for lunch (the girls went to Cabanas) and I had a great (and huge!) strip steak. The variety at a buffet is nice, but I love eating in Lumiere's. It's always nice to have a server, even if you don't know him/her.

Our port adventure for the day was an excursion to the Waterfall of the Gods and then to the city's botanical gardens. We took a bus about 45 minutes to the falls, spent a half hour there, then 45 minutes back to town where the gardens are, where we spent another half hour before heading back to the ship. I liked this excursion very much, although I wish they'd given us a little more time at the falls.

It is called the Waterfall of the Gods because when Iceland converted from paganism to Christianity in the year 999 or 1000, the Lawspeaker (leader of the legislature) returned home, gathered his pagan idol statues and dumped them all into the waterfall to publicly announce his conversion.











We stopped on the way back to town for some picturesque views of the town:





The botanical gardens were very nice, but just like everywhere else we'd been on this cruise, our guide remarked on how uncharacteristically cold the Spring and Summer had been to that point. So the gardens had not really come to full bloom yet when we were there. But we enjoyed what we could.



This is Matthías Jochumsson, who wrote Iceland's national anthem.







The excursion dropped us back at the Magic around 4:15, but Kathryn and I walked back into town to visit the biggest church in Akureyri, the Akureyrarkirkja. There are wonderful views of the town and the port from the top of the 109 steps to the church. After visiting the church, we wandered through some of the local shops (bought some Christmas decorations). One of the things that everybody talked about as we did our research before the cruise was how Iceland was famous for its hot dogs. So on our last day in Iceland, we shared a hot dog. They put all kinds of stuff on them. It was good, but come on, it's still just a hot dog. We arrived back at the ship at 5:30.



A view of the ship from the top of the 109 stairs:







A couple shots of the shopping "district" (just one pedestrian-only street, actually):





We saw this on our way back to the ship. If I've said it once, It've said it 1,000 times: "Hittu litlu raddirnar i hofdinu pin".



And this sculpture is at the port entrance. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, but it reminds me of a whale's tail:



Getting back to the ship at 5:30 didn't leave us much time to get ready for dinner. But we didn't want to be late because our dinner was in Animator's Palate, and we wanted to make sure we had time to draw our figures for the animation show. If you haven't been on the Magic or Fantasy, I won't ruin this show for you, but the basic concept is that everyone draws a person and the dining room animates it. It's very fun to do and to watch and you don't want to miss it, especially if you have kids in your traveling party. Anyway, my character was a Viking. I thought it was pretty good, but Allen laughed at it. (I had second thoughts about it at that point.) But it's not THAT bad, is it?



Because of the show, the menu is somewhat limited on "Animation Night". Everybody gets the same appetizers, there aren't any options. The appetizer was a sampler with smoked duck breast, dill shrimp and smoked salmon tartare. I passed on this combo, but Kathryn said it was very good. The soup was "Macaroni, cheese and baked potato", which was a lot like the Canadian cheddar soup with elbow noodles in it. I liked it more than Molly did.

Several of the entrees sounded really good, so we each ordered something different and just shared all three among ourselves. We got the Juniper wild Boar filet on spetzel, the Honey-Mustard Marinated Salmon, and the Veal topped with crab meat over polenta with a red wine reduction. The boar was fabulous and so delicious! We all loved it. The salmon was also very good. The veal, however, was disapointing. It was a very thick piece of meat and ended up being pretty overdone. The crab topping, polenta, and sauce were all delicious; but the veal itself, sadly, was a waste. Here are the entrees:

The veal:



This is a terrible picture of the salmon. Sorry:



The amazing boar:



There was a frozen yogurt dessert that no one wanted. So we all ended up getting the sampler trio, which included a Norwegian pancake and an almond berry crumble. It was ok, but not as good as a soft-serve twist on Deck 9 later. (By the way, they served a really great variety of flavors at the soft serve station. Throughout the week at various times, there was banana, blueberry, mango and strawberry. Yum!!)

Between the first and second seatings of dinner, the Magic hosted the Freezing the Night Away party on Deck 9. This was a very cute deck party with Anna, Elsa and Kristoff performing live on deck and Olaf and Sven joining us via the Funnel Vision screen. There was a dance party, lots of Frozen songs, and a little story line and Olaf being silly up on the screen. 

Since the party took place at 7:30 p.m., it was still broad daylight outside, so it didn't really feel like a Freezing the NIGHT away party. But it definitely was a FREEZING the night away party!! It was so cold on deck! It had to be in the mid-40's at the most. So with the wind blowing across the deck, it really felt like Arendelle! 

I'm not a huge fan of the deck parties (they're usually just too crowded for me), but I really thought this one was terrific. The singing and dancing was great -- the cast member who sang "Let It Go" was phenomenal -- and there was plenty of Olaf and Sven to make it funny. So here are some pictures from the party:







The stage with gorgeous Iceland scenery in the background:



And it even "snowed":



When we got back to our room that night, we were greeted by a note from the Frozen characters and some rice crispy treats. 





It's a little sad not having Pirates Night and fireworks on a Disney Cruise, but this party was very good, too.

The show in the Walt Disney Theater was the Beatle Maniacs. As you might guess, this is a Beatles tribute band. And they put on a GREAT show. I loved it, and pretty much everyone in the theater was going crazy for them. They played a great selection of songs from different "eras" of Beatles history. They opened with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and closed with (what else?) "Hey Jude". They did use a lot of pre-recorded orchestration, so it was never 100% clear to me exactly how much they were actually playing. But the show was really fantastic. And, as I said, the crowd absolutely loved it.





After the show, we got that soft-serve, but it was too cold to spend much time on deck. So we watched a movie back in the stateroom and called it a night.

As a final thought on our day,we crossed the Arctic Circle as we approached Akureyri, and then crossed it again after our departure. This was actually a sore spot with many of the cruisers because there was no announcement or recognition of any kind that we'd been in the Arctic Circle. There was no announcement made at the time of the crossing because it was around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. each time. But I have to admit, I expected a certificate or some memento, or even some merchandise, to recognize that we'd become Arctic "explorers". 

This lack of recognition of a pretty cool achievement just seemed to reinforce the feeling that DCL really gave a poor effort of providing passengers with unique reminders of this once-in-a-lifetime trip. So one of the passengers created a customizable image and I adapted it for my family: