Viking Cruise 2019

September 29, 2019 MONTREAL, QUEBEC What a treat! We awoke to a perfect sunny day. After breakfast a walk through and around  this wooded area was irresistible. It evoked pleasant memories of many similar outings during  Ontario autumns many years ago. Well, if leaving Montreal was a hassle, driving back into town was mayhem. Don't get me started. Who the heck is running this city, anyways? Returning to the Sun, we find there are now several hundred new passengers aboard. They replace several hundred who departed from the ship in Montreal. From what we hear, most of the new folks are only going to New York. Two weeks appears to be the standard trip size for the majority of people we have met. This afternoon Karen and I had our third bi-weekly  "emergency event meeting" - that's what fire drills used to be called. On this ship passengers don't have life vests (someone actually called them "personal flotation devices" {lol}) in their roo...

September 28, 2019 MONTREAL, QUEBEC (another rainy day - so what's new?) This is the view from atop Mount Royal where Karen and I would often take out of town guests, sometimes for picnics. We also spent many Sunday mornings on "The Mountain" for, in the opposite direction is Beaver Lake where, on Sunday mornings, miniature home-made ships would monopolize the Lake -  sail boats, tugs, multi-masted schooners, even radio-controlled warships whose guns fired blanks. That was BC (before children). Those were the days! Today we are driving to Ingleside, Ontario just outside Cornwall, to visit our daughter Andrea and her lads Brayden and Ethan. I tried to rent a car for two days from our usual provider, Enterprise - $427.60. Whaaaaat? So I tried Avis instead - $129.85. Go figure. Getting out of Montreal was a nightm are. Several major highways and roads were closed for repairs. Roads not being repaired were in need of repairs. The rented GPS (only in french, which ...

September 27, 2019 QUEBEC CITY, QUEBEC See....we had a sunny day in Quebec City. And it was warm too, if you call 17 degrees warm. But in the sunlight it normally feels 8 to 10 degrees warmer than the thermometer. We toured the upper part of the city during the morning, and that was okay, but the best part came afterwards as we casually walked around Quebec's lower town. The narrow streets, the musicians (I bought a CD from a harp player, he was that good), the open-door shops and the friendliness of everyone who spoke French. The architecture in general is captivating since many of the buildings are over 200 years old. There were five cruise ships docked so the streets became fairly crowded as the day progressed. But that didn't spoil the ambiance. Actually, it felt a bit like Government Street on a busy day. When we stopped for lunch we naturally felt obliged to try the local poutine. Although our restaurant offered several different types of poutine, we chose the ...

September 26, 2019 SAGUENAY, QUEBEC Rainy, but so what? La  Fabuleuse is fabulous. La Fabuleuse is a stage production like no other - 150 actors (some playing up to a dozen parts), six horses, yes, I said horses, a gaggle of geese, one pig, four classic cars careening around, dazzling laser lights, startling pyrotechnics, music, dancing .... just too much to adequately describe. The production tells the story of Saguenay from its beginning to today, including the great flood of 1996 that you might remember from TV news reports. It all takes place on the largest stage I have ever seen, and in an auditorium that seats 2,444 patrons. Not bad for a town of 150,000. It has been running for over 30 years and has entertained 1.3 million visitors. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKy81Rowdw Saguenay has been voted Best Port Welcome Cruise Site four times in the last ten years because this is a town the hangs together, everybody pitches in, even t...

September 25, 2019 SEA DAY We are travelling up the Saint Lawrence River. There are no swells on the river, so the ship is quite stable and passengers no longer need to hold onto the railings as they get around. T oday was lobster day at the World Cafe. Diners lined up early and the lines were long. More precisely, these were lobster tails and they were not the size we are accustomed to. They were baked and only about five inches in length, and ready to peel out of their shells. There was plenty to go around, so I guess tomorrow we will be offered lobster bisque. Incidentally, there is always king crab available at lunch - it, too, is prepared to be easily forked out of its shell. The quality and variety of food being served on the Viking Sun is the best we have ever encountered on our cruises.   This afternoon our duplicate bridge group played its last session. My east-west partner, Bill Founde, late of Port Angeles and now living in Texas, and I came in first during ...

September 24, 2019 NEWFOUNDLAND (ST ANTHONY) Karen and I walked our deck mile just as the sun was rising into a clear blue sky. Visibility was infinite. After so many days of dark clouds, it was an exhilarating experience. It caused our hearts to soar like a hawk.  Well, we had expected to land at "Snanthny", as the locals call it. Instead the Viking Sun chose to anchor several miles farther north, just outside L'Anse aux Meadows, so we tendered in. D uring our Newfoundland trip l ast year Karen and I were visiting L'Anse on about this same September date, and we ran into a group of tourists  from our sister ship, the Viking Sea,  who were also visiting the site - small world!  The only reason for stopping at this particular place is to visit the first New World Viking settlement at L'Anse Aux Meadows on the tip of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula. This area also happens to be the best place to see passing icebergs in May and June, eve...

September 23, 2019 SEA DAY Guess what? We saw our first honest-to-god iceberg today. No, not the one above; maybe it was only ten feet high, but it qualifies. This late in the season it is surprising to see any bergs at all. Last year at this time we were in L'Anse Aux Meadows and we saw nary a one. Sure, we saw plenty of "bergie bits" in Prince Christian Sound two days ago, but they weren't the real deal. Just to backtrack for a moment - yesterday, in Qaqortoq, as we spent most of the day walking around in a heavy overcast, our prevailing mood was fairly somber. Later, just as the ship was pulling away from land, the clouds thinned out and before you could say Jack Robinson, the sky was pure blue. It's amazing how different and better everything looks in sunlight. And sunshine definitely lifts a person's spirits. I guess that's why Palm Springs is such an inviting place in winter. This afternoon we had our first "Afternoon Tea". Ten...

Sep tember 22, 2019 GREENLAND (QAQORTOQ) - pop. 3087          ( pronounced ka-kor-tock ) Greenland  originally joined the then-European Community with Denmark in 1973.  In 1982 Greenland voted to leave the Union, but it took until 1985 until negotiations, primarily over fishing rights, were completed. That talks were so tough for an island with a population of 56,000 doesn't bode well for a swift divorce by the U.K. As you know, Greenland's colossal ice sheet is melting. If that ice were to melt - all 680,000 cubic miles of it - the world's sea level would rise by 23 feet. A survey by French scientist Paul-Emile Victor finds that if and when that ice sheet does melt, Greenland will be revealed to be three separate islands.  Our Sunday morning walk around Qaqortoq was uneventful. It's primarily a fishing village. One thing stood out, though - for some reason it reminded us of Newfoundland.  To celebrate Karen's and my arriv...

September 21, 2019 SCENIC CRUISING - PRINCE CHRISTIAN SOUND   Wow, did we ever get lucky - as compensation for missing our Nanortalik stop, Viking arranged for the Sun to travel the sixty mile long Prince Christian Sound which is on the protected west side of Greenland. It was spectacular. We spent the day in a fjord - it was nothing but eye candy, a true delight. I had planned to take a few pictures of the Sound for the record; instead I shot several rolls of digital film. Every change of scenery was a wonder; the glaciers, the mountains, the icebergs, even the 100 person village of Aappilattoq (and I thought Icelandic was tough). But you don't need my poor commentary or pictures to really appreciate this side trip - check out the following:  http://www.sidetrackedtravelblog.com/blog/2015/9/03/natural-wonders-of-prince-christian-sound Granted, we had overcast and rather cold conditions, but that all seemed somehow appropriate for the surroundings - a bit Lord-of-...

September 20, 2019 A SEA DAY Every day when the ship is hundreds of miles from shore it is fascinating to see so many petrels skimming a foot or so above the waves close to the ship. Maybe they expect a handout. It seems they only go to land in order to breed. How about that? This will not be news to our sailing friends, but for us landlubbers one of the most useful websites when cruising is www.windy.com. The Viking Sun uses this navigational aid. It provides data about current and predicted wind, wind gusts, waves, swells and more. We are heading toward the southern tip of Greenland. Check this out: https://www.windy.com/59.879/-41.089?47.097,-24.464,4 The tabs on the bottom, "basic, wind, etc." as well as the tabs on the right side of the page, "radar & satellite, wind etc." provide a wealth of information in colourful pictorial form.  You can see the remnants of Hurricane Humberto off the coast of Nova Scotia and the current status of Hurricane Je...

September 19, 2019 ICELAND (REYKJAVIK) - island pop. 370,000 Now I know how to spell Reykjavik. Tough language this Icelandic. Iceland is splitting in two, half on the North American Plate moving westward, the other half on the European Plate moving eastward. And all of this movement at 2 centimetres a year. We passed up opportunities to see the city and also to swim in the Blue Lagoon so that we could take an 8 hour panoramic tour of the south coast of this island. We boarded our bus during a downpour - not looking good. As the trip progressed the rainy bus windows hampered our view which was annoying. Even worse was the fog - visibility was about 200 yards, beyond that it was just a grey haze. We couldn't see the mountains or the anything else in the distance. It felt like riding inside a giant puffball.  The weather didn't change all day.  We stopped and saw two waterfalls and a black sand beach all of them in the driving rain. Ugh! However, it wasn't all bad. W...