After a full day of fog at sea aboard Sky Princess we were looking forward to simply seeing something when we arrived at the first Icelandic port of call on this Norway and Iceland cruise.
As I’ve mentioned already in this travelogue series, and as you’ll know if you’ve looked at the menu structure of trips we’ve made on this site or if you’ve ever followed any of our posts on social media in the past, we had not only visited Iceland before, but it’s also our favourite European country to visit. You can read about the weekend trips we took to the country here: Iceland (2015) and Iceland (2018). What would make Akureyri special for us would be that it would be the first time we’d arrived in Iceland via cruise ship. What would make the cruise special would be that we’d be hitting Iceland’s northern coast, which we’d not done before, and with the exception of the capital, all new locations for us.
If we could see any of it.
The very early view from our balcony seemed to indicate that the fog bank we’d cruised through during the day before had made the journey to Iceland with us.
We had an excursion booked for the day in Akureyri, Iceland, but it started at a very reasonable hour and meant we’d have time to have a leisurely breakfast and take part in the morning trivia before hopping off the ship. For those staying aboard, or those who might be returning early you can see what sorts of activities were taking place on Sky Princess in the day’s Princess Patter below.
After eating, we had a wander around the top deck to see whether the view was any less foggy from other sides of the ship.
Sky Princess wasn’t the only ship in port on that day, with the Silverseas vessel, Silver Whisper, also visiting Akureyri. If you take a look at the cruise menu on this site, or if you take a look at our Cruise History page, then you’ll notice that – at time of writing – we haven’t cruised with Silverseas. That’s because we’re not stupidly wealthy. I have little doubt that the service and quality aboard one of their ships would be fabulous, but barring a lottery win it’s a cruise line that we would struggle to pay for a single night aboard let alone a full cruise. And would it really be worth it? We’ll likely never know.
Anyway, after that little aside to bemoan the fact that we can’t afford to cruise with an ultra luxury cruise line, here are some more views from around Sky Princess looking out to Akureyri. As you’ll be able to see below, the fog or low cloud that had covered most of the port scenery when we first awoke started to burn off as the morning progressed.
We took part in the morning trivia before heading to the meeting spot for our day’s excursion to begin. One of the good things about taking part in the early trivia on a port day is that some of the smarter people may already be ashore, and they must have been on this day because we managed to win.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll leave Akureyri and head to the Laufás Turf House Museum and Heritage Site.