20260618 Thursday, June 18, 2026 At Sea, Svalbard to Iceland Day 2

20260618 Thursday, June 18, 2026 At Sea, Svalbard to Iceland Day 2

It was nice to have another relaxing day at sea.  Our clocks moved back another hour overnight to put us on Reykjavik time, so it was nice to sleep in.  After a casual breakfast in the buffet, we attended lectures and walked the promenade deck before participating in general trivia. 

 
There was a culinary cooking demonstration by the head chef, but unlike Princess Cruises’ culinary demonstrations, there was no comedic relief, except after the chef completed a pasta with Arabiatta sauce, he said that the stage hands usually will eat his creations, so he buried a huge pile of hot chili flakes under Parmesan cheese for some unfortunate stage hand to discover later.  

At lunch, they did feature a fresh pasta station on the AquaVit terrace with a couple of different pastas and sauces.  Unfortunately, there was a big line and it was cold outside. 

 

Today’s trivia was divided up into different parts starting with super close-up photo recognitions.  The general trivia was broken up into Missing Lyrics, Name the Century, Movie quotes, and just a handful of actual general trivia questions.  We got slaughtered on the Name the Century for various significant events and only managed to get a couple of the missing lyrics completely correct.  If it had been name the artist and title, we would have been fine.  The winning team did rack up an impressive score.  

The weather has been clear with patchy clouds overhead and mild to moderate winds.  The ship is in open North Atlantic waters and did skirt a low-pressure system last night, so the ship has been subject to a steady, noticeable slow rolling motion.  Although the ship’s wildlife specialist has spotted blue whales and bottle nosed whales around the ship, about all we have spotted have been rare whale spouts too far from the ship to identify the species of whale, but there have been no visible tail flukes or breaching spotted.  There are plenty of black legged kittiwakes and northern fulmars around the ship, sometimes in significant flocks that have flown around the ship repeatedly.  These look like gulls for the most part.

Black-legged Kittiwake

Northern Fulmar

Our particular stateroom location (6055) seems to be at a harmonic resonance for something in the ship’s power plant because there has been a steady low-frequency vibration that tends to rattle things on the desk and closet even when the ship was at port.  

We would avoid this location in future cruises.  There have been a few times when we could hear noises overhead as chairs were being moved in the World Cafe above.  

The saddest day of any cruise is when the disembarkation luggage tags arrive.  We will have to pack up our bags and have them out in the hallway by 10 p.m. tomorrow so the end is near.

Dinner in the Restaurant started with Turmeric Harissa Lemon Chickpea Soup, which had a very interesting flavor and texture, but had just a touch too much salt.  

The entrees featured Seared Duck Magret with foie gras, which was quite delicious, moist, and tender.  

There was a dessert called Exotic Wave which had passion fruit curd, meringue shards, and fresh fruit which was like a deconstructed Pavlova.  It was sweet, creamy, tart, and refreshing.

The evening wound up with a farewell reception to toast the ship’s crew, followed by the Vocalists doing a Beatles tribute.  The arrangements were novel to create four-part harmonies for the male and female vocals.  This caused the music to sound un-Beatles-like, but they did cover a lot of the Beatles songbook in mash-ups with an energetic and overall enjoyable show.  We recognized the costumes from a “British Invasion” Viking Vocalist show we saw on the Viking Orion in the fall of 2024 during our North Pacific Crossing cruise.  Same costumes, different singers and different show.

Tomorrow we arrive in Ísafjördur, Iceland, which will be our last port of call before disembarking in Reykjavik.  The weather forecast is for a 30-40% chance of rain, 0.25” precipitation, and temperatures 38-42ºF.  We may have to don our heavy weather gear again like in Honningsvåg. We hope not to have to pack wet things in our suitcases tomorrow.