This lovely historical town is the Capital of the beautifully rugged Westjord region and happens to be the birthplace of two of Iceland’s presidents. For many centuries charming Isafjordur was a major centre of commerce and trade for the fishing industry. Today, the fishing industry is second to none with tourism growing as an economical force.
This is our second visit here, so rather than walking the town as we did in July of 2018, we decided to take the HAL sponsored excursion over to Vigur Island. Vigur island is known as a Paradise Island to an abundance of bird life including puffins, eider ducks and arctic terns. This island only has 3 inhabitants, a husband and wife along with their five year old son. During the busy tourist season they do bring a few additional hires to help out. The husband and wife conduct the tours with smallish groups and they do a fantastic job. Both the husband and wife are incredible explorers that decided to buy this island in 2019. Most of the buildings in the pics are from the 1800’s, including the Viking style boat, crica, 1827. Although the puffins take centre stage for cuteness and pictures, it’s the Arctic tern that should be the main focus. First they are very territorial and we must walk with a stick pressed up against our temples to ensure we don’t get attacked but these birds travel from the Antarctica to here in the edge of the arctic each year, some 38,000 miles, perhaps some of these amazing birds are the ancestors of the terns we saw in the Antarctic back in 2020 and 2019. Just amazing. Is this tour worth it, yes, for sure, this is an amazing remote island that is standing the test of time. The tour also included delicious rhubarb cake and coffee. There is also a well maintained 1800’s house here definitely worth a look through.
Back to the ship about 3:30 for a rest before our big gala dinner held at the Pinnacle tonight. Fantastic as it was the first one ever offered on this ship. We started on the red carpet and drinks in the Mix piano bar, with a surprise cameo piano performance by Glenn Michael our cruise director. Then in groups we were escorted to the Pinnacle dining room where we were served an amazing six course meal, with wine pairings. Probably one of the best beef tenderloin cuts we have ever had. With bellies full we headed to the 9:00 pm show featuring a wonderful broadway style singer. A great and fantastic day and night on the edge of the Arctic circle, bonus tonight is we get one of our hours back we lost on the way over, hurray.
A few pics of our day here, hope you enjoy…. The wifi is trying but has been difficult especially when uploading anything with a lot of content. We are doing our best to get this out, we are a few days behind at this point.
Quote of the day, “The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life” - Agnes Repplier
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