Voyage of the Vikings Cruise - It's Finally Time

It's time for us to hit the road again, only this time we'll be hitting the rails and the sea.  We booked the Holland America Voyage of the Vikings cruise 15 months ago when we were on our Inca Empire Cruise to South America and it seems like it has taken forever to get here.  I guess as you get older having time pass slowly is a good thing, but we are anxious to get started.

The Voyage of the Vikings Cruise is a 35 day round trip, transatlantic cruise from Boston.  We will be visiting Maine, the East Coast of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, The Netherlands, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Mann.  We are very excited about this cruise and will be visiting many places we never thought we would see.  Here is a map of our route and our itinerary.

Day   Port                                                   Arrive          Depart

0		Boston, Massachusetts		11:00 PM
1		Bar Harbor, Maine	10:00 AM	08:00 PM
2		At Sea
3		Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada	08:00 AM	05:00 PM
4		Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada	08:00 AM	05:00 PM
5		Red Bay, Labrador, Canada Port Guide	08:00 AM	03:00 PM
6		At Sea
7		Qaqortoq, Greenland	10:00 AM	06:00 PM
8		Cruising Prince Christian Sund
9		At Sea
10		Reykjavik, Iceland	08:00 AM
11		Reykjavik, Iceland		05:00 PM
12		At Sea
13		At Sea
14		Alesund, Norway	07:00 AM	04:00 PM
15		Scenic cruising Hardangerfjord
15		Eidfjord, Norway	10:00 AM	06:00 PM
16		At Sea
17		Rotterdam, The Netherlands	07:00 AM
18		Rotterdam, The Netherlands		04:00 PM
19		At Sea
20		Dublin, Ireland	08:00 AM	07:45 PM
21		Douglas, Isle of Man, UK	08:00 AM	06:00 PM
22		Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK	08:00 AM	06:00 PM
23		At Sea
24		At Sea
25		Akureyri, Iceland	08:00 AM	05:00 PM
25		Scenic cruising Eyjafjordur
26		Isafjordur, Iceland	08:00 AM	05:00 PM
26		Scenic Cruising Isafjardurdjur
27		At Sea
28		Cruising Prince Christian Sund
29		Nanortalik, Greenland	07:00 AM	01:00 PM
30		At Sea
31		St Johns, Newfoundland, Canada	Noon	08:00 PM
32		At Sea
33		Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada	08:00 AM	04:00 PM
34		At Sea
35		Boston, Massachusetts, US	07:00 AM

Originally we had planned on flying to Boston, but Val's reluctance to fly and my frustration with the hassle of flying coupled with the difficulty of finding convenient flights from our area, made us change our plans.  Since we are retired and have plenty of time we decided to do something we both enjoy and take the train.  The credit card we use gives us Amtrak points so we were able to book the round trip from our home to Boston and back in a sleeper compartment at no charge to us.  You can't beat a deal like that, all it takes is more time and we retired folks have plenty of that.

We have never been to Boston before so we have given ourselves two extra days to see the city before the cruise begins.  As a bonus, our good friends, Doug and Ev will be in Boston at the same time we are so we'll get to spend time with them while we're there.  We won't have a car so we have booked a hotel in the middle of the downtown area close to many of the things we want to see and do in Boston.  Many things are within walking distance of our hotel, but for those that aren't we have already bought tickets for a hop-on hop-off bus.  This is shaping up to be a wonderful trip.

I will try to keep the blog up-to-date as I go, but I'm sure at some point I will fall behind, especially if the Internet connection is slow.  This cruise is more port intensive than most we have taken so that will also impact my blogging time. The one thing I do know is that it will eventually all get published whether it's sooner or later, who knows.