Invergordon - Alesund

July 18 

Invergorden is known for its rich naval history and servicing of oil rigs. On our way in to port passed a huge couple being maintained.

The town is very pretty and the first impression you get are the greystone brick homes all along the harbour.

Many of the shops have murals painted on their walls, all painted by locals and representing some type of activity in the town. 

Before we departed a local Scottish group came on board and did some highland flings, sang and there was a Piper in full garb.

It was a very enjoyable session.

As we sailed away we had the Pipe Band playing. 

A lovely day indeed.

July 19

Happy Birthday Lesley.

After another fairly rough passage we arrived in Lerwick, Shetland Islands (4500) to a grey foggy, rainy day but the stay was anything but dismal.

Once again the houses and buildings a built of grey stone and although not bright in colour have their own style which we liked.

We managed to do a few important chores here. Tony had a long awaited haircut, 6 pound 50, we managed to book our coach from Dover to Heathrow (it was becoming a worry) and Gloria posted a card to her mother.

Lerwick is hosting a tall ships race and there were a few in but not many. Guess they will turn up in the next day or two. The town is very busy with quite a few people around.

We combed the neighborhood, went into the local Town hall which was featured with quite a lot of stained glass windows. Very nice.

July 20

Well if the last cruise was in smooth seas, this has been the opposite. Last night was the roughest we’ve had by far, so stayed in, had some room service to ride out the what felt like a very bumpy ride in a bus over a very badly potholed road. Boom crash boom crash.

Not a problem, know it will be ok for next couple of days, because we are back in the Fjords of Norway and quite a big city called Alesund (40000)

This is another magnificent place very Norwegian, buildings with high pitched rooves and very colourful. 

We climbed Mt Aksla which is right in the middle of Town.

After climbing up some quite steep streets we then navigated 418 steps to the top but the view from there was well worth the effort. 

By the time we got back to the bottom it was raining, so after exploring the Commercial side of the City we went back to the ship for lunch and decided we would go back out in the afternoon as we don’t leave for Geiranger/Hellysylt until 11 pm.

We should make some comments about the new ship Marina.

It is a beautiful ship, But; it is not nearly as personable as Insignia.

Obviously 1250 passengers compared to 580 makes a huge difference and so too does the weather which has not been kind.

Firstly “We don’t print an Australian newsletter”, because they only print three based on the population on board. I threw a “wobbly” and now we get a full photocopy of The Australian everyday. Nice to see Gold Coast had another win.

The Cruise Director, (who) is rarely sighted, there are few announcements made (the guy on Insignia was very informative) and has no personality whatsoever.

We did see a very good pianist the other night who was first class.

We have not met anybody on board that we could say we’d keep in touch with and in all fairness, we haven’t plastered ourselves around all over the place to get to meet many.

We miss our mates from Insignia.

There are a lot of badly trained (or untrained more likely), staff on board, we seldom see our cabin steward, however the service is good the food is much better than Insignia and the new specialised restaurants are very good indeed.

Hope this doesn’t give the impression we are not enjoying the cruise because we are and looking forward to seeing Geiranger/Hellysylt again tomorrow.

So as not to bore you again our next post will be from Belfast and hopefully the North Sea will be kinder than she has for the last few days.