In my working years, I had a technical blog which I intended to convert to more personal entries upon retirement. Somehow, I never got around to doing more than one post announcing my intentions. Fast forward six years and here we are – we have traveled, we each experienced the loss of a parent, we survived a pandemic – and I still haven’t blogged about any of it. With our first really big post-pandemic trip approaching, I decided to restart and launch Notes By Nancy as my personal journal to share with family and friends.

How we got to where we are going next

On our first trip upon our retirement in 2017, the Viking Grand European river cruise, we met a couple from South Carolina (Keith & Paula) who have become good friends and travel buddies. For the summer of 2020, the four of us had planned back-to-back Viking River cruises (Elegant Elbe & Passage to Eastern Europe) along with a side DIY trip to Oberammergau to see the decennial Passion Play. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and we ended up accepting the generous voucher from Viking towards a future cruise. In late 2020, we decided to book a May 2022 23-day Mediterranean sailing from Istanbul to Rome with our voucher thinking surely travel would be back to normal by then. In early 2022, we realized that the restrictions still being imposed on travelers was not the experience we wanted, so we cancelled under our risk-free guarantee. In March 2022, we pivoted yet again and scheduled this cruise for the last 2023 sailing of a new Iconic Iceland, Greenland, and Canada itinerary on what would be Viking Ocean’s newest ship debuting in May 2023, Viking Saturn. So, in a sense, this is the third iteration of our 2020 trip!  

538 days before we were to sail from NYC, I started a Roll Call on Cruise Critic for this trip. I might have been a little bit ready to travel again at that point! As of today, we have over 50 people from the Cruise Critic Roll Call registered for a Meet & Mingle which Viking is hosting for us early in the cruise. I’m looking forward to meeting so many people who have been discussing this trip online for so long – sharing excursion ideas, reading materials, packing tips, the weather, etc. Many of the Cruise Critic Roll Call members are seasoned cruisers whereas this will be just our 4^th ocean cruise and 2^nd on Viking Ocean.

Itinerary

We always like to build in buffer travel time, so we will fly to NYC the day before we board as the ship leaves NYC that afternoon. I can’t wait to experience sailing out of New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Upon arrival in Reykjavik on day 15 of the cruise, we disembark and will spend 3 days and nights in Reykjavik day-tripping from there. We plan to wander and see the local Reykjavik sights on the 1^st day. We have booked full-day small group tours of the South Coast and the Golden Circle for the 2^nd and 3^rd day. On day 19 of the trip, we will fly home.

Here’s our schedule:

• 29-Aug-23        NYC – DIY Hotel
• 30-Aug-23        NYC – Embark Viking Saturn
• 31-Aug-23        Sail the Atlantic
• 1-Sep-23           Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• 2-Sep-23           Sail the Gulf of St. Lawrence
• 3-Sep-23           L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada
• 4-Sep-23           Sail the Labrador Sea
• 5-Sep-23           Qaqortoq, Greenland
• 6-Sep-23           Nanortalik, Greenland
• 7-Sep-23           Sail the Atlantic Ocean
• 8-Sep-23           ĺsafjördur, Iceland
• 9-Sep-23           Akureyri, Iceland
• 10-Sep-23         Seydisfjördur, Iceland
• 11-Sep-23         Djúpivogur, Iceland
• 12-Sep-23         Westman Islands (Heimaey), Iceland
• 13-Sep-23         Reykjavík, Iceland – Disembark – DIY hotel
• 14-Sep-23         Reykjavík, Iceland – South Coast – DIY hotel
• 15-Sep-23         Reykjavík, Iceland – Golden Circle – DIY hotel
• 16-Sep-23         Fly Home

Expectations

So far none of the 4 previous sailings of this itinerary have been able to go ashore for L’Anse aux Meadows, the site of the first Norse (Viking) settlement in North America. The first 3 sailings early in the summer, totally missed this port and the two Greenland ports due to icebergs in Iceberg Alley. The most recent sailing a couple of weeks ago arrived at the bay but was unable to deploy the tenders needed to get passengers ashore due to high waves. They did get to visit the two Greenland ports. I’m going to expect to miss and then consider it good fortune if we make any of these 3 ports as they are all tender ports. So, fingers crossed for the sailing coming from Reykjavik to NYC before us and for our sailing. Otherwise, that’s a lot of consecutive sea days!

However, that’s the least of our worries as we nervously watch to see whether Hurricane Franklin will impact our routing and as we track all those other tropical disturbances that might have eyes on the upper Texas Gulf Coast while we are gone!

We have not seen any of this part of the world, so even if we miss some ports, we’ll be encountering something new. We do expect to experience the fantastic service from the Viking on-board staff that we found on our prior river and ocean cruises and with the sea days we should be able to enjoy more of the ship’s amenities than we had time for on the port-intensive cruises we did previously. Finally, we are grateful to be blessed with the means to travel and blessed to have good friends to share in the adventure.

UPDATE: Landings at L’Anse aux Meadows are now 0 for 5 for this itinerary with Viking for 2023. Haven’t heard why today’s was cancelled yet. You could see the little village along the shore from the Saturn’s webcam, but then they left. I’m definitely expecting an extra sea day now.