The falls themselves were likely the least impressive part of the trip. If you have seen one falls, well, you find them remarkably similar.  I think what was most interesting about it was our guide, Abdullah.  He chatted to us during both parts of the drive and his English was remarkably good, compared to what we had experienced on our previous excursion.  He also did a great job of giving us a good understanding of Morocco and life in and outside the cities.  He was honest about what he felt was working well in Morocco and what could be improved upon (like, he would gladly pay taxes to not have a “cash and carry” health care system).  It was great to have a guide who was clearly passionate about his country.

Another interesting thing about the falls, is that non-Moroccans are in the minority to visit the falls, at it seems to attract lots of Moroccan families.  It also helped that there was a term break in the schools at the moment.  So a lot of the vendors and stalls seemed not too bothered to try to flog us their wares and focused more on trying to get trade from other Moroccans.

Like a lot of Morocco, it would seem that there is just a general sense of practicality and pragmatism.  I would say along the roads to the falls, 75% of the houses were unfinished.  Abdullah informed us, contrary to what the other couple we were with were told, is that it isn’t for tax reasons (as there is no income or property tax in Morocco) but slow term family investment.  A family will slowly build homes as they can afford to, maybe here and there, over many many years.  Therefore they may live on the ground floor and first floor and maybe eventually finish the third.  Health and safety and building regulations are clearly absent.

The most entertaining part of the falls was several troops of monkeys that were a bit over socialised with humans.  Even though there were signs which discussed the downsides to feeding and interacting with the monkeys, there were peanut vendors making a good trade in selling peanuts to be fed to the monkeys.  Of course this did allow us to get up close and personal.  There were several young ones who were playing and goofing around with each other, which of course entertained a lot of the young humans, which did make the whole experience quite entertaining.  Abdullah told us later though that sometimes you can visit and you won’t encounter any monkeys, so while not totally lucky, it wasn’t a guarantee.

I think what has started to become clear to me is that there is a lot of hidden beauty in Morocco, both in the people and in the environment.  A combination of stark practicality and realism couple with a general goodwill and joie de vivre.  A few more days to go, but certainly relaxing so far.

We barely got a distance away from the tour shop, when one of the bikes (Simon’s) decided to pack it in and its gear changing went a bit haywire.  Our guide, Yousef, swapped bikes and tried valiantly to pretend the bike was ok.  This resulted in having to make a pit stop to fix the bike.  In retrospect, this was actually quite cool, because we were clearly not in the tourist part of medina and got to see daily life a bit more close up.  The bike repair guy used his hammer and a spark plug to fix part of the damaged chain and shorten it.  It was amazing that this very practical on the spot fix held put the bike in perfect working order for the rest of the day.

Our first stop was the Ben Youssef Madrasa. It has a lot of historical significance, but one of the things you quickly realise about Marrakech is that Arabic is the first language and French is the second language.  English, usually broken, can usually be found, but all the plaques were in Arabic and French.  My french is passable enough, but for Simon, in a lot of places I had to try to translate for him (as our guide basically waited by the bikes as we self-guided ourselves about the attractions).

We also happened to accidentally choose the same day as the Marrakech Marathon.  This caused some challenges in moving around Marrakech in the morning, with several dead ends and traffic in places where it normally wasn’t.  Also, one of our planned stops was having some heavy work done to it, therefore it was closed, though no-one seemed to be aware of this until you arrived at the gates and the locals had to inform our guide it was closed.  It highlighted what appears to be the general attitude in Marrakech, going with the flow.  Everything, from traffic, to interactions with others, seemed to just be “well I am sure this will work out…”  Interesting from the rather uptight and rigid Britishness I have been accustomed to for the past decade.

One of our other stops was the Bahia Palace.  Again with the plaques in Arabic and French and our guide standing outside watching the bikes, we were able to glean that it was a late 19th century palace which was created by combining several separate raids.  The whole of the palace made me realise that buildings in Marrakech aren’t designed to keep the weather out, as they are generally made to be open and allow a lot of natural light in.  In the photo above, Simon decides to glare at me out one of the windows of one of the rooms.

As part of the bike tour, we were served a lunch at a local riad (Riad Haraka).  The lunch spot on, starting with super tasting small vegetable dishes with warm freshly baked bread, followed by a chicken tagine, and finishing with slices of fresh orange topped with cinnamon and sugar!  The staff were super friendly and very warm and welcoming.  If we are ever back in Marrakech, I would seriously consider staying at one of the six rooms the riad offers to guests!

After lunch we stopped at the Jardin Majorelle (which also includes a Berber museum, though we didn’t visit that as well).  Personally, this was the best stop in the whole day.  The garden in lovely and very well maintained.  It is a sea of calm and isolation in what is a bustling city.  If you do one thing in Marrakech, I would say visit here.

We finished up with a tour (which really was just a long cycle) around the new city.  After the hustle and bustle of the medina, it was nice to just get out and cycle around.  It was good too, because we got more information about the daily life and culture of Morocco and Marrakech from Yousef during this part of the tour.

Overall, I think it was a great adventure.  Marrakech is an interesting city, which has its obvious tourist traps, but largely seems to be far more focused on itself than just depending on tourists.  People won’t hesitate to help others on the street and everyone seems to be a friend, though when there is an impediment to people just getting along, then they won’t hesitate to yell at each other.

We head out to the old town of Stavanger which happens to be right next to our ship. It was a lot of houses from the late 1700s and early 1800s that made up the town. Outside a lot of tourists and a few cats (which we assume weren’t tourists) there wasn’t much to see. We wandered around the rest of the downtown district waiting for our cruise of Lysefjord.

While the forecast was a 60% chance of showers, what we encountered was a very blustery partly cloudy. It was so windy we thought that maybe our ship wouldn’t set sail for the tour, but it did. That made the sea rather rough out to the fjord, but once we got into the fjord everything was much more calm and we had quite nice spots of sunshine, I think the most sunshine we had since leaving Southampton. It was still on the cool side of about 14º max.

We saw Pulpit Rock, which is an abnormal rock formation that is flat and juts 25 feet out over the cliff edge. We had originally tried to get a hike up to there, but with our time in port we couldn’t make it fit, so I guess seeing it from below was a close proximity. We also saw some more waterfalls and other formations that made the day interesting.

We hit the buffet early (since we didn’t have a lunch) and then decided we were call it an early evening. We went back to our cabin, watched the documentary called Art and Craft (which was really quite interesting) and then were in asleep just after 21:00.

Oscar picked us up at the port and drove us about 15 minutes to the family farm. It had been in his family for about 200 years, with his Uncle being the last in line and having no children, so his older brother quit his job and decided to try to make a go of working the farm. Oscar works and lives in Olden during the summers and then spends the winters in Oslo working for a publishing house. They run these tours to help supplement the farm income.

The farm, some 150 hectares, rises up the side of the fjord from the water, the main farm houses are at the end of a road (which didn’t arrive until the 1970s) and then we had about a 45 minute hike (would have been 25 minutes if we knew what we were doing) to the Summer Farm, where there is another small farmhouse along side a rather impressive falls. There is no electricity on the summer farm, just a small kitchen, a small living/dining room and a loft that can sleep six. No indoor plumbing (all the water comes from the waterfall). Oscar’s mom had hiked up the day before to prepare for our arrival and she often spends a couple weeks up there by herself during the peak of berry season, where lots of wild blueberries and “thorn berries” grow, which she picks and then makes jam out of.

We were joined by another couple from Miami, who had not realised that there would be extensive hiking involved. It was good, because I think they would have avoided it if they had realised it was such a challenging hike, but the both grinned and bared it and I think (hope) they were glad they came along.

Oscar’s mom was a wonderful host and we had “first lunch” and “second lunch” at the cabin (which had a wonderful wood fire, which was totally welcome because it had rained lightly most of the way up the hill). First lunch was bread and vegetable soup. Second lunch was “hot dogs” which were wrapped in a flat wrap that was very much like a tortilla and made with spelt.

Oscar also entertained us with a couple typical Norwegian games, which included a matchstick game, where each person was given 99 matchsticks over 10 rounds to “bid” against the other players, the highest bid won the round but everyone had to discard the sticks the bid, meaning if you bid too high too early, you wouldn’t have further sticks to bid. We also played some horseshoes, which brought back memories of playing horseshoes with my family growing up. I can only guess the the nordic influence on Minnesota had infected my family, like some of the other traditions we have that have come from other parts of the world (like Cornish Pasties).

Simon and Oscar decided that they would hike further up the farm towards the top of the mountain where the waterfall originates. The Christina and Juan (the couple from Miami) and myself decided we would stay in the warm cabin with mom! We played cards and chatted at length about life and everything while Simon and Oscar hiked.

We started heading back down and time was getting a bit tight. It was a bit slower going than we had expected and we only ended up boarding the ship about 10 minutes before the “all aboard” and they would have taken away the gangway and we would have been left with the 12 hour drive to Stavanger to figure out! Luckily everything worked out fine and Oscar gave us some parting gifts, including a copy of a book he wrote, where we discovered he is the holder of two world records for memorisation. He obviously was a little bit “self-conscious” of his feats and while proud, didn’t want to spend the whole time talking about his memory abilities while we were on the trip.

So we set off in the morning making our way through part of Alesund towards the marine park. It was a pleasant walk with lots of little sights to see. While we had heard good things about the marine park online, we were very surprised by how entertaining it was and how good quality the exhibits were for a relatively isolated part of the world. We had found out later that it was the first week of the school holidays in Norway and so by mid-afternoon the museum was teeming with kids. They had an interactive pond, where kids could touch sea creatures and a tank full of crabs which you would use prawns at the end of the lines to tempt the crabs. Simon remarked how “brave” the kids were, just mucking in and quite fearlessly manhandling these sea creatures. Especially the young Norwegian boys, who seemed that it was almost an accomplishment to torment a crab into snapping on your fingers!

We walked back into town and then decided to go up to the top of the main hill in Alesund. On the way up, we took the “back” way, which was avoiding the 440 steps up to the top, but required a bit more of a concerted effort as the path became quite involved at points. We also wandered around to the summit (which was different than the lookout point). We finally made it to the lookout point which had a view over and across Alesund (and of course our ship docked in port). We then went down the 440 steps (which had only just re-opened after being heavily renovated over the past year) and found our way back to the ship.

We then went to Q-Sine for the second time that evening, a bit early too, having avoided having a lunch to ensure we were robustly hungry by the time we had dinner. We had the same waitress as we previously had, which made the dinner interesting as we started to have a nice rapport with her. We rounded out the food we had, trying a few dishes we never had and I think pretty much having had everything on the menu at least once.

Our first planned activity was to go kayaking. Our guide was a Spanish gal who obviously loved kayaking. This was her first season up in Geiranger. We were joined by a couple from Holland and a couple of young ladies from the US. The couple from Holland were on the same cruise as us and the gals were travelling about on their own. We were put in tandem kayaks which also had a rudder. I suspect because they are dealing with all sorts of skill levels (mostly beginner) at Active Geiranger, they choose these as it ultimately de-risks the ability of people to be successful. It was clear though that wile the couple from Holland were similar to us, expecting a very active trip, the gals underestimated the trials of kayaking for several hours.

Our plan was to make it out to the Seven Sisters waterfall in Geiranger, which is one of the major attractions. There were several ways to see it, but I have to admit kayaking seems to be a great way to do it as it was absolutely beautiful the whole way there and back. The only real drawback was that it was raining the whole time and while my coat was waterproof, Simon’s wasn’t, so he was getting pretty soaked through. We also had gaskets to seal us into the kayak and while they seemed to be reasonably effective, I still ended up with a wet bum. Even with these minor annoyances, it was totally wonderful experience. What a great way to see things!

By the time we got back to the ship, it was time to dry off, change and have a nice lunch. Afterwards we headed back out again, because we wanted to walk around the town and there were a couple hikes up into what was a lookout. The first hike was marked as “level 2” which meant that it was reasonable but might be a bit challenging. Level 3 meant that there was a lot of clambering up things and Level 4 was you needed specialist hiking equipment. Once we got to the first destination, it was a restaurant with a second Level 1 walk through some fields with sheep and goats grazing in them. We walked that path for a bit before turning back and hiking back down. Again, another great way to spend an afternoon, exploring. The only problem again is it was raining for at least half the journey and so by the time we got back, we now had been through two sets of clothes each! I clearly didn’t pack enough hiking clothes for this trip.

Both DJ Krazy Prince (who hails from Jamaica and it appears some sort of DJ moniker is required) and our main activity host Kahbir (who is from Toronto) are great and keep the quizzes and other entertainment interesting. We are struggling to get any major success in our trivia. Mostly because I suspect we haven’t found a regular group of people to integrate with to become a larger team.

We also did a dinner for the second time at Tuscan Grill, which is one of the speciality dining restaurants on board. We dined there the first night and the food is of good quality, easily something you would pay for on shore, the Tuscan Grill isn’t as unique as the Q-Sine, but we bought a 5 dinner package which means that we have to go to Q-Sine and Tuscan Grill twice and their upscale Murano once.

The town is really quite nice, but it is clear that even tourism doesn’t necessarily rouse the Faroe Islanders from their activities. They get “invaded” by 2800 passengers and 1000 crew every few days in the summer and they seemed largely indifferent. Even the excursions offered by the ship were the weakest on the itinerary. Simon and gone back and forth via e-mail over the weeks leading up to the trip, also dealing with a rather indifferent Tourist Information bureau.

The only thing that Klaksvík had in abundance was trampolines! As Simon and I wandered through the residential streets of the town, we noticed that about 1 out of 3 houses seemed to have a trampoline. There was even a trampoline shop in the centre of town, a town which has only one coffee shop/café.

Early this morning we crossed into the Arctic Circle for the second time (as we arrived in Akureyri we also crossed). I think we ended up with less than 2 hours of “sunset” and it didn’t even set until sometime early this morning.

I find myself now seeking out these other couples that I have met, having a great time just talking about life in general. There are several couples from the UK, including BA employees, teachers, ex-police officers, all sorts. I am finding it energising being able to talk to people, who might be slightly older than Simon and myself, but have had similar life experiences.

Since I was by myself, I scuttled off the ship and instead of there being a queue, the exit was practically empty. I suspect everyone else thought it would be crowded and were waiting a bit. We had booked online with IceAK and then found out that there were five other tours with this company and 6 others booked on the same vehicle as we were. The only problem was I was the only one from my group that showed up. We waited for about 30 minutes and were getting ready for me and the guide to just head out on our own when the first couple showed up, followed fairly quickly by the rest of the group. Saved from just me and the guide in a big 4×4 vehicle touring northern Iceland.

Akureyri itself is greener than Reykjavik but then once we got to the highlands though, it petered out to lava fields much like the rest of Iceland. Iceland is beautiful in a very stark way compared to lots of other places. Our driver planned to take us to the farthest spot out and then work our way back. This sort of thinned out the crowds but did make for a long first leg.

First stop was Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe. It was interesting because as we approached you couldn’t really hear anything until you were about 200 meters away and then you started to hear a faint rush of water until finally cresting over a hill and staring at a huge powerful waterfall. After this we went quickly off road to a smaller waterfall that was further along the river.

Second major stop was the geysers at Strokkur. While they were interesting, the huge amounts of sulphur and the situation that I tend to find them uninteresting made the stop somewhat unremarkable. We then stopped for a bite to eat at the Green Lagoon, which is a more “realistic” than the Blue Lagoon. Our guide mentioned that the Blue Lagoon was the biggest “puffin selling” place in Iceland (the local way of saying something is a tourist trap, referring to all the stuffed puffins that you inevitably find in the tourist shop). The Green Lagoon seemed to have lots more Icelandic people visiting and was less than half the price of the Blue Lagoon. I also tried some of the skyr, which is like an Icelandic yogurt. It is high in protein and supposedly quite good for you. I found it remarkably filling and a lot like Greek-style yogurt, but even better. I saw they that have started selling it in London and I suspect I have my new breakfast food!

We then headed off to Grjótagjá which are pools of water in a large crevice that opened up. It was a popular bathing spot until volcanic eruptions nearby at Kröflu raised the water to over 60ºC and now the temperatures are in the high 40s. We then stopped at lake Mývatn, which is the 3rd (or 4th largest lake, as the largest lake is only the largest depending on the season in Iceland).

We finally returned to the fjord where Akureyri is located and got to see our ship in port. Our guide took us on a quick circuit of Akureyri before dropping us back at the ship. One interesting point he mentioned was that ice-cream is very popular in Akureyri and the colder it gets, the more popular it becomes, so often in snow storms, you can find a queue outside of the most popular ice-cream shop in town.

When I got back on board, Simon was still not feeling all that well, so after tending to him he encouraged me to go out and about on the ship all by my lonesome. I went to the show on board which was called “Mercury Rising” and was a comedic Freddy Mercury impersonator. I have to say it was one of the best acts that I have ever seen on a cruise ship and would have easily have paid to see him in person on land. He could carry Freddy’s voice very well, even in some of the hardest parts of the more classic songs. His humour was a bit too banal and played up to gay stereotypes a bit too much, but didn’t really detract for me, but was wholly unnecessary given his raw talent as a performer.

I finally landed at the Martini Bar and struck up a conversation with a random stranger next to me, as one does on cruise ships, only to then get drawn into a rather large contingent of gay couples (and a lesbian couple) from the Canada, UK and Australia and spent the evening chatting with a whole load of folks that I was finding out we had a lot in common with. It have lost count, but there has to be close to 20-30 couples on this cruise.