2025 London and TA Day 18: Cruise Day 12 - Sea Day #6

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: The Royal Night
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
Location at End of Day

We completed our campaign of The Crew today. At one point in the Schooner a fellow pax stopped as he passed our table to ask if we were familiar with the sequel.

In the MDR our assistant waiter (James) is MIA as he’s sick. Keysheilee is working alone (assisted ad hoc by other staff) but the pace definitely suffers as a result. For the next couple of nights dinner will actually take about 15 minutes longer than our usual 45 minutes.

The Production Show tonight was “Tango Buenos Aires”, which I personally thought was the best of the three Production shows. Turns out Tango BA is a 3rd party show that has contracted out to Royal for years, being one of their most popular shows. Tonight’s show was the last one on Brilliance this time around. I did wonder how many times during rehearsal the female dancer had kicked her partner in the Oompah Loompahs – there were a LOT of flailing legs between the crotch.

                 

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2025 London and TA Day 17: Cruise Day 11 - Sea Day #5

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: Chops    (MDR Menu: A Taste of Italy)
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
Location at End of Day

A solid night’s sleep. Bruised from the fall yesterday…and feel like a chest cold may be coming on. (It did. It was minor.) Spent next several days on DayQuil + Bendryl at night.

Minor crisis at Chop’s: a waiter dropped his tray cocktails and got a guest wet. Oh, horrors. For us, Chops was excellent. My ribeye was perfect, and really enjoyed the Pork Belly appetizer. They messed up our Baked Potato order (making it fully loaded), but there was no reason to mention it – we had too much food already.

The Headliner show were husband and wife magician team of Kyle and Mistie Knight. Very polished and slick, and Kyle’s sleight of hand involving 4 coins on a black velvet table on his lap that morphed into 16 coins was VERY good. However, in the end, it was kind of sterile.

Clocks went back another hour again tonight. At 1245A we got a bing bong from Kat that someone reported the Northern Lights again, this time off the starboard side of the ship near the back. This time we chose to get dressed in hopes of seeing something, so trooped up to deck 12 down my Izumi and found shelter against a raging wind for about 30 minutes, hoping to see something more than a halo with the naked eye. While the camera picked up a lot of green there was nothing otherwise visible – and too much cloud cover. Upon return to the cabin we both slept poorly.

                                 

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2025 London and TA Day 16: Cruise Day 10 - Nuuk, Greenland

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: A Taste of Asia
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
View From the Port Webcam
Location at End of Day

One of the biggest challenges of trying to figure out a plan in Nuuk turned out to be the total inscrutability of the bus system, which seemed to be the only viable self-service option for getting out of the cruise port (outside of walking). The bus system website offered maps and schedules that were close to useless. After hours of work I managed to find the actual location of several bus stops – but the majority didn’t show up on Google Maps or street-view (where most photos were from 2014, at a time when it seems like most of Nuuk was undergoing massive road construction). From that I got an idea of where bus route #1, which was the route generally mentioned online as being the right one for cruise passengers to use, could be accessed – but even that was filled with a lot of what-ifs. Finally, as it seemed like the only way to pay for the bus was to have local currency, that idea went out the window!

In April 2025 I tried to find us a bus-based tour, but the only one I could find that could accept both of us started at 7:45AM and that was earlier than I wanted. So that really left us only with walking our way through town, which looked like it would be in the neighborhood of 2 ½ to 3 miles roundtrip. Clearly, whether we did something at this port was going to be a game-time decision. While it would be nice to say that we “saw” Nuuk, I’m wasn’t sold on the idea that there was really much of great interest to see there – so if we DIDN’T get onshore it wouldn’t be the worst thing. I did manage to find a couple of potential geocaches that would involve very little walking, so there was the possibility of just a “quick walkabout” if that’s what we decided.

Neither of us had a great night’s sleep last night. We had purchased tickets to the 1015A shuttle, which was comprised of a number of city buses Royal had chartered. We were delivered to the Cultural Center by 1030A and took a leisurely walk to the National Museum of Greenland, where they have a lot of clothing (animal furs), kayaks, and small artifacts spread over 3 buildings, which occupied us for about an hour.

We then walked across the street to Kittat, a place where they use native techniques to create clothing/costumes. Amusingly, we’d gotten a PM on Facebook from Hallie Feldman, saying she had a penpal in Nuuk(!) who she’d been communicating with for about 20 years, but she’d never met and hoped we could meet up with. Well, we did meet with Louise Ottosen at Kittat. She had a number of native tattoos and we had a nice visit.

Given that Louise had tattoos that evoked the imagery of the mythic Mother of Sea (something discussed in the museum) it was quite appropriate to try for the Earthcache Mother of the Sea. On the way down rain-slicked rocks to get closer my feet went out from under me and I took a hard fall, catching my back, elbow and shoulder and giving myself a good scare. Fortunately just bruised. But this prevented me from getting as close as I hoped, and I logged the find without answering the questions since I never got close enough. It appears the cache owner allowed my claim based on my selfie, however.



The rest of the day was the usual mix of Schooner time and post-dinner live music, followed by the ship’s Production Show by the RC Singers and Dancers. There were several “interesting” moments in the show, including

1. I believe that one of the male leads was sick and they had male #2 sing his solo number while he mostly marked his group numbers.
2. Male #2 was late for a solo entrance – sang a couple of lines offstage, or perhaps they were stabbing buttons to get his vocal track running?
3. One male dancer took a spill on a move;
4. Obvious “someone’s behind that curtain” moment breaking an illusion; and
5. An actual show stop – about 16 minutes - due to tech issues. While 2x female singers were starting an ABBA number in front of curtain, there was obvious noise behind curtain – sounded like a set piece had hit the floor. They kept singing, but at the point where they would have opened the curtain recorded voice told us they had to stop the show. Band stopped and women immediately exited US through curtain – with mics still live. So we heard whispers of “I heard that out there” and other confusion before the board op killed their mics. We heard lots of squeaking, etc US of the curtain before they finally brought the orchestra pit back up (having dropped the band below eyesight about 8 minutes into the stop) and then they finally restarted by playing the instrumentals of the duet again, and then opening the curtain to reveal things and allowing the vocalists to pick up from where they’d left off. My best guess is that one of the rolling stairways they had had lost a caster and they needed to fix it to make the stairs safe again. (Later during the cruise the CD confirmed that a flying element had come out of its track, making an unsafe situation. In correcting the problem it sounds like they may have bumped another element out of its track!)

Anyway, the show continued – and turned out that this was the finale number anyway. Interesting experience! From theater we were tired, so went back to cabin to veg for about 60 minutes before bed. Turned the clock back another hour again.

Tonight’s Taste of Aisa MDR menu was excellent – perhaps the best menu we’ve experienced in the MDR.

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2025 London and TA Day 15: Cruise Day 9 - Sea Day #4

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: A Taste of the World
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
Location at End of Day

A lazy day. We reached Mission 30 in our game of The Crew. We spent time in Colony Club (while a tango class was going on) in anticipation of attending the 230P Love and Marriage show…but at 245P realized the show was happening in the Theater! Oh well. (Did see the rebroadcast on in-room TV and it was fine that we’d missed it.)

We started seeing a number of icebergs during transit today, but were on the wrong side to see “the biggest iceberg we were going to pass”, as per the captain.

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2025 London and TA Day 14: Cruise Day 8 - Qaqartoq, Greenland

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: A Taste of the Caribbean
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
View From the Port Webcam
Location at End of Day

One thing I had learned while researching Greenland was that Greenland, despite being a Danish protectorate, is not part of the EU. What that translates to is that international cell phone plans that work in the EU do NOT work in Greenland. Costs to use your cell phone are about $3.15/min to make a call, $1.90/min to receive a call, $0.50/text, over $6.00/MEGAbyte for data. So the moral of this was to put our phones into airplane mode and confirm that data is off when not connected to the ship’s wireless!

The (reasonable) activity at this port appeared to be simply to walk around. As this is something we can do ourselves I didn’t bother trying to find any kind of organized excursion. Instead, I found a nicely photo-documented walking route that would take us up to a scenic overlook of the port. Whether or not we would have the energy to complete the route was TBD.

As per the Cruise Director, this port is apparently pronounced “Cocker-Talk”) Royal was giving out come-first tender tickets starting at 830A. If you were debarking after 1P you could simply show up and wait for a tender. I arrived at 845A and got tickets for tender #16. We reported to MDR Deck 5 at 1045A when our number was called and were actually boarded and onshore by 1130A.

Before that, however, while standing in line to get my water bottle filled at Caffe Latte around 1030A, it turned out that CD Kat was just in front of me in line, so I chatted with her a bit and got clarification on the scope of responsibility of an Activities Director vs Cruise Director. She also confirmed that they’d had about 60 minutes of Northern Lights “activity” last night but, again, I don’t think it was visible to the naked eye.

Once ashore, tried to follow a Geocaching Adventure for the first time, but the one for Qaqortoq appeared to be misconfigured so instead had to complete the Earthcache Stone & Man. We did attempt to follow the walk up the hill, but only made it halfway before deciding to turn around. We stopped by the town’s small/only grocery to look around. It was perhaps 2x the size of Diekman’s.

The town has several stone carvings on a ridge fronting the road by the pier.

We saw a cruise schedule on the door of the gift shop at the pier listing all the ships that were in that season. Brilliance, listed as having about 2200 pax, was by far the largest ship visiting this 3000-person town. The 5-6 taxis we saw were driving quite aggressively, suggesting that while they love the business they may not love all the people!

Tonight’s Headliner was John Paul Ekins (again) but this time paired with a violinist from the Royal College of Music (London), Lucilla Rose Mariotti. Their combined show was the best of the three.

 

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2025 London and TA Day 13: Cruise Day 7 - Sea Day #3

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: Giovanni’s Table  
(MDR Menu: A Taste of Royal History)
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
Location at End of Day

A very relaxing day. We went to the Theater to hear from the Singers and Dancers as part of the ongoing Life@Sea series. This was an insight into their audition, casting, rehearsal, performance, and general production processes. Continued with the Life@Sea theme by heading to Colony Club to hear from Kat (Cruise Director) and the Hotel Manager (nominally her boss) as they handled Q&A from the audience.

At the Theater mid-day for another performance by Ekins, this time doing Moonlight Sonata, Clare de Lune, and the Warsaw Concerto from the 1942 movie “Dangerous Moonlight”, ham-fistedly renamed “Suicide Squadron” for its US release. All were very nice and the theater was a full as we’d see it all cruise.

Seas today were fast and a little choppy, but nothing like the first night. Winds were howling however, and when we walked past a door leading outside after the show we got a good blast of very cold air.

Dinner in Giovanni’s was nice – we both enjoyed it a lot.

The Headliner was ventriloquist Jerry Goodspeed. He was entertaining, although kind of “more of the same” when it comes to ventriloquists. His act was gentle, however, as opposed to vulgar, and that was nice. His finale has him controlling two of his dummies doing a duet with himself, including seeming to simultaneously having both dummies singing together!

At around 1130P Cruise Director Kat made a general announcement that folks reported Northern Lights were visible, but we were tired and decided not to get up. It isn’t clear whether lights were ACTUALLY visible to the naked eye. In talking with others during later days it sounds to me like what people saw was only through cameras, much like our outing in Reykjavik. So we don’t think we actually missed anything.

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2025 London and TA Day 12: Cruise Day 6 - Reykjavik, Iceland

Location at End of Day

In March 2025 I booked us a bus tour (via Costco and ShoreExcursionsGroup.com) of Gullfoss, Geysir & Thingvellir.  I had to first check the excursions offered by Royal because ShoreExcursionsGroup showed us leaving Reykjavik at 11:59P while Royal said 5:00P, and I of course needed to be sure that we’d get back in time.  All of the Royal excursions seemed to arrive back at the ship no later than 4:00P, and since the 3^rd party excursion also came back at 4:00P I figured I didn’t need to worry about their incorrect sail away time.  Of course, by using a 3^rd party site I was able to save about $50 per person over Royal’s price.  Sadly, on May 20 I got a confusing email from the tour operator saying they had move the tour start time to 12:00P to “fit [our] ship’s itinerary”.  To me, that meant they either were shortening the trip to 4 hours (which I didn’t think was physically possible) or they were going to deliver us back to the dock two hours post-sailaway.  I felt like I had no choice but to cancel the trip due to their confounding communication.

Since we had no multi-hour bus trip, we were able to sleep until 10A following our early morning return to the ship.  We then grabbed a quick donut/bagel at the WJ before catching a shuttle to Harpa by 11A.  We decided it was too complicated to deal with using city buses to get to Perlan, so instead we walked over to the Museum of Photography and saw a really interesting retrospective spanning 50 years of work by photojournalist Gunnar V. Andrésson.

From there we decided to head back over to the downtown area to see if we could find lunch.  We ended up at a place called Icelandic Street Food, which served up soups.  It was a mixed bag.  I had the Spicy Tomato while W got the Fisherman’s Special, which we both thought would be a seafood soup but instead turned out to be more like a bowl of fish paste.  We combined the two and made the 2^nd better, but still not great.

We then wandered over to Rainbow Street and got some photos, but my phone’s battery was exhausted by the end of this so no more pictures of Reykjavik after this.  That’s OK, because we were ready to head back to the ship anyway – particularly since we couldn’t find any ice cream in the area. 

 So at 2P we re-boarded and dipped into the stockpiled chocolate from the Clermont minibar and E’s remaining Gingerbread Oreos before heading down to Schooner for the afternoon.  This was the first time we got the Handcrafted Margs and actually enjoyed our cocktails sans terrible OJ.

Tonight’s Headliner was pianist John Paul Ekins presenting music built around VERY earnest stories.  Technically and musically good, but a bit pretentious!  Played Chopin, March of the Tin Soldiers, Rhapsody in Blue, and ended with Hey Jude/Give Peace a Chance.  Before going to bed we set the clocks back another hour.

 

 

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