A whale of a day in Reykjavik!

After a whopping day of travel, today started way too early.  With an 8:30am excursion, we opted for room service.  They showed up right on time and breakfast was good.

I can tell you with certainty, it is light all the time in Iceland this time of year.  While our cabin has room-darkening shades, they don't go all the way to the floor and there's a small gap on the side, and a lot - I mean a lot - of light streams in all night long.  At 4:15am UTC, it was as bright as it was at midday.

After we ate breakfast, we bundled up and boarded our bus for our excursion.  We boarded a boat and headed out to sea.

We sailed past the Harpa and were able to get a good look at the other side.

We also got a good look at the city center of Reykjavik.

Sitting on the top deck, we were happy that we brought warm coats, our heated vests, hats, and gloves.

As our excursion boat headed out, we encountered a couple of pods of white-beaked dolphins.  They gave us quite a show.

They were amazingly playful and were really entertaining.

But, the real target for this excursion was whale watching.  And, it did not disappoint!  We stumbled upon three humpback whales and they were up for giving us our money's worth.

When they show their fluke, it means they are heading for a deep dive and will be under for several minutes.

Their blowhole is quite interesting.  I've seen a typical blowhole on a whale.  These looked like they had three distinct openings.  More blowhole photos follow below as well.

The next couple of photos show how close these giants came to our ship.  At one point, there was no more than an arm's length off the side.

Here's a closeup of a blowhole.

On our way back to port, we ventured past an island that is home to a multitude of puffins. They looked like a swarm.

I got a photo of one that looked like it picked up some tasty eels for lunch.

We also saw a few other sea birds.

It was a great excursion!

We returned to the ship and enjoyed lunch.  Later that afternoon, we took another excursion - a bus tour of Reykjavik.  This tour was a little disappointing.  We saw very little but did hear some background on Reykjavik and Iceland.  The guide was entertaining, but the overall content of the excursion was lacking.  Oh well.

After getting back on the ship, we enjoyed a pre-dinner cocktail in the Explorer's Lounge and watched as we departed Reykjavik.  For dinner, we opted for the World Cafe buffet that was featuring seafood.  Crab legs, crab cake, soft wheeled crab, salmon, calamari, tiger prawns, and more were available.

This evening, we returned to the Explorer's Lounge for team trivia. We weren't sure what to expect from Viking and it was a bit different than Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Carnival trivia.  We paired up with another couple, Maggie & David from Scottsdale, AZ.  It turned out to be a good pairing as we were truly a cooperative team and our strengths made up for our weaknesses.  In the end, we got 12 correct out of a possible 20 questions and won the game.  Our prize was resounding fame (read: nothing).  Still, it was fun and we got to know a nice couple.

Ultimately, we returned to our room.  Did I mention that it doesn't get dark?  Here we are on our balcony at 10:30pm.  Yea, sunlight!

Time for bed.  Tomorrow - ĺsafjördur.