Bob:

Another day of fun and frolic aboard the Crown Princess! I attended the presentations on "A Naturalist View of Iceland" by Jules Talarico, the "Port Information on Reykjavik" by Hutch, and "Energies of Iceland" by Wesley Smith. The first presentation featured the flora, fauna, geology, and scenery of Iceland, which just confirmed my desire to someday, somehow, see the place. In particular, I really wanted to see the rift valley where the "All Thing" met for many centuries. The "All Thing" was Iceland’s democratic Parliament that functioned starting in 980, and to me it essentially marks the first blossoming of a representative democracy in Medieval Europe, a time and place not otherwise noted for democracies!

Hutch's port information lecture was originally designed to help us navigate Reykjavik and environs. I couldn't use that information immediately but hoped some of it would stick in my mind until we could finally get there for a visit. I was impressed by his pictures of the Blue Lagoon, geysers, and the city sights in Reykjavik, and thought that the $20 tourist card that included bus transportation as well as museum entrance fees might be a good deal for us if and when we get there.

Wesley Smith's presentation on Iceland focused on the country's innovative attempts to convert geothermal power to electricity as well as the new, large, and quite controversial dam that was built near the major icefield. The power from that project goes solely to feed a huge, new ALCOA aluminium plant, but the environmental costs clearly offset some of the economic gain from the plant. Even more intriguing is the government’s attempt to convert their plentiful electricity to hydrogen and find some way to use it and even export it in that form. Hydrogen buses I had heard off, but the fuel-cell hydrogen-powered Priuses for rent at Hertz I had definitely not heard about.

Monika:

Bob:

After lunch we attended another port information lecture given by Hutch on St. John's, Newfoundland. There appeared to be a lot to do there, but Monika and I combined some of his information with some of the material that Susan had printed off the Internet to formulate a rough plan for the next day. The plan involved walking up Signal Hill, visiting a geology museum there, and then seeing some of the sights in St. John's proper.

I spent much of the afternoon in downloading and backing up pictures from our various cameras plus stitching together the panoramic pictures from the SLR, a surprisingly time-consuming but ultimately very rewarding process. Some of the panoramics from Qaqortoq came together almost without a visible seam, which was particularly satisfying.

Monika:

Bob:

Just before dinner we jumped up to attend a dart-throwing competition in the ship's pub. Monika's turn came right away when we entered the lounge, so she didn't have time to get nervous and threw her darts rather accurately, all things considered (ship's motion, placement of the dart board on a chair rather than the wall, 50 people staring at you, etc.) In fact she ended up coming in first with a score of 77! Woohoo! Way to go, Monika! For her efforts Monika was awarded a nifty dark blue baseball cap with "Princess Cruises" embroidered on it. I'm embarrassed to admit that I completely missed the dart board on all of my three throws, so Monika had to carry the family honor that day. The evening entertainment was the latest "Indiana Jones" movie, but we skipped that in favour of working on our journals, solving crostics, and just quietly reading in our room.

Monika: