Cruise to the Shetland Islands. May 2025

Celebrity Eclipse.

This was from 25th April till 9 May .  We were up at 3am. to get a taxi to the Ben Gurion Airport for a 4  hour flight to Amsterdam with El Al.  There are cheaper airlines but only the Israeli airlines fly if there is a war on. We were meant to be in Amsterdam at the Jakarta Hotel for 2 nights but the cruise ship was delayed in dry docks and so they paid for our 3rd  night at the hotel including meals and we got compensation as we were unable to see the port of Waterford Ireland

From the hotel we could watch enormous barges carrying building sand or gravel each one  probably more that the capacity of 20 trucks. Close up you can see the bargee has a whole home on it including gardens and bicycles  some even had a car on it. It also carries a crane to load and unload. The Dutch are always reclaiming  land always taking soil to fill polders in the Ijsselmeer, perhaps that was the purpose.

Koningdag . That Saturday was the day that the kings birthday gets  celebrated. I took the bus to the Central station and walked around the city, the trams could not go into it, as the streets were crowded with a huge population all wearing orange. Some orange T-shirts or hat, glasses, jackets and garlands. People meeting friends or drinking beer. All the ferries  are free  and from the station  you cross the bay. Many ride onto the ferry on bikes and ride off again. Busses and trams are not free so perhaps this is why so many use bicycles. There is an old neighborhood where the wooden houses are preserved as well as buildings of the Amsterdam University. Walked through a neighborhood that was a flea market of stuff that should be dumped. One is aware that there are few children around and few parks with swings and jungle gyms. You see bicycles mostly old style as well as tandems parked everywhere by their thousands. Most bikes are very plain no gears. Bikes with a rubber belt instead of a chain. I returned from  the city by tram which is quicker and took another ferry to an island where there was pop festival. This had been an industrial zone but all the warehouses had been converted to residential flats.

Hotel Jakarta  is on the Island of Borneo and it was reclaimed from the sea and it was probably in the days when the Dutch East Indies existed and all the streets are named after Indonesia. This is very close to the centre of Amsterdam. It has a road around it with flats directly on the road and a bridge to the mainland on each end. Behind the buildings there are lots of well kept gardens and bicycles with the bicycle path. The tram has a terminus here at the ferry port which goes across the bay. The island also has a school next to this and under one building were bookcases with lots of books neatly arranged mostly in Dutch but I found a good English book to read. Saw many Tesla cars and a places to charge them. The buildings here look reasonably new after they had urban planning and demolish all that was there before in 1999..

We walked to the cruise port to board the ship. We were told that most cruises run to schedule, which is surprising considering how many things can go wrong. Sailing out of Amsterdam there are miles of city either side  of you till you reach the lock which takes you up as the sea is 2 meter or more above the land, here you go from fresh to sea water and a dozen windmills that are driving pumps to get the water out.

 Cobh (Cove) We were taken for a tour to the City of Cork  and Cork bay which is surrounded by 6 island which shelter the bay. This  had lots of industry and employment so it was not affected by the famine of 1845. Cork is the 2nd city of the Irish Republic after Dublin under the British it was called Queenstown. Most of the building are undergoing renovation and are build of the local sandstone and limestone. ~There are 4 Martello Forts build to stop Napolean invading and 4 more that were completed after Waterloo. These were never used and bought up to be turned into private homes. Cork is near a flood plane and get flooded by sudden storms. We were taken to Blarney but did not go  to the castle. Instead  wool mill was turned into a store selling mostly beautiful wooden products but not many wear these nowadays.

In the afternoon I took a walk around Cove which has a memorial to the Titanic and the Lusitania which Cove sailors tried to rescue survivors after it was torpedoed in WW1, 1915.  They told us that if it doesn't rain in the next week the grass will turn brown. I walked up a steep stairway to get to the Cathedral which was completed in 1919. Under Henry II who  led an Anglo - Norman invasion and  Ireland was first brought it under England control in 1171.

 A big crowd were sitting at tables outside a pub and a singer entertained singing Irish songs on this warm sunny day.

Long after the ship was meant to leave we were watching when a bus arrived everyone boarded the ship.  The gangplank  was pulled away and the ship was untied and sailed and we had a view of the Cove coast which has miles of  houses along the shore.

Liverpool the cruise terminal is right in the city in front of the Liver building and we took the on/ off bus around the city centre which we could hardly recognize from the 1980s when we were here often. There used to be block towers build after the war that became instant slums and there were demolished houses around the cathedral. These areas have seen urban renewal and the city is more beautiful and cleaner than London. There are lots  of old attractive  buildings of red brick and the city has 4 universities. In pop music it had 58 records at the top of the hit parade more than any other city.

We went shopping at Marks and Spencer's where we wanted to use the toilet. They have done away with toilets as there is  a municipal toilet in the complex that you have to pay for. The couple before us went in together to save time and said "we are not going in for sex" We also went in together. Then went to  Waterstones. Afterwards as we got on the bus Astrid realized that I left the shopping on a bench and the driver let us off the bus. Luckily the bag was still there and we got the next bus.

After  lunch on the ship I took a walk to the Museum of Liverpool. There is the Lion locomotive which is the same as Stephenson's Rocket and is the oldest steam locomotive that still exists. Till the late 50s Liverpool had an enormous working class loading/unloading ships till containerization took over. This was followed by years of unemployment. WW2 Liverpool was the worst bombed city after London as it was the main port to the USA. It was also the main port for immigrants to Europe. For tourist the Beatles is the cities  claim to fame.

Holyhead  Wales. This is the largest town on the Island of Anglesey and is connected to the mainland by a bridge. which forms a bottleneck for travelling. We got off the ship into tenders to get to the harbour.  A bus tour took us to  Caenarfon . This has the castle build by Edward II (1284 to 1327) where Prince Charles had his investiture ceremony to became Prince of Wales in 1969, thus crown prince. A lot of Welsh is spoken here. There were a lot of Roman settlements as the Romans were here from the 1st till the 4th Century. 

Travelling along the countryside there are lots of sheep and they all seem to have a lamb or two. All the meadows look like mowed lawn and the hills are ancient pre Cambrian granite with boulders some very big that broke off and rolled down the mountain. The open country is part of Snowdonia National park where there are glacial made lakes. We drove through a number of Welsh villages that attracts holiday makers with boating and fishing, for trout . You can look into the clear transparent flowing water here. We returned to Holyhead along a highway that the trucks come along to the ferry from Holyhead to Ireland which is only 65 miles away and it only takes 3 hours 35 minutes to Dublin.

On our bus a man  was so overweight that he broke the bus seat and nearly crushed the person behind him. There were other seats on busses and the cruise theater that are damaged the same way. Returning to the ship the tender has 2 engines and one stopped working and the skipper had to battle with one engine to steer the tender.

Belfast  This has a CS Lewis Square, he was born here and wrote the Chronicles of Narnia novels. Cavehill  looks like a sleeping giants face and this gave Jonathan Swift the idea for Gulliver's Travels. Liam Neeson and St. Patrick came from this area. Ireland has 32 Counties and Northern Ireland has 6 - Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone. Belfast has a population of 600,000 a third of the population of N. Ireland.

 We had seen the city last time, so this time went on a trip along the Atrim Coast till Glenrick and area of beauty. We had perfectly made tasty scones with tea. We returned on the inner road  over the mountain and you pass through towns with neatly moved lawn and beautiful gardens along lots of steep roads.

Today the  total population of Ireland is 6.8 million still less than the 8 million before the famine when there were 8 million. They considered the very warm weather  with sunshine, even thought it never went above 14C.

Greenock This is the Inverclyde or entrance to the Clyde and is a 35 minute train ride to Glasgow. Like Liverpool you get of on a floating pontoon as the difference between low and high tide is 9 and a half meters. At low tide it is not easy walking up the steep ramp. The town looks like it has a wealthy history of ship building. It has dozens of beautiful of granite or red sandstone that make up everything from the law courts, churches and municipal buildings.  A wing of this building was hit during WW2 and that was just demolished instead of being rebuild. Like the old customs house some old building were turned into museums, but were closed today Sunday. Most of the roads are paved with blocks and not asphalt. 

There is a memorial to James Watt born here and  who build the first steam engine. The wife of Robert Burns the poet was a native here.

The pub had a notice "No football colours allowed in here" which means that they result in drunken fights. The town felt deserted as a lot of people were at the nearby game between Celtic (Catholic supported Glasgow team) and Rangers (Protestant supported Glasgow team). This game took place at the Greenock  Morton football stadium a neutral ground between the 2 teams.

Understanding the English spoken was not easy. I walked along the beautiful promenade on the shore and spoke to a man fishing who told me he caught cod, pollock and whiting but occasionally trout and salmon. The town centre appears to have been build for a greater population in the heyday days of shipbuilding. There is a statue to the Skelpies these were the strong men who hammered rivets joining steel plates in ship construction

Glasgow. The coach took us from  Greenoak along the Clyde. Ships could not get closer to Glasgow because it was too shallow, so they loaded here. In Glasgow we took the on /off bus, the city center indicates a period of wealth with beautiful architecture and many industrial building were changed to residential ones. Many places in Glasgow got nicknames which later became their real names. 

We went to the  Riverside museum where there is a collection of old cars, trams, locomotives  and bicycles and a tandem for four. Glasgow has 3 universities as well as a big music school and polytechnics. There is an enormous common given to the city by James II and cannot be build on. A merchant who wanted to build a carpet factory nearby had the building designed as the Doges  Palace in Venice. The one end of the city has Celtic Stadium and the other Rangers. Historically Glasgow was a big trading and manufacturing centre. In medicine many great doctors came from here including Joseph Lister. Billie Mc Connolly is a very popular entertainer here his home city.

Leaving Glasgow you go north through channels and island so you see land on both sides of the ship and the water is calm, you could not tell if the land was contiguous. On your left are the Hebrides' Islands. It took about 24 hours to pass them before you reach the  open North Sea, where it is rougher.

Shetland Island, Lerwick

 The Shetland Island belonged to Norway but when the Norwegian princess Margaret  married the Scottish King James III in 1469 she received it as a dowry.  So most of the place names here are Scandinavian. Our guide was a S. African girl who married a Shetland Islander. There was another S. African women guide with another group perhaps because the English accent here is very difficult to understand. There are over 100 islands here but only 16 of them are inhabited. There is a nightly ferry from here to Aberdeen and regular ferries to the other islands.  But they only run in good weather.  The Shetland has a population of 23,000.

We were taken to the Scalloway where we walked around the town which is smaller that Lerwick but not as mountainous.  Scalloway  was the capital till the Dutch started trading for fish in Lerwich which has a much better harbour and better protected bay. Scalloway was preferred as it is not so steep there, but its bay is not so well protected. Scalloway museum was opened by the Norwegian PM. Jens Stollen burg  in 2012 as it documents the Shetland bus. This was a secret WW2 program to deliver weapons to the Norwegian underground and to get people that the Gestapo were looking for away.

There are few trees on the Shetland except in very sheltered gardens as the strong winds destroy the saplings and they have  to be protected from the sheep by fences. The main industry was fishing and still is. Many churches have been turned into homes and flats, after being sold by the Church of Scotland. Many empty building turned into community centres. The central library is very well patronized by the islanders during the long dark winters. As it is the lambing season we saw many sheep with more than one lamb. You see lots of Shetland ponies and once they had side baskets and were used to carry peat to the houses for heating.

The coach ride ended up at a jewelry factory and what interested me her was the variety of specially made tools hammers files needed for the job. The oil drilling in the nearby sea paid for good roads to be build as they were needed by the drilling companies.  The island garbage bins are all tied to posts as the wind will blow them over and is all burned in an incinerator that provides both hot water for the nearby homes and electricity,

The Norwegian warship 1260 ton Hestananden from  Stokmarknes was docked in the harbour of Lerwick. This is a travelling museum from 2017. Build in 1911 with a riveted hulk and saw action in WW2.  Most of the Norwegian navy over 1000 ships escaped and were at the disposal of the British war effort. Inside were documentaries about Norway WW2. The ship's next port of call would be Aberdeen for a week.

I wondered around the town of Lerwick to Castle Charlotte which has cannons and  which was build during the Napoleonic wars but never saw action It had a garrison of 220 soldiers.

On the last sea day going through the English channel you could sometimes see land on both sides of us. We saw miles and miles of windmills in the coastal water, so wind power must be profitable. We also saw some oil rigs on the way to Amsterdam. The cruised had an organized coach directly, from the port to the Schiphol airport. This airport must have been expanded a dozen times and has long distances to walk to the gates. We got through security quickly but the passport control had such a queue that it took us ages to get through.

Besides the tours we found from this trip that we were some of the younger people, and the ship was the closest we have come to a retirement home.  Pensioners travel in the off season.  We were aware of a very high % of Canadians and French Canadians. They all told us the are boycotting the US so looking to spend holidays in Europe, and there are no longer US food products on the supermarket shelves in Canada, or Californian wines. The Quebec people speak English with a accent very different from France. They told us they are a  minority in Canada, but as part of the USA they would be frightened for their language rights and culture. 

  There is such a choice of quality meat, fish , vegetables, salad and fruit  of every type in the dining room so no need for  hamburgers and chips. Fresh pizza is available but we avoided that also.

I seldom eat smoked salmon and cream cheese on bagels at home  but ate that for breakfast almost every day. The workers on the ship in the past were from Eastern Europe or South America, but now are from Indonesia, Philippines  India, Jamaica and Africa. We met many Kenyans, Zimbabweans as well as South African blacks, colored's and even a few whites working on the ship everyone speaks a good English.

A cruise is relatively cheap because the workers are from the 3rd world and the casino is open when you are not in port and people drink a lot. You see far more of a place when you travel over land but the cruise also has entertainment and it is a 5 star hotel at a good price.

The ship had quite a big library where people leave books, they have read. I brought 2 books which I left in the library read another book  on the cruise and took 2 books to read on the and the flight and at home. Most of the books were in English but it had a selection of Dutch books.