June 23 – Kirkwall, (Orkney Islands) Scotland

Weather – 14º, sunny…so far so good!

can everyday start this way??

Steps – 13,554

Sunrise – 3:56, sunset – 10:28, hours of daylight – 18hrs, 32min

Northness - 59º (Calgary - 51º)

A morning at sea let us sleep in once again. I could have slept longer (I continue to blame jet lag) but set an alarm. We wanted to get to the Sunday caviar breakfast. We must be heading in a slightly different direction because while the sun was up around 4, it didn’t directly shine into our room.

Ring of Brodgar

First tour of the cruise…Scotland. We’ve been to
Scotland a few times, but never to Orkney. We are prepared for cold rainy weather this trip and so far, we haven’t needed anything more than a long-sleeved shirt and pants. In fact, although I had a jacket and thick zippy, I only needed my long-sleeved t-shirt. Tomorrow’s looking rainy, but we’ll deal with that tomorrow. We completely lucked out with the weather today!

Orkney's coast

The Orkney Islands, is an archipelago

wasn't as cold as it looks

 off the north coast of Scotland with about 70 islands - 20 are inhabited. Orkney's biggest town is Kirkwall – pop. 10,000. The islands have been inhabited for at least 8,500 years. The ancientness of this place is what the tour today was about. 

Today we first visited Orkney’s pre-historic landmarks - Standing Stones of Stenness, four tall Neolithic slabs with sharply angled tops, next was the Ring of Brodgar – a huge ceremonial circle of standing stones from 5,000 years ago. We also visited Skara Brae, a village from the neolithic age.

On the way back, we drove along the coast of Scapa Flow, one of the world’s best-known stretches of sheltered water. Along the way the guide described

Skall manor house

reasons for its importance particularly during the wars and during Viking times.

further and further north

Before prepping for this vacation, I’d never heard of Scapa Flow. It is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, that played an important role in travel, trade and conflict throughout the
centuries. Vikings anchored their ships in Scapa Flow more than a thousand years ago. It was the UK's chief naval base during the WWI and WW2 - it was closed in 1956.

Scapa Flow is also an important oil port. Ok…end of today’s lesson.

Pacific Rim - tonight's dinner

Dinner was at Pacific Rim. This is one of the ship’s 3 reservation required restaurants and it completely new to us as it isn’t on any of the other Regent boats we’ve been on. It was good, but no better than the  main dining room. As is obvious from the name, the food is Asian. I actually happened to have an

Skara Brae village

Asian Salmon last night; tonight was Asian start to
finish, including sake. We may try to get another reservation into here before the end of the cruise.

The captain warned us of rough seas tonight…yup, he was right. I wanted to try to sleep to the sound of the waves, but the door wouldn’t stay open and kept slamming shut…maybe tomorrow.