Day 33 - Monday July 15, 2024 - Inverness Scotland

By Ellen Outten

 

Our day started early, at 8 am, when we docked at Invergordon Scotland. Our buses were waiting to take us into Inverness Scotland.  It was about a half hour ride and our guide explained that Inverness was the mist highly populated area in the Highlands with approximately 48,000 residents.

Our drive from the port to the town of Inverness 




Some of the houses as we approached town



The River Ness which feeds into the Loch Ness.  

We were dropped off in Inverness and we had about 2 hours to wander on our own.   Wayne and I walked into town from our drop off location and wandered the streets, stopping at The Victorian Market.  There were shops and what amounted to a good court area.  It was early and not much was open but it was fun to look ain the windows and at the pastries in the coffee shops.

Flowers all along the footbridge over the River Ness.

The skyline of Inverness is in the shadow of Inverness castle




St. Andrew's church where our bus dropped us off for the start of our wander.

I hope you can just see the head of the Loch Ness monster that broke.rhe water here at the River Ness.




Castle Inverness 
More.of the River Ness.

Wayne left me to wander back and I continued walking around Inverness. I went into an M&S store. It's a large department store in the scale of Harrod's with a large food/supermarket area. Sorry, no ketchup bottle pictures today.  

I stopped and bought a few small LIGHTWEIGHT trinkets. Heck, I have another suitcase.  



A kilt, made to order takes 8 yards of fabric and costs between $500-$600 and takes approximately 60 days to make.   OR, YOU CAN RENT ONE!

Victorian Market 


Pictures as I wandered Inverness 


The flowers absolutely thrive in this moisture.





We had a really nice ride back to the ship through the beautiful countryside.  The HAAR started to clear.  Our guide gave us this new Scottish word.  It means a cold sea fog on the east coast of Scotland.  The morning progresses, it burns off or blows away.  We missed summer here this year too.  Our guide said it was last Tuesday!  

Someone once said, you don't have bad weather, just bad clothes.  True enough.  The residents are dressed for their weather.  

We had a real treat this afternoon.  Viking occasionally gives a tour they call Behind The Scenes.  We were lucky enough to get in this tour this afternoon at 5 pm.  We were taken below to the major kitchens where all the food is prepared as well as the laundry.  The General Manager of the ship gave us the tour and had great stories about loading supplies at various ports including stories of issues encountered in places like Miami, Quebec, Bali, Sydney.  

We also had an explanation of their emergency drills and evacuation procedures as well as the training that all crew go through.  Fire, first aid, EMT training, that ALL CREW members must take.  He spent a lot of time on Food Safety.  Waste removal...making sure cutlery doesn't jam and break machinery. They even have a bone crushing machine.  All the food waste is pulverized and chemicals added before being released into the ocean for the sake of ecological benefits to the wildlife.  It was a real treat to see everything.  

They have a machine that cut laundry time from a full 24/7 procedure to 16 hours a day.  The machine irons and folds all the linens saving manpower and time

Food set.out at 4:30 for management to taste test before being served that evening 

Where cooking classes are held as well as their daily management meetings.  This area is called the Kitchen Table 

The Executive Chef talking with us and the General Manager in uniform giving us the tour.


The head pastry chef does an amazing job!

Pallets and pallets of commodities 

A peek Into the huge refrigerator full of commodities 

They call this I-95 in honor of the US highway from Maine to Florida.  It's a passageway that runs underneath level A the entire length of the ship.  It's how the 451 crew members get from one area to another quickly.

Laundry being done quickly 

The folding machine. At the bottom of the picture is the folded sheet coming out of the conveyor.

We reach the end, in two days, of this leg of the cruise when we dock in Bergen Norway (again).  We have three days there.  The middle day, many will depart for good and others will arrive as we head into the last 15 day leg of this journey, with a few stops in new ports in Norway and hopefully some beautiful fjords. And then into the Baltic where I'm told it will be warmer.  I'm looking forward to Copenhagen Denmark and Berlin and Gdansk Poland and of course, Stockholm Sweden.  Time to get excited again.

Tomorrow before Bergen, we dock in Lerwick in the Shetland Islands.  We were here in June and don't need to see the ponies again so after a little morning laundry, we'll take the free shuttle bus into town and perhaps have lunch.



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