July 10

I woke at 7am, to find we were already in port at Torshavn, the capital city of the Faroe Islands, and that Jared had been up since 5:30 am, (to look for whales!) had written me a very sweet note to say ‘happy anniversary’ before going up on deck to seek coffee. I’d slept through the ship’s fog horn blasting through the morning mist for an hour or so, and since the ship was already docked, figured Jared must be basically ready to go – we only had until 4pm to see Torshavn.

What I didn’t anticipate was zombie-sloth-Jared, and how he was even more sloth-like than normal.

We mooched through the morning, downing coffee, and more coffee, and working our way through breakfast (full English for Jared, pastries and fruit for me) and eventually made our way to the gangway, and the coach waiting to transport us the 800m to the port terminal – no pedestrians are allowed through the port.

Despite rugging up, we hadn’t fully taken into account the amount of rain we’d be dealing with, and any loose plans we had for the day quickly washed away with the copious precipitation falling from the sky.

We scurried across town to the SMS mall, where we, like dehydrated wanderers in a desert, were in search of much needed INTERNET.

Travel Tip: Mobile data is not a thing on the Faroe Islands (if you have Virgin media anyway)

Lapping up the free WiFi in the mall, and making a nest in a local café (to do some blogging!). Jared went in search of a haircut, and was ultimately unsuccessful, as he is allergic to queues. He did instead get a trim on the ship later – so far the only one of us to make it to the ‘spa’.

I liked the look of the sushi at the local place. A sampler platter set me back a whopping 229 DKK – €31/NZ$55 but it was delicious, so no regerts.

We stopped by a supermarket on the way out of the mall to investigate the crisps situation and I discovered potentially the best crisps I’ve ever tasted – a Danish brand, with very no-frills type of packaging, and no discernible name, but oh my goodness were they good. There are some kettles available on the boat, but only sea salt, or Pringles which don’t even count as food and always make me feel kind of sick so finding good crisps was a nice treat.

We hadn’t fully taken advantage of the free public transport that Torshavn offered, nor…anything really. Neither of us had slept well or for very long, so after making it to the mall, and caffeinating, that was all the exploring we were up for.

Travel tip: there are free public buses in the Faroe Islands, and in Iceland

Saturated upon our return to the ship, we changed and headed up to the Observatory lounge so we could see Torshavn as we departed the harbour, and discovered that it was the CEO of Ambassador’s birthday and this meant copious amounts of free cocktails were bestowed upon us, mostly because we were at one end of the lounge and the waiters were trying to empty their trays – so we had about 8 between us over the course of an hour. Cheers!

I really like the observatory lounge as a place to hang out. It has really nice décor, it’s open and spacious, there’s loads of private little nooks for ocean watching, reading and chilling, and obviously an ample bar. There’s often live music, and sometimes talks hosted there, but it’s a really great space to hang out.

The ship we were on used to sail out of Auckland, and they sold it just before I was going to book my 30th birthday cruise, so we ended up sailing on the sister ship out of Sydney. I’m fairly sure there wasn’t a bar up top on the sister ship, and instead it was a gym on one side and the spa on the other side. You very much had to pay for the good views with either money or sweat.

Trust the Brits to turn it into a bar – much better choice in this scenario.

We also snaffled a few cocktails while we were chatting to the Orca ocean observer ladies who were schmoozing – they were ‘on duty’ and therefore not drinking, so Jared went and sourced some mocktails so they could join in the fun.

We fully embraced Mediterranean timetabling and the 5-7pm nap, dragged myself groggily from bed for the 8.15pm dinner setting.  

I discovered upon being seated at our table for dinner that Jared had covertly ordered a bottle of prosecco for our dinner to celebrate 6 years of wedded bliss, and that now the entire wait staff knew it was our anniversary, so everyone made a point of coming up to us and saying happy anniversary, which was really sweet. Ali, our wine guy, had also created a flower arrangement to celebrate the occasion. We had a delicious feast of caprese, chicken salad, lamb (very generous portion) and tiramisu – basically the perfect anniversary dinner, couldn’t have chosen better if I’d been cooking myself.

After dinner, we headed back to the room and finished the evening by watching the Man from Snowy River.