Dear friends,
I must apologize for lapsing with my blog. It's been too long and there are so many photos I cannot possibly include them here. My plan is to make separate albums, beginning tonight with our trip overseas to the UK, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.
Let me tell you about that now. On July 28, 2026, we flew out of Boston to Heathrow, arriving on the following day. We had reserved a hotel with early checkin, and headed straight there for a nap before walking around the city. It was 94 degrees F, so super hot. The next morning we had more time to explore a bit of London before checking out of our hotel and heading over to the train station. We boarded the train at Kings Cross to York.
In York, we checked into our hotel, and then walked the city and its wall and found a lovely Greek restaurant for dinner. The next morning and afternoon we walked some more within the city and then headed back to the train station to head up to Durham. We had a lovely time in Durham as well, walking the city, and the next day, walking 9 miles along a river around the outskirts of Durham. That evening we took the short train ride to Newcastle, from where we would begin our Hadrian's Wall cycleway trip the following morning.
Newcastle was a wild city. It was a bank holiday in nearby Scotland, so there were lots of young folks in the city strutting around and ready to party. The next morning we were met by the local cycle tour company who picked us up and brought us to the west coast town of Bowness at Sea, from where we began cycling on our hired e-bikes. The trip was four days of cycling, and each morning we had our bags carted from the last night's inn to the next. We stayed in small towns and enjoyed great food and met nice people along the way. We also learned a bit of history about the Romans in that region.
On the fourth day we finished the tour at Tynemouth, at the meeting of the North Sea. Our tour company picked us up there and brought us back to Newcastle for our last night there.
The next morning we walked around Newcastle, over the winking eye bridge, and to a wonderful modern art gallery. We did a lot of walking that morning and afternoon, until we had a nice late lunch in a Turkish restaurant there in Newcastle, before heading over the train station.
That was August 6. The infamous day for UK trains on which a power outage caused a complete outage of the UK train network for almost the entire afternoon and night. We had booked a first class 3 hour train from Newcastle to Liverpool, from where we would be boarding our cruise ship the following day. Long story short, it was a nightmare, but we ended up at our Liverpool hotel after more than 5 hours of travel.
The next morning we had time to use the gym at the hotel before we boarded our ship. And from there we set out on Fred Olsen Cruise Lines (The Bolette) out at sea for a day and a half before arriving close to the port of Heimaey where we boarded the small lifeboats to transfer us to port.
We did two things there: we hiked a volcano and we walked to the puffin preserve and saw puffins. Plus we visited the museum that commemorated the eruption of the volcano in the 70s.
One thing about Iceland, it is very expensive.
The next morning our port was Reykjavik. We did a lot of walking, visited one museum (the Icelandic National history museum) and walked and walked. I had dropped my phone at some point, but luckily the young man who found it knew what to do, and was able to use my locked phone to call Claude, my emergency contact, and we retrieved the phone relatively painlessly. Phew!
The following morning was already August 12, the day of the total Solar Eclipse. The ship captain steered us into a fjord to see a beuatiful waterfall and some whales tales before heading out to sea to catch the total eclipse of the usn, which we did.
The following morning we visited Isafjordur, where we rented a couple of bikes and rode around. It was lovely.
The following day we were at sea, and then on to Akureyri, where we visited the Forest Lagoon, a set of geothermally heated pools, where we walked around and met people and enjoyed ourselves.
The following day we were at sea, and the next day arrived at Torshavn, the capitol city of the Faroe Islands. There we took a long hike, and returned to the ship on time.
Those at-sea days were enjoyable too. Our room had a balcony. One day we saw an iceberg. We also went to several fitness classes, and one dance class.
We had one more day at sea, and then arrived early in the morning of August 11, back in Liverpool.
Our train back to Healthrow, where we had reserved a hotel for the night before the flight, was not until early evening, so we used the "stash" app to store our bags at a hotel near the train station, and spent the day walking around Liverpool.
OK, that is it in a nutshell. Here' a link to the photo album. The final three photos in the album are of the total eclipse on August 12. We were lucky to see it. Was was a very cloudy day.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/eaeFnmeJePVUyR8i8
As always it would be lovely to hear from you.
Carla
PS some big poetry news: I won the 2026 New England Poetry Club Samuel Washington Allen prize for my "Elegy Sequence for Charles Coe". I am so honored. Here is a link to the poems.
https://nepoetryclub.org/elegy-sequence-for-charles-coe-by-carla-schwartz
And I have had a lot more poems come out online recently and you can find many of them here on my linktree:
And here's a photo of one from the 2026 Southborough Art on the Trails Anthology:
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