Kirkwall, Orkney Islands Sept. 26, 2023

 We sailed down from the top of the Shetland Islands to Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands.  The Orkney Islands have about 70 islands, 20 of which are inhabited.  Around 22,000 people live in the Orkney Islands with Kirkwall, where we stopped, as the capital…perhaps 8-9.000 of the 22,000 people live in Kirkwall.  These islands as well as the Shetlands had a long connection with the Vikings and then Norway before becoming part of Scotland several hundred years ago.  We opted to just take in the town on this stop…they did have a recreation of a Viking longhouse that you could go to on a bus, but we saw on our own the Viking settlement in northern Newfoundland where they did a living history and also had a Viking longhouse so we skipped this one.  Seeing the Ring of R….? Was an option but a pricey one, and Neolithic stuff is probably less interesting to us…we saw Stonehenge years ago, and were a bit underwhelmed by it…blasphemous I know, but there you have it.  In any case it was relaxing and enjoyable day nonetheless.