COREY SANDLER BLOG

November 2026: What Light through Yonder Window Breaks?*

By Corey Sandler

We’re finally returned from a loop-de-loop set of European cruises, a six-week odyssey that began in Iceland and ended in Lisbon.

It was a wonderful window on the world, from the North Atlantic to the Norwegian Sea to the Iberian Peninsula. I took several hundred photos along the way, quite a few of them through windows.

About twenty years ago, I threw caution to the wind and rented a car in England for a circumnavigation from Manchester to Wales, the Cotswolds, Totnes and Dartmouth on the south coast, and back to Manchester. I adapted to driving on the wrong side of the road, although I never quite figured out how to stop turning on the windshield wipers when I wanted to use the turn signal.

But I still have the occasional nightmare about coming to a roundabout.

(You might know this piece of road engineering as a rotary, a traffic circle, or a ring junction.)

It was hard enough to remember to bear to the left to make a circuit in a clockwise direction. Now imagine doing this with two lanes of traffic and road signs in Welsh or Gaelic.

On more than one occasion I stayed in the roundabout for several loops while my wife and family tried to determine whether we wanted to exit at Pontypridd, Merthyr Tydfil, or Tongwynlais. I chose Cardiff…

Why was I remembering roundabouts?

Outside and Inside a Cube of Iceland. The spectacular Harpa concert hall along the waterfront in Reykjavik is one of my favorite places to bring my camera; it is a kaleidoscope of light, changing with the season and time of day. Its name means “harp” in the Islenska language, but also refers to a period of time in early spring on old Nordic calendars. Photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

This cruise contract began in Reykjavik, Iceland. We proceeded in a clockwise direction (west, then north, then east, then south) to nearly circle that amazing island nation.

From the port of Seyðisfjörður on the east coast, we headed out to sea, southeast to Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands.

Tórshavn, the principal city of the Faroe Islands, seems frozen in time. On our visit in September, the days were getting shorter and the temperatures cooler. In mid-June, the isolated islands experience about 20 hours of gray daylight. On the day this blog published, December 1, there was just short of six hours of daylight. Photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

Still with me? Our next port of call was due east to Bergen. From there north up the coast of Norway to Geiranger and Molde, then hanging a U-turn to Flåm and finally returning south to Bergen.

We spent a day in Bergen to allow the ship’s navigator to recalibrate the compass and to pick up fresh supplies of the necessities: steak, lobster, beer, wine, and dark chocolate.

A Glimpse Out the Window of the Undredal stave church which dates from the mid-12th century. It has been updated ever-so-slightly over the years even as the tiny village’s population has shrunk to about 70; there are, though, about 500 goats and they support an artisanal cheesemaking industry. A narrow road was installed to connect to Flåm a few decades ago. Photo by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

It was now mid-September, and North Sea was beginning to churn.

We sailed west to Lerwick in Scotland’s Shetland Islands. The next two days we were southbound, calling at Aberdeen and then Newhaven, the port of Edinburgh.

It was here, perhaps in tribute to local poet Robert Burns, that the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley. Our best-laid plans indeed went wrong, because a major storm was approaching the top of Scotland where our itinerary called for us to sail.

And so, instead of sailing north to Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands and then west to Ullapool on the west coast of Scotland, we went the other direction: south, all the way down the United Kingdom’s east coast past Dover and then west along Cornwall, then north into the Irish Sea to resume our itinerary at Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Still with me? East over to England to Liverpool, then west to Dublin in Ireland, and then south to the bottom of England to Dover before proceeding west to Greenwich at the port of London.

But wait, there’s more: there was one more cruise on my contract, beginning from Greenwich. East down the River Thames, then a jog south to Dover.

From there, southwest across the English Channel (or as the French call it, La Manche or The Sleeve) to Le Havre which allowed us a visit to Paris to pick up a fresh baguette. Some guests went to Normandy.

From Le Havre, we sailed around the corner west and then southeast to Pauilliac on the Gironde Estuary short of Bordeaux.

From there south and across the border to Bilbao, and then west across the top of Spain to A Coruña.

The Pride of Bilbao–and its modern savior–is the spectacular Guggenheim Museum, designed by architect Frank Gehry. It is a spectacular example not just of design but also progressive government. In 1991 the government of Spain’s Basque region offered to pay the $100 million cost of construction of the museum in a decrepit port area of Bilbao. Today the rescue of the city with an investment in art is called the “Bilbao Effect.” The museum’s exterior is clad in undulating titanium plates. Exploring the interior, to me, is somewhat like an expedition into an alien invader. In a good way. Photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.
A pair of peeks out of the wIndows of Guggenheim Bilbao. It was completed in 1998 near the navigable end of the Nervion River. Photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.
A Coruña in the northwest corner of Spain is one of those places ancient cartographers deemed to be the “end of the world.” It was a significant shipbuilding and fishing port for centuries. And as is common in many such places, local shipbuilders moonlighted as terrestrial architects. A Coruña is often blanketed with gray skies and mist and 18th-century shipbuilder-architects designed the fronts of most of the buildings along the harbor to resemble the windowed sterns of old Spanish warships to capture as much light as possible. That gave rise to the city’s nickname “A Cidade de Cristal” (The Crystal City.) Photo by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

And finally, dizzingly, south into Portugal for visits to Leixões and finally Lisbon.

In other words, every which way but loose. Great trip, though.

When I described our route to my AI map drawing assistant, it broke down in tears and shut itself off. Here is a rough version of our course. Please do not use this as a nautical chart. Drawing begun by ChatGPT and finished with human intervention.

*“What light through yonder window breaks?” — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

All text and photos are by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. Copyright 2026. If you want to obtain a copy of one of my photographs for personal or commercial use, please contact me using the link on this page.

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