Norway 2023

This is the preserved skeleton of "Hatch", the ship's dog.

One of the Royal Navy ships in port whilst we were there was HMS Prince of Wales.

Our friend, Nick, relaxing near "Warrior" - the largest warship in the World when it was launched in 1860.

We also visited the Submarine Museum at Gosport where we went on-board the submarine HMS Alliance which was built in 1945 just as the Second World War was coming to an end.

Pat by HMS Alliance

Today we embarked on the Sky Princess. The process ran very smoothly. As usual, we arrived far earlier than we needed to and so were initially turned away from our car park. We drove out of the port area and went and had some breakfast at a nice cafe at the side of a nearby marina. On our return we were soon parked up and then on board our ship.

Our cabin is quite spacious and has a nice area to relax inside as well as a balcony outside.

The day was spent getting used to where everything was on the ship. It has a well-equipped gym and so I had an hour there in the middle of the afternoon.

After that there was a sail away party on Deck 16, which is the Lido Deck. Our cabin is in the accommodation part of the same deck situated to the rear of the ship.

We had dinner at around 6.30pm and then went to our first show. It was a performance of songs by Dusty Sprinfield sung by a lady called Sammy Lomax who performed excellently.

After the show we had some drinks at a bar where we enjoyed some more live music and then we retired for the night.

Tomorrow we are at sea for the day as we make our way across the North Sea to Norway. It will give us the opportunity to explore the ship some more.

Pat and I went on the exercise bikes in the gym today.

The bikes were really good as you were able to follow a route on screen and the resistance on the bike altered in accordance with the terrain on screen.

This is a general view of part of the gym showing some of the equipment that is available.

Tonight was the first formal night of the cruise so we were all able to put on our best bib and tucker!

After dinner we went to the evening's production which was a Rock Opera.

Today we reached Norway and called in at our first port of call which was Bergen.

Although it is the second largest city in Norway, the old part in the centre takes only 20 or 30 minutes to completely traverse. The walk from where the ship docked to the old city was also only around a 15 minute walk away so we could visit the main tourist spots very easily.

We opted to visit the Tourist Information right away as we wanted to take the funicular railway up Mount Floyen to get a panoramic view over the centre of Bergen

The old city is focussed around the various quays that punctuate the area.

The most famous part of Bergen is this set of wooden buildings in the Bryggen area. Unfortunately some of these, as well as other buildings in Bergen were covered as they are undergoing much needed renovation.

Here's a more close-up view

And this is what it is like in-between the wooden buildings.

As we were leaving the centre of Bergen, I spotted this Troll keeping an eye on the unsuspecting members of the public below!

We sailed further north overnight and had arrived in Flam by the time we woke up at around 7 a.m.

Flam is a village that sits at the end of Aurlandsfjord which is a branch of the Sognefjord. Our ship docked right at the end of the Fjord and it was therefore only a couple of minutes' walk away from the railway station, bus stops and various food and clothing outlets.

We had pre-booked a shuttlebus to get us to Gudvangen which took us about 20 minutes.

At Gudvangen we visited the Viking Village of Njardarheimr. The village is a reconstruction to show how Vikings lived during the Viking Age which ran from 700 A.D.(with the destruction of the Monastery of Lindisfarne in England) to around 1,000 A.D.

One thing I learned from the guided tour that we went on, was that "Viking" isn't who you were, it was what you did. Vikings were people from Scandanavia who went away from home to discover new lands and to rob and trade with the peoples of those lands. The desire to do this was prompted by the difficult farming conditions at home where the winters were long and the land was difficult to farm due to the terrain.

Some "Vikings" would return home with the produce of their pillaging and trade (which would also included enslaved peoples from the lands they had visited). Other "Vikings" would settle down and form communities in the places they had conquered (York in England, for example).

The Viking life was not for everyone though. The men who chose to stay at home and farm the land as best as they could were known as "Norsemen".

Whilst we were at the Viking Village, we had a go at archery and axe throwing.

Some photos of the fjord as we sailed away from Flam this evening:

We weren't original scheduled to stay in Andalsnes. When we booked the cruise it included a day in the Lofoten Islands. However, the Lofoten Islands have stopped hosting cruise ships of the size of ours due to the environmental impact and therefore our stop in the Islands was replaced with Andalsnes.

This is the view from our cabin of the small town of Andalsnes. The town is a mountaineering centre and this is evidenced by the strange-shaped building which, on its inside, has a climbing wall.

In the centre of Andalsnes, we discovered an old railway carriage that had been converted into a small chapel.

For non-mountaineers such as us, the main attraction is the cable car which takes visitors up the mountain Nesaksla. The journey takes about 10 minutes. A short walk above the cable car station enables you to overlook the Romsdalen mountain range. It's very expensive in the cable car (about £40 per person), but the spectacular views at the top makes it worthwhile.

Our port of call today was Trondheim which is the third-largest and second-oldest city in Norway. Whilst we were here, we visited the Nidarosdomen (Nidaros Cathedral) and the Kristiansten Festing (Kristiansten Fortress).

The Cathedral was built over the burial site of King Olaf II and was completed in 1300 having taken 230 years to build. It is the traditional location for the consecration of new kings of Norway.

King Olaf II reigned from 995 A.D. to 1028 A.D. Interestingly, he succeeded Sven Forkbeard who had been King of England for five weeks and was himself succceeded by another King of England, King Canute.

The fortress was built after the city of Trondheim had a huge fire in 1681. It was designed to protect the city from invasion from the east and it successfully did this in 1718 when it held out against Swedish forces.

The Germany army captured it during the Second World War and used it as the execution place of members of the Norwegian resistance. After the War ended the Norwegians used it for executions too ... this time to execute those who had collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of the country.

A view of Trondheim from the Fortress:

The Old Bridge or, in Norwegian, "Gamle Bybroen" was along the way we walked from our ship to the Cathedral. It was built in 1862 and connects the central peninsula with the part of Trondheim called Bakklandet which is known for its small wooden houses. Nowadays they are used as cafes, craft centres and boutiques.

I wonder if you know what this strange contraption is! The clue is that it's at the bottom of a very steep street.

It's a bicycle lift! Saves pushing the bike up the hill if you can't make it under your own power!

Today was a day at sea as we sailed towards Honningsvag, crossing the Arctic Circle shortly after midday.

This evening was the second formal night. After dinner we went to a show called "Spotlight Bar".

Today we arrived in Honningsvag from where we reached the North Cape which, at more than 71 degrees North of the Equator is the most northerly point in Europe that is accessible by road. Honningsvag itself is the most northerly city in Europe (despite it's small population of around 2,400 it was declared a city in 1996).

First, a few photos of Honningsvag:

Here's one of Pat with the North Cape in the background.

This is the view from the North Cape. Unfortunately we had quite a cloudy/misty day.

Pat at the North Cape.

This structure was created from pictures drawn by seven children from different parts of the world and is intended to demonstrate the overcoming of frontiers in working together, friendship, hope and peace. The sculpture "Mother and Child" is by Eva Rybakken.

We are in Tromso now. Considering the latitude it is on, Tromso is relatively warm. This is as a result of the effect of the Gulf Stream. This allows trees to grow which wouldn't happen in other places as far north as this. When we arrived the city was shrouded in mist, but fortunately this had cleared up by late morning and we were treated to a sunny afternoon. This was a nice change as we hadn't had any proper sun during the last few days.

The strange shaped building in the first photo below is Tromso Cathedral which is one of the main tourist destinations in Tromso.

There were lots of wooden buildings in Tromso. The one at the farthest right in the next photo houses the Polar Museum which we visited and found very interesting. The exhibits were largely about the progression of hunting on the island of Svalbard and the quest to reach the North Pole. One section was devoted to the life of Roald Amundsen. I knew that he had beaten Robert Scott to the South Pole in 1911, but I wasn't aware of his many other incredible exploits in the Arctic. I also didn't know that he'd died in a plane crash in 1928 whilst flying on a rescue mission for the airship Italia. Amundsen disappeared in June 1928 and the search for his remains, which have still not been found, was called off in September 1928. A true hero!

The final photo for today is the Cathedral of Our Lady which is the Catholic Cathedral in Tromso and is the northernmost Catholic Cathedral in the world.

It has been a day at sea today. That's happen as well as I woke up this morning full of a cold and I've therefore spent most of the day in bed. Went for dinner this evening and then came straight back to our cabin, leaving Pat to spend the evening with Nick and Carol (I think they are going to the theatre again ... it's a motown night). So no photos today unfortunately. Hopefully I'll be better by the morning when we arrive in Olden. Pat has a hike planned for us all.

There are quite a few disgruntled passengers on board ship following our day in "Olden". The reason for this is that we never in fact reached Olden! There was another cruise ship already in port and the port authorities wouldn't let ours in. So we docked in Loen which is about 4 miles from where we should have been. This wouldn't have been so bad had our cruise line, Princess Cruises, warned people properly in advance that this was to be the case. Unfortunately they didn't and this meant that many people had made their own arrangements for trips from Olden and couldn't actually get there! (One passenger was making the very-valid point that his wife was in a wheelchair and there was therefore no way they could walk from the drop-off point to Olden and back). Princess Cruises were aware this was going to happen but seemed to have made no arrangements. They perhaps should have arranged shuttlebuses from Loen to Olden. I'm still full of a cold today and I was also not up to making the walk. So we just walked around the very small settlement of Loen and then got back on ship, as disappointed as many others.

Loen has a cable car and it would have been good to use it to see the magnificent scenery of the area. However, because there were so many who couldn't make the walk and decided to go up in the cable car, the queue was enormous. I checked with the cable car operator and she said that the queue to get on was about an hour and a half and we'd face the same wait to get down. Needless to say, we didn't bother.

Anyway, at least I had the opportunity of taking some photos of Loen and it's surroudings. You can see Loen itself in the first photo which I took from the balcony of our cabin.

I don't need say much about the Sognefjord as you can listen to a recording I made about it when I was around 14 years old (and before my voice broke!!). Sorry about the sound quality but that is what it was like in the days of cassette tape!

We docked in the correct place today!! As I was also feeling quite a bit better, this enabled us to go on a hike. I hesitate to say a long hike because, for Pat it would only be a short walk! I think it was about 5 miles.

The walk took us to Asafossen Waterfall (You might notice that our word "Foss" in England - such as "Janet's Foss" near Malham - comes from our viking invaders)

On the way to Asafossen, we walked alongside a lake called "Eidsvatnet". The Austrian philospher Wittgenstein lived in Skjolden for a while and lived in a hut on the lakeside. He wrote most of his major works whilst in the hut. You can see it in the photo below.

We also passed by this rock. But it's not just any old rock! It has a name! It is called Valbur Rock. It is Norway's biggest solid rock. My guess is that it has broken off from the cliffs above and rolled to the point where it is now.

Finally here are a couple of photos of Skjolden (the letters "Skj" are pronounced the same as "sh" in English. At least that's the Norwegian way. The Danes (who could also choose the viking life, of course) pronounce the Sk as in the English "Ski")

Another day at sea today. In the morning we went to a talk given by Simon Weston (famous from the Falklands War). It was a very emotional talk as, if you know Simon's story, you will be aware of the injuries he suffered and some part of what he's had to go through over the years in order to live as normal a life as possible. In the evening we dressed up in our formal wear for the last time.

And a less formal one from earlier in the day:

Sadly we are approaching the end of our journey now. Our last day before arriving back in England tomorrow was spent in Bruges, Belgium.

We docked at shortly after 9 a.m. in Zeebrugge and from there we caught a shuttlebus into Bruges and back out again. The weather was not great to start with but fortunately there were quite a few sunny spells whilst we were there.

Whilst in Bruges we treated ourselves to some scrumptious Belgian Waffles but this didn't stop me from having a final mid-afternoon indulgence in the restaurant once we were back on board.

All our suitcases are packed now ready to be left outside of our cabin and picked up during the course of the night. We are due to disembark in Southampton at 9.45 a.m. tomorrow morning. At least we will get an extra hour in bed tonight as the clocks will be going back.

So here are some photos I took whilst walking round the centre of Bruges this morning.

Today has felt like a very long day! Everything actually worked out quite smoothly though. We disembarked ship at around 9.45am, picked up our suitcases that were waiting for us in the bagging area and retrieved our car from the car park. The drive home also went without hassle and we got home about 5.30pm after stopping to do some shopping at the supermarket.

Now we can plan for our next holiday!!