Norway Cruise For Judith’s 40th birthday and our 8th wedding anniversary, we decided to try something a bit different, i.e. not a driving tour or the Alps/Rockies. After much discussion, we decided to try a cruise. However, not wanting to stray too far from our comfort zone (lakes and mountains), we decided to cruise to Norway, which has lots of nice scenery. Here’s how we got on.I’ll apologize in advance for the rather large number of photos in this gallery (about 80). It was a two week holiday and I took about 850 photos in total. I reckon well over a hundred of them are nice enough to be in this gallery and it’s been a bit of a struggle to limit myself to just the ones you see here.
Leaving Southampton Saturday – Judith on our terrace, watching Arcadia move away from its dock in Southampton.
Aurora Passing Aurora on our way out of Southampton. It's apparently a big deal when two P&O ships see each other, as there was much waving and honking of horns.
Portsmouth Passing the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.
Pilot Having cleared the Solent, the Southampton pilot is retrieved by his chums on their speedy orange boat. We'd be seeing a lot of these pilot boats as we navigated our way in and out of various Norwegian ports and fjords over the next couple of weeks.
North Sea Sunday – The first leg of our cruise is to cross the North Sea to Norway. Fortunately the weather is fantastic, so the roof over the main pool has been opened.
Art On the days when we don't have the opportunity to leave Arcadia, there's loads of stuff laid on to keep people occupied. This was the first of several art auction. For some pieces the bidding started at a tenner, for others it was well over a thousand quid.
Relaxing If you don't fancy participating in any of the organized activities, it's' nice enough just sitting (or standing) about watching the sea.I was really impressed at how stable Arcadia was throughout the cruise. We were lucky that there was little in he way of inclement weather, but even when the sea was choppy, there was virtually no perceptible movement on deck.
Terrace Judith on our terrace. This view will shortly be consigned to history as, later this year, Arcadia will be refitted to remove these lovely terraces by extending the upper decks to squeeze in 38 more cabins. One of the officers we spoke to thought it would make the back of Arcadia look like a “car ferry” and he’s probably right.
Stavanger Monday – Arriving in Stavanger, Arcadia is gently reversed into her berth. The thing about turning up to relatively small towns in a 183 foot tall cruise ship is that the decks are generally way higher than anything in town, so the best views of the surrounding area are generally from Arcadia itself. The white houses visible in the distance are part of Gamle Stavanger (Old Stavanger), which apparently contains the largest concentration of 18th century wooden houses in northern Europe.
Stavanger Berth Arcadia at its berth in Stavanger. From this angle you can clearly see the soon-to-be-removed terraces. The black clouds were a clue that they weather would shortly turn unpleasant.
Fountain A fountain on the Breiavatnet, which is a lake in the middle of Stavanger.
Statue An arty-type picture of a statue.
Cathedral The Domkirke cathedral. The original building, which was built in the 9th century, was destroyed by a fire in 1272 and replaced with this building, which is considered to be the best preserved medieval church in Norway.
Hospitality Norwegians are famed for their hospitality. Here's why.
Little and Large You turn your back for 10 minutes and someone goes and parks a scraggy little Italian cruise ship next to your lovely, big British cruise ship. Tcheeeeer.
And Larger Our first opportunity to stand next to Arcadia on the dock. This is a BIG ship. At over 900 feet long and grossing nearly 90,000 tonnes, Arcadia can only manage an average of 53 feet on a gallon of diesel, which is even marginally worse fuel consumption than Tom's big, fat Jag.
Art A piece from Arcadia's extensive art collection.
Geirangerfjord Tuesday – Arcadia left Stavanger on Monday evening and on Tuesday morning we awoke to the impressive sight of Geirangerfjord. Geirangerfjord is 16km long, 258 meters at its deepest and 500 meters wide at its narrowest. The mountains that line Geirangerfjord rise to 1,899 meters. It is a most impressive place indeed.
Ferry Due to the nature of the terrain, there are few roads here, so ferries are used extensively for travel between the towns and villages.
Geiranger Eventually we reach the town of Geiranger, which is at the end of Geirangerfjord. The town has just 300 permanent residents, but is host to around 160 cruise ships and 600,000 tourists every year.
Tender Because Geiranger has no dock, Arcadia weighs anchor in the middle of the fjord and lowers four tenders, which will be used to ferry passengers to and from the shore during the day.As we've got a suite, we've been given a priority embarkation card, which basically entitles us to jump the queue and get off and on ahead of anyone else that might be waiting. However, we're too scared to use it, so queue up with everyone else. Should there be a mutiny, I’m sure the people that have been using the priority embarkation cards will be the first over the side.
Mount Dalsnibba We've arranged to go on a tour to the top of Mount Dalsnibba, which is 1,500 meters tall and offers allegedly spectacular views of the surrounding scenery. Unfortunately for us there was a bit of a blizzard going on when we got there, so we saw bugger all.
Flydalsjuvet If you've ever seen a picture of Geirangerfjord in a holiday brochure (or anywhere else for that matter), it was almost certainly taken from the Flydalsjuvet viewpoint. The problem with being on a coach tour is that there are always 59 other people that also want to get that once-in-a-lifetime shot.
Flydalsjuvet Fortunately, if you can be bothered to walk 50 yards from the coach, you can get it. And, to be fair, 50 yards is further than most of the people on Arcadia were able to travel without some sort of assistance, be it a walking stick, Zimmer frame or wheelchair. I think it would be conservative to estimate Arcadia's passengers to average around 70-years-of-age. Obviously this meant that I fit in perfectly.Notice that two other cruise ships have turned up in the time its taken us to get up this hill. Another one would arrive shortly after this photo was taken.
Norwegian Judith gets to meet a real, live Norwegian. The sign on that shop is starting to make more sense now.
Arcadia Judith with Arcadia in the background.
Arcadia Arcadia moored in Geirangerfjord.
Seven Sisters Traveling past the Seven Sisters waterfalls on the way out of Geirangerfjord.
Geirangerfjord And finally the sun came out and the magnificent scenery became extra magnificent.
Geirangerfjord Looking at Geirangerfjord from our terrace.
Fjords View A miscellaneous view on the way out of Geirangerfjord. Very Tony Hart.
Evening Sun This picture was taken at around 21:30 and you can see from the position of the sun in the sky that it's still going to be a while before sunset. We're not that far north, but already the sun's not going down until well after 23:00.
Pilot The speedy orange boat comes to retrieve the Geirangerfjord pilot as we head back out into the Norwegian Sea.
Clouds Clouds and a mountain form an interesting pattern. This might make good desktop wallpaper.
Trondheim Wednesday – Arrived in Trondheim. This is a view of the colorful warehouses (for which Trondheim is apparently famous) on the Nidelva River, with the Nidaros cathedral in the background.
Nidaros Cathedral A nice view of the Nidaros cathedral. And the sun’s come out again, although it won’t be for long.
Nidaros Cathedral Another nice view of the Nidaros cathedral.Shortly after this photo was taken it started to rain a lot, so we decided to call it a day and returned to Arcadia.
Hollandsfjord Thursday – We're cruising the fjords today, so no chance to leave Arcadia. That's the something-or-other glacier in the background, but the weather was so rubbish at this point that there's really not very much to see at all. I’m sure it’s probably lovely in the sunshine though.
Fjords A miscellaneous view of the fjords that we were spending the day cruising through. You can see that the weather in the east (on the left side of the picture) is not looking anywhere near as nice as the weather in the west. As we're heading north, it’s tricky to say how it’s going to turn out.
Fjords Another miscellaneous fjord view.
Midnight Sun As we crossed into the Arctic Circle at 05:28 this morning, we're now cruising in the land of the midnight sun. This picture was taken at 00:15 on Friday morning. We've now left the fjords behind and we're heading north across the Norwegian Sea to the islands of Svalbard.We spent all day Friday at sea. It was heavily overcast, raining and very cold all day (hence the reason I didn't bother to take any photos).
Svalbard Saturday – We've arrived in Svalbard and the weather is fantastic, which is apparently unusual. The prevailing wind is very cold on deck, but if you can find a sheltered spot the sunshine is very warm.Svalbard is a large and dispersed group of islands about the size of Iceland, i.e. quite big. We're visiting the island of Spitsbergen and are moored in Kings Bay, a short distance from the Norwegian Arctic research station Ny Alesund, which is located at latitude 79.6 degrees north, about 600 miles from the North Pole.
Ny Alesund This is the “town” of Ny Alesund. It's home to a population of around 300. So the 2,100 people that have just turfed off Arcadia should blend in almost completely unnoticed then.
Post Office This is the most northerly post office in the world. There was a bit of a queue, so we didn't bother to try to post anything.
Flowers These little pink flowers grow all over the place. No idea what they are.
Arctic Tern There are lots of Arctic Tern around and they nest pretty much anywhere they feel like, which is often right by the paths and roads. And they take great exception to anyone straying too close, like this twitcher fellow. You’d think he’d know better.
Polar Bears There is a large polar bear population on Svalbard and the locals apparently don't leave Ny Alesund unarmed. We did see a couple of polar bears, but we were on Arcadia and they were a very long way off, so I couldn't get any sort of a decent photo.
Reindeer The reindeer were a bit more accommodating.
Arcadia Arcadia moored in Kings Bay.
Arcadia The view of Arcadia from the tender (I took this photo through the slightly scratched window, which is why there's a bit of distortion).
Promenade Back on Arcadia, Judith takes a stroll on the Promenade Deck and admires the view.
Southward Bound We leave Svalbard in the early evening and finally start heading south. This picture was taken just before midnight.
Svalbard We sail along the coast of Svalbard for several hours. You can just make out the mountains on the horizon. This picture was also taken at around midnight.
Whales Just after taking the previous picture I managed to snap this pilot whale. There seemed to be quite a lot of whales about, but they only surface for a couple of seconds, so you have to be fairly patient to actually get a photo of one.
Tromso Sunday – Another day at sea, re-crossing the Norwegian Sea back to the mainland. Nothing to see apart from sea all day, so I didn't take any photos.Monday – Arrived in Tromso. We first came here ten years ago for Judith's 30th birthday. If you’re interested, you can see those photos here.
Cathedral We walked from Arcadia, over the Tromsobrua Bridge (which you can just see in the background on the left), to the Tromso Cathedral.
Cathedral An arty picture of the roof line of the cathedral.
Storsteinen Having had a look at the cathedral, we walked to the Fjellheisen cable car, which goes to Storsteinen, 421m above Tromso.
Storsteinen Judith at Storsteinen.
Tromso Looking back towards Tromso from Storsteinen. You can just see Arcadia to the right of Judith's head, so you can see how far we've walked to get here.
Beer Having descended Storsteinen, crossed back into Tromso and popped into the Polaria Center (which was pretty rubbish, apart from their Svalbard presentation), on the way back to Arcadia we stopped for a pint in Olhallen, which is the oldest pub in Tromso and next to the Mack brewery. The beer was nice enough, but at £5.70-a-pint, one pint each was pretty much all we could afford. There was unfortunately also no time to do the brewery tour. Doh!
Botanical Garden On the way back to Arcadia, we spent half-an-hour walking round the Botanical Garden, which is apparently the world's most northerly botanical garden (there are a lot of “the world's most northerly” things round here). I took lots of lovely pictures of the flowers, but I didn't want to fill up this gallery with them as there are already more than enough photos in here as it is.
Botanical Garden A view across one of the ponds in the Botanical Garden.
Sea Tuesday – Another full day at sea. As we progress further south the sun gets progressively closer to the horizon each evening. The object on the horizon is an oil rig.
Sunset Finally, at around midnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, we see our first sunset for a week. The sun was only down for a couple of hours though, so it didn’t get very dark at all.
Andalsnes Wednesday – Arcadia is moored in the Romsdal Fjord, next to the picturesque city of Andalsnes. I'm not sure why it's classed as a city as only 3,000 people live here, but there you go. We're booked onto a rail-and-coach tour, which will take us to see the sights of the Romsdal Valley.
Trollvegen The first stop is Trollvegen - the Troll Wall. It's the highest vertical mountain wall in Europe. From where I'm standing it's 5,500 feet (just over 1 mile!) to the top and the top 3,000 feet are vertical. Apparently it's a dead tricky climb and it's also a popular location for base jumping. It also makes a pretty rubbish photo as there's absolutely no way to judge the scale.
Train Having completed the coach bit of our tour, we've now got to switch to a train for the return leg back to Andalsnes.
Romsdal Valley A view of the Romsdal Valley from the train.
Tender Back in Andalsnes, we decide to pop back to Arcadia for some lunch (as I'm feeling too tight to spend twenty quid on a couple of beers and a sandwich in town). This is a picture of the inside of one of the tenders.
Arcadia A view of Arcadia on the Romsdal Fjord.
Beach Having filled up with free lunch, we go back on shore in the afternoon. This deserted beach was about a mile out of town.
Sunset Arcadia was scheduled to leave Andalsnes at around 18:00. However, when they were winding the anchor in, the anchor chain got twisted and jammed between a witch and a spinster (or something like that). It took five hours to unjam it, so we didn't actually leave until just after 23:00. This photo was taken as we were leaving.
Bergen Thursday – Arcadia about to pass under a suspension bridge on the way into Bergen. I think it’s the Askoy Bridge, but I wouldn’t swear to that.
Bergen Because we left Andalsnes so late last night, we arrived four hours late in Bergen. This had two unfortunate consequences. Firstly, all of the tours were canceled, so we didn't get to do the city tour we'd booked. Secondly, we would only have three hours on shore. As Arcadia had moored in a restricted commercial dock, passengers weren't permitted to simply walk the 400 meters out of the dock into Bergen, so there were several hundred people queuing for the 1km coach ride. Given the limited time ashore, I couldn't be bothered with the queuing, so I spent the afternoon relaxing on Arcadia. However, Judith was feeling a bit more patient, so she waited for a coach. Consequently this was the only photo I got of the sights of Bergen.
Seagull We’re on the way out of Bergen now. Seagulls seem to quite enjoy flying behind ships, which is handy as it makes them relatively easy to photograph.
Seagull Nice. I think this might even be the same seagull as was in the last photo.
Sunset Back out at sea and we’re treated to another super sunset.
North Sea Friday – Our final cruise day and a full day at sea, retracing our path across the North Sea. I hadn’t realized quite how many oil rigs there are out here. We entered the Channel at around midnight in the first proper darkness that we’d seen for almost a fortnight.
Home Saturday – It’s 07:30 and we’re back where it all started two weeks ago. Arcadia is a nightmare this morning, with 2,100 passengers desperate to start their journeys home (we’ve all been turfed out of our cabins and everything is closed, so there’s nothing to do but mill about, and the crew are largely busy preparing for the next cruise, which starts boarding passengers in four hours). Disembarkation starts at 08:40 and everyone’s been allocated a timed slot to try to ensure a relatively orderly departure, but this means that some people won’t get ashore until well after 10:00. Fortunately for us, having a suite brings a priority disembarkation pass, so we can leave whenever we want and we’re amongst the first group off Arcadia at 08:40. Our bags are already waiting for us in the main terminal building and it’s a short walk to pick up the car. We arrive home just over an hour later.On the whole I would say that my first cruising experience has been more enjoyable than I expected and I would highly recommend that everyone try to give it a go at least once. I particularly enjoyed our spacious suite and terrace and that Arcadia is a child-free ship (although swapping children for 2,000 really old people is, at best, a marginal benefit). I think it’s likely that I will cruise again at some point, although when and, probably more importantly, where, I have no idea.