Norway cruise

We sailed from Southampton, visited Stavanger, Tromso, Flaam and Voss, Alesund, Olden, Trondheim, the Lofoten Islands and the Port for the North Cape and Bergen. We were sailing to land of the Midnight Sun.

It sounds fantastic, but the weather was definitely not playing the game! For most of our cruise there were heavy clouds overhead and it was quite cold too. We heard of a lady who had done this cruise the year before, when the weather was completely different, a lot hotter and sunny. She had taken a variety of warm clothes, which she didn’t need. Unfortunately for her this time she had only taken summer clothes!

There were lectures given in the theatre each day about the next port of call. We went to one for both Olden and Alesund. The lecturer played Grieg piano concerto which does make me think of mountains, lakes and rivers.

I am not sure I took much in from these, as I had recently lost my sister, and I was devastated, she was not only my sister but my best friend as well. She didn’t travel, as her husband wouldn’t go abroad, so I would pick post cards from the places I had been and tell all about it. It felt wrong not to be able to give her all details about this holiday, which I am sure she would been keen to hear all about!

My husband, who loves trains, wanted this itinerary, as it included the Flaam railway. We booked an excursion which included the train journey, high in the mountains with the snow still laying around. The sun shone that day. We took two different trains and a beautiful coach ride through some lovely, if worrying, scenery. The roads weren’t very wide, and the coach appeared on a knife edge to go around some corners. We had lunch at a big hotel in Voss, overlooking a wide green space.

We travelled up to the North Cape but didn’t do the walk to the promontory. We did see lots of different waterfalls when going on various excursions.

Stavanger was a picturesque little place with little white houses with red roofs, all laid out in a random way. We took loads of photographs between us, one around midnight, the light was slightly less bright than normal daylight.

We did visit several of the ports on our list. They were varied in what they offered. But sometimes we didn’t leave the ships as the weather wasn’t at all inviting. As other people seemed to think the same way, this did mean the ship was very full at lunchtime, when everyone was trying to find somewhere to sit. It meant sharing a space with other people, not always a happy process!

Our last port of call before we returned to Southampton was Bergen, which has a reputation for being one of the wettest places on earth. We heard that it was raining there, and a tender was required to get into the port, so we decided to stay on board!

I had heard such a lot about Norway’s scenery, but I was a bit disappointed, as it seemed to be much the same everywhere we went. This may been because we were on a larger ship which couldn’t reach some of the more remote valleys.