A change from our motorhome travels – we took a cruise from Southampton to the Norwegian fjords for eight days from August 28th returning September 4th……..

There are more details of the ship, the food and the on-board entertainment further down but first – the main attractions – the four destinations (click on any image to enlarge or to start videos) …………….

Stavanger

Stavanger is a major city but features a very attractive old town full of wooden buildings all within easy walking distance of the dock.

Flam

Flam is a small village at the end of a long fjord. The ship started the journey into the fjord at around 2am so by sunrise we were getting close to the dock. we were on deck at 6am to capture some of the amazing scenery.

We arrived at Flam at approx. 7am:

The dock was next to the railway station. We took the train along the famous scenic route into the Myrdal Mountains stopping briefly at the Kjosfossen waterfall

Back at Flam there was time for a walk around the small harbour before the ship set sail.

Olden

On the following day the ship took another 4 hour pre-sunrise cruise to the far end of another long fjord and docked at the tiny town of Olden. Unfortunately we were surrounded by fog and suspected that we wouldn’t be seeng much that day but by late morning the fog started to clear revealing some amazing scenery.

Olden is known as the ‘Gateway to the Glaciers’ so we took a local bus tour up the valley to a viewpoint offering some spectacular views of the Jostedalsbreen glacier.

The ship set sail from Olden and this time we were able to just watch from our balcony the amazing sights roll past as we made our slow journey back up the fjord.

Bergen

Our last port of call was Bergen, the second largest city in Norway. It has a very busy harbour with ships from the oil, freight, fishing and, of course, the tourist industries. We walked through the city spotting plenty of attractive old wooden buildings amongst the more modern ones and took the funicular up Mount Floyen for some spectacular views back down over the city.

Around the quays near the impressive (but expensive) fish market is an area known as Bryggen, a World Heritage Site. It is a collection of preserved wooden buildings built by the Hanseatic League of German traders who were very active in the area with some of the construction dating back to the 12th century.

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The Ship

The ship is huge – although nowhere near the largest cruise liner afloat – it came into service in 2015 and houses 4900 passengers at full capacity! Click on any image to expand………

The North Star is a glass capsule that gets lifted way above the deck and then sideways directly over the sea – you can get some spectacular views of the ship in motion …….

The Food (and Drink) !

In addition to the (pretty good) main dining rooms we paid extra on two evenings to use some of the speciality restaurants – Chops Grill (a steak house) and Wonderland, a ‘Alice in Wonderland’ styled location serving food prepared in very unusual ways (shades of Heston Blumenthal!).

At Wonderland they gave us all four desserts including this chocolate globe …

… and then there were the industrial robots serving drinks in the Bionic Bar:

Place your hands on the panel underneath this chandelier and the lights will flash in sync with your heartbeat!

Entertainment

There was plenty of music of all genres being performed at the many venues on the ship. Here’s a few of the performances we saw: