The trip in general did exactly what it said on the tin. The ship arrived in port every morning, getting on and off was very efficient with no queues (other than the lifts) so that was a very good experience.
It was good to get off the ship each day, the Norwegian ports were quaint, but much of a muchness. The trips are important because there isn’t a lot to do in the towns and they are expensive, especially the bars. If you want to get to see the waterfalls and mountains you need to do the excursions.
Stavangar
The general view of cruise ship excursions is that you can buy them cheaper locally, through something like Tripadvisor or Trustpilot. This may work in the Med or the Caribbean but it wasn’t the case with Norway as there wasn’t much competition amongst the providers, presumably due to a lack of cruise ships, so you might as well buy it through P&O or whoever you go with.
Once of the problem with the excursions is there are so many options in the brochure it is difficult so work out what you want to do, part of the problem is the tours in each town are quite similar, boat trip, trek, kayaking or coach ride so here is a quick summary of what we did:
Stavanger, we did the cruise up the Fjords to Pulpit Rock, it was a very pleasant afternoon out but take some sarnies, there is nothing on the boat. The trip went up close and personal with the edges of the fjords and ticked that box really well. There was a trek up to Pulpit Rock that would have been spectacular but was expensive and 9 hour return trip.
Aalesund
We climbed Sugar Lump Mountain, which included a coach transfer. The mountain was actually only about 10 minutes away, so a group could walk there, or 4 people might be better off getting a cab. The walk was quite tough and would have been a lot tougher in the rain.
There wasn’t much else to do in the town, so we spent £38 on the hop on hop off bus, which provided the proof that there was nothing else to do and we fell asleep on the exciting tour!
Olden
This is a special cruise liner terminal built in a remote Fjord and is the most spectacular part of the cruise. We did the cable car up the mountain and trekked around the top in the morning and it was spectacular with views of the fjords, especially if you don’t do winter sports and haven’t been on the top of mountains. In the afternoon we did another coach trip and trek to the glacier, this was also very spectacular and set us up for a few beers later !
Haugesund
Is the final stop and to be honest we were wondering what else there was to do. The only thing we hadn’t done was kayaking and it felt like we were doing it for the sake of it, but we were saved by a bad weather forecast out to sea, so our stop was curtailed which was just enough time for a wander around, have a Costa coffee, meet out chums and have a very expensive pint in the sun.
Then back to Southampton, in a cold grey North Sea mist, which meant that everyone sat inside and filled up all the chairs, or in many cases, took the opportunity to eat more in the buffet or drink more in the pub.
Summary
So, in summary, the cruise was exactly what we expected, the bad bits were what we expected, and the good bits were also what we expected. It was a great way to see Norway and we chose a standard low cost option, and we got what we paid for, so no complaints.
We need to age another 10 years before we do the next one, but there is also the possibility that there wont be a next one anytime soon !
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