We’ll quite often visit World War II ruins or museums when we travel and this turned out to be a great one, but I will say that if you’re planning on visiting – if, like us, you’re visiting La Rochelle on a cruise, for instance – then try to get here early. We weren’t the first ones through the door but we were probably in the first five and by the time we left there was a small queue backed up trying to enter. It’s a former World War II bunker so it’s compact with thick concrete walls. It can get a little crowded in there if it’s popular, and if you should be visiting at the same time as inconsiderate people who won’t wait for others to leave a room before trying to get into them, or people who are oblivious to people trying to get past while they block entrances and narrow corridors, then you will need to engage Maximum Patience mode unless you fancy starting a potential international incident.

La Rochelle was occupied by German forces in 1940 and it wasn’t long before they’d set up a submarine base to attack allied forces and wanted some protection for their officers in case the allied forces felt like retaliating. To this end, a couple of buildings adjoining the Hôtel des Étrangers, which had already been commandeered for the German Navy, were demolished to make way for a bunker on top of which an extension of the hotel was rebuilt to conceal it. The bunker contained offices, rooms for admirals, a bar, and bunk space for 62 officers. Despite German fears, the bunker was not actually needed as allied bombing restricted itself to the submarine enclosures and the airfield, leaving the historic areas of La Rochelle alone. Which was nice of them, as it’s rather lovely.

Following the war, the bunker entrances were sealed up – there had only been access from within the hotel – and over time it was forgotten about, until, in 1982, a property developer purchased the hotel, discovered the labyrinth of concrete rooms, and made plans to use them as cellars for the private apartments being constructed above. Luckily for everyone involved, a local working with the tourist board heard about this and set about securing its purchase separately in order to house a museum of objects and information from World War II. A few changes of hands later, and now, since 2013, the museum has been opened to the public in its current form.

Today, if you visit the La Rochelle Bunker Museum then you’ll find steps leading down to narrow, concrete-walled corridors and rooms all filled with bits of history about the bunker while it was in use by the German Navy, and about local wartime resistance in La Rochelle, including a reasonable bit on Léonce Vieljeux, former army colonel who was mayor of La Rochelle early in the occupation and could certainly be said to be somewhat obstructionist in his dealings with the Germans, if not obviously resistant at first. He didn’t meet with a happy end, however.

The remainder of this write-up will simply be a few of the many photos taken while visiting this excellent La Rochelle museum. It’s absolutely worth a visit if you’re in the city because there’s a wealth of information in pictures, notes, videos, and objects, all giving a good feel for what life was like in this part of France for both the locals and the occupiers. And it’s a delightfully quirky building too. Bonus.

In the next post in this 2025 MSC Virtuosa cruise series we engage in a little more exploration of La Rochelle’s waterfront area before making a return visit to La Belle Du Gabut after seven years.

With the first scheduled port of call on our 2025 France and Spain cruise on MSC Virtuosa being La Rochelle, this time we had more of a chance to plan our day better. We’d booked this cruise late and were trying to do this one on the cheap anyway, so excursions weren’t really considered. Instead, we noticed that a place we’d really enjoyed drinking at outside in the sunshine was still open (with the pandemic occurring in the intervening years this hadn’t been a given) and there was a museum that felt like it would be the sort of thing we’d like to see.

MSC Virtuosa is a big ship and the cruise port of La Rochelle requires you to get on shuttle buses to get outside it, or get into La Rochelle itself. This meant that we were determined to get off as early as possible for this day in the French city as the thought of the queues, given previous experience years earlier on a considerably smaller vessel, filled us with dread.

We timed it perfectly (it would be a different matter when coming back), and were off the ship and straight onto a bus with no waiting around at all. Twenty minutes after that we were in La Rochelle far earlier than we’d expected, leaving us with a fair bit of time to kill before the museum we wanted to visit opened up. As the bus drop-off and pick-up point was right at the entrance to Saint Louis Cathedral we started off with a look inside. We’re not religious people but we do like history and architecture.

Although the church is listed as a national monument, it’s a building with not a lot of history and rather basic neo-classical architecture. The design for the cathedral was made in the late seventeenth century but building work only began in 1742 and the place was consecrated in 1784 despite not being completed. Art on the ceiling of the cathedral’s cupola was the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a painter and local. It’s more than nice enough for a short look around but with just a tower on the southern side of the cathedral having a connection to Huguenots and sieges – and we didn’t notice that until after this visit – there’s not a lot else to really say about it.

Stepping back out of the cathedral on a warm but overcast day in La Rochelle, we then pretty much picked random roads if the maps on our phones indicated there might be a building of interest down them or if we could see architecture that looked like it might be photo-worthy. I did like the warm-toned stone and prevalence of architectural arcades in La Rochelle.

There were references to La Rochelle’s unfortunate history of a slave trade power in the form of street art and a museum dedicated to the subject. This wasn’t the museum we wanted to visit, though.

We passed the entrance to another church as we started to wind our way back to where we really wanted to be. This is a church of the main protestant body in France.

Next door to the church in the photo above there was an eighteenth century courtyard garden, the Cloister Of The White Ladies. It was very peaceful and pretty in there, and on a hot day it looked like it would probably be very popular with locals wanting to get some shade and quiet time. The church and convent gardens had originally been built by Franciscan monks with the protestant Christian body taking over and rebuilding it after the original structure had burned down in 1705.

We’d finally eaten up enough time to complete the slow stroll towards where we’d been planning to visit all along and in the next post we visit the La Rochelle Bunker Museum.

This first post will look at the first two days on MSC Virtuosa as that takes in the embarkation and the first sea day, and as your eyeballs will have already transmitted details of the title of this post to your brain you’ll already ascertain that we were heading towards France.

Wanting to avoid the worst of the crowds that seem to think that if they’re not on the ship as soon as it’s possible for the first person to board then they’re being ripped off by the cruise line somehow, we left it until later than we needed to head over to Southampton, park up, and get onto Virtuosa. This meant we barely stopped moving through an empty departure hall and security screening before stepping on the ship. Lovely.

The LED ceiling on Virtuosa is actually quite a fun little feature but we’re not really fans of the UK flag these days as its meaning has been adopted and abused by a minority of angry, penis-free racists. Given our one previous weekender cruise on Virtuosa where some right-wing, gammon-flavoured ex-squaddie threatened to punch me once he realised we didn’t share his opinions on, well, anything, the imagery of the national flags of the UK and England are now rather unsavoury in general, and unpleasant to us in particular on this ship.

Getting aboard later than necessary meant that our room was already accessible to us so we headed there to drop off and unpack our hand luggage and have a quick freshen-up before exploring. We’d booked a cabin with a larger balcony than normal for this class of ship because we are fond of large balconies. The cabin was a nice space, although the bed being so close to the wardrobe was a pain at times.

Our cabin location was close to our muster station so when the time came around for everyone to watch the safety video in their room, dial the number to say they’d done so, then head to the muster station to scan their cards, we were first to do so. The thought of fighting through the crowds back to our room to wait until the bars would open again – about 45 minutes – was not one we wanted to entertain so we found a space in the champagne bar to kill time. While perusing the menu, we realised that glasses of champagne were within the allowed price range of our premium drinks package (at the time; this may have changed now). Champagne would become our go-to drink on this MSC cruise.

MSC Cruises do fixed dining, and our experience a year before had been, I suppose, entertaining, as the couple of women sharing with us were absolutely shit-faced during dinner, one even trying to eat her hair with her fork at one point. We were on a table for eight this time, which initially filled us with dread, but it turned out to be just fine with good waiting staff and good company across the week aboard.

The champagne bar was too busy for us to find a seat so we returned to L’Atelier, a spot we’d enjoyed before, to see if the cocktails were as good as we remembered. They were, but the location and ambience of the venue didn’t feel quite so enjoyable for some reason. After a few drinks and watching the LED screen show we ended up spending a lot of time in the The Attic, Virtuosa’s late-night club, only deciding to head to bed at some unearthly hour when the woman next to us projectile-vomited all over the deck.

Our previous cruise on MSC Virtuosa had been a party cruise, filled with party people (or drunkards, if you prefer), and not really the sort of thing that encouraged me to wander around with my camera. The different dynamic of this cruise and a sea day to start this week aboard meant that I could get back to taking a few photos. The MSC ships do have some very visually appealing sights on them with a lot of bling on show, although, perversely, some of the interior locations, despite being covered with mirrors and crystals and lights on every surface, could also feel a little dark and claustrophobic in areas. Adding crowds to the mix wouldn’t help there, of course, although we never really thought that the ship was unbearably full.

Virtuosa has water slides for the water sliders out there, although the rain had started to fall as we were wandering around them so it was as wet outside the tubes as within. We are not water sliders.

The indoor pool did get quite busy during the day and was popular with families. We’d thought we’d been clever in booking this cruise a couple of weeks before term time in England had finished, reasoning that there wouldn’t be any kids aboard and taking advantage of the cruise being somewhat cheaper than waiting a fortnight. This had been the whole basis for us booking this cruise at all as we’d vowed not to get aboard this ship out of the UK again following the year before’s experience, but a bargain is a bargain. Scottish and Irish schools had broken up a week or two earlier than their counterparts in England, though, and families there had made the same determination as us. In truth, the kids aboard were well-behaved and not overly noisy. It did mean I was a bit more cautious about where I pointed my camera, though.

The decks on musically-named Virtuosa are named for composers, appropriately enough, and each floor featured artwork accordingly.

Reading, drinking, and relaxing took up most of the rest of the day, and the evening followed a very typical pattern for us on a cruise ship. This started with dinner, and it was another very nice one.

We’d tried to head straight to the champagne bar again after dinner but there were no seats to be had so we hunted around for alternatives. Virtuosa has a robot bar which is a nice gimmick but not for us. The drinks are expensive, even if you get to keep the glass, but that just means that after one drink you’ve got to take the glass back to your room if you don’t want to carry it around with you for the rest of the evening and hope you don’t forget it somewhere.

We tried L’Atelier again but it just didn’t feel as good there as we’d remembered so we chanced the champagne bar once more. The only seats we could find were at the bar. We don’t really like sitting at the bar because the seats are never that comfortable and you’re often in the way of people trying to place orders so there’s a risk that people are standing over your shoulder, leaning over you, reaching past you, talking through you, etc. However, our seats were tucked around one side of the bar so that issue wasn’t one. In fact, this turned out to be the place to sit and we’d start coming for these seats on purpose as the cruise progressed. The reason was two-fold: firstly, we’d already taken advantage of MSC’s status-match policy on our first cruise with them, matching our existing Elite Princess loyalty level to get us up to Diamond with MSC; secondly, we’d paid for the premium drinks package. This combination of factors – black cards signifying (wrongly) that we were long-time, loyal MSC people, plus an indicator that we were on the top tier package for drinks – was enough to make us stand out amongst most other people. The staff got to quickly realise we liked champagne and they didn’t need to ask or even put us in a queue of other drinkers when making rounds. We were just seen to. I won’t lie: it felt great. There’s something wonderful about seeing a group of people having their orders taken down on tablets by staff, then those staff turning to start making those drinks, glance over at us, raise their eyebrows, get a nod, then pour us glasses before everyone else.

The next post in this series finds us at our first port of call, La Rochelle, a lovely French city we’d visited unexpectedly a few years earlier, and we’d start with a walk around and past two churches in the city until a museum we wanted to take a look at opened.

Within the New Forest there is the village of Lyndhurst and in early 2011 we stopped off for a short visit. For some reason lost to the mists of time. Possibly just because we saw the sign to it and thought “Huh, we’ve not been there in a while.” And, as far as I can remember, we’ve not been there since, and that’s mostly because it’s a bit out of the way. And small. Villages, eh?

In this post I’m simply going to share some photos of the church in Lyndhurst, St Michael and All Angels. We didn’t go in, and I’d guess that’s because it wasn’t open at the time as we are fond of nosing around old buildings if we get a chance. The church dates from the late nineteenth century, replacing a smaller one from the early eighteenth century, although some form of church has apparently stood on or around this spot since the 1200s.

The minor claim to fame for this church, and for Lyndhurst in general, is that the grave of Alice Hargreaves is there. Before marrying the English cricketer, Reginald Hargreaves, she was Alice Liddell, sharing a name with Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, after whom some scholars believe the character was named. Some don’t, though, because scholars are argumentative and opinionated. Whether the naming is deliberate or coincidental, Lyndhurst has definitely decided that a connection is good for tourism as there’s a White Rabbit pub in the village and, at the time of our visit, the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms. This is now apparently closed, though.

We reached the northernmost point of our cruise at Alta, spending around 36 hours in total there, and in the first post from our time docked at the town we headed off on an excursion to the Igloo Hotel. No, we didn’t go and stare at huskies’ backsides while being pulled in sleds like everyone else seems to do. No, it’s not an industrial freezer masquerading as a quirky bar. This was one of those places that’s built every year from ice blocks and has artists in to carve designs for rooms. Just beautiful, and we saw reindeer too.

We continued our first day in Alta with a look around the Northern Lights Cathedral followed by a night-time excursion to see the Northern Lights. Spoiler: there were no Northern Lights. But we loved the experience of sitting out in the snow near fjord waters and fires for several hours and we’d definitely do that again.

Our sailaway from Alta the following day passed by some of the most incredibly gorgeous landscapes we’ve ever seen. Norway knows how to do landscapes, and under blue skies the snow just glistened with a heavenly chill. In that same post there are details of our speciality dining at Saffron on Ambassador Ambience and, to make up for the night before, a sighting of the Northern Lights from the ship instead.

A short post comes next as we enjoy a relaxing day at sea on Ambience.

Although it wasn’t supposed to be, Leknes on the Lofoten Islands ended up being our final Norwegian port of call on this cruise. Weather caused a cancellation of the next day’s planned stop and also shortened our time ashore here so this was a case of us getting dropped off in town then walking through the cold, drizzly landscape back to port. Some gorgeous views still to be had.

The cancelled Norwegian port in order to get us ahead of the weather front gave us two sea days on Ambience before our final port of call in the UK, and I took advantage of this to wander around the ship for some photos as well as catching an ice carving demonstration and getting more sights of the Northern Lights after dark.

There was some traffic accident excitement just getting to Crathes Castle and gardens on the tour we took when we arrived at Aberdeen in Scotland for what was the final stop on this cruise itinerary.

And to finish off the cruise just a few photos from the final sea day and arrival at London Tilbury along the Thames, including some useful information for anyone who thinks they can ignore instructions about disembarkation times.

If you haven’t read the complete series of travelogues regarding this cruise into the Arctic Circle on Ambassador Ambience then don’t worry because there’s not a court of law in the world that would hold you accountable for that action, but if you are interested and would like to see a map of the places covered as well then you can find all the posts here: Cruise – Ambience 2025.

The next set of cruise write-ups will start appearing on the site soon and those will be from the week-long trip down to France and Spain we had on MSC Virtuosa in July last year. We had low expectations of that cruise following the awful weekender that had been our only prior experience with this line and ship, but it turned out to be utterly different and absolutely wonderful. Next year we’ll be on a sister ship in the fleet, Meraviglia, for two weeks.

I should get a few of those posts from the new cruise travelogues series published before we head off on our next cruise which leaves Southampton on Halloween for a fortnight in the Canaries, but the next of these blog/newsletter-style posts will be the post-cruise thoughts about that Canary Island experience as that’s the way I do things in these parts. One thing we still don’t know about that cruise is what’s going to happen on the 11th November. At the moment, the itinerary has us docking in A Coruña (which we were looking forward to as it’s lovely there) but we know that Spain is staging a national strike on that day. Even if there are enough port workers to allow us to dock that won’t mean that there will be anything open. P&O have been quiet on this despite a number of people who are going on the cruise mentioning that they’ve sent emails to ask about it. If I were a betting man then I’d guess they’ll pretend it’s a big surprise to them and just announce the port cancellation when we’re aboard, then let everyone claim on their travel insurance for a missed port. I’d much rather that they gave us an alternative such as Lisbon or Porto as they’re on the way back otherwise we’re going to be finishing with four sea days. But we’ll still be on a cruise, so it won’t be all bad. Anyway, we shall see what happens.

The last day on a cruise is always interspersed with jarring reminders that the realities of life are about to take over once more. The disembarkation schedule is one such reminder. We’d need to be hanging around the Observatory given our cabin location, forward on Deck 10. More on the disembarkation at the end of this write-up, because we laughed. What we did like about this note of impending departure, though, was the voyage summary and the breakdown of where all the members of the crew came from.

Another reminder of your cruise coming to an end is the appearance of suitcases outside cabins, awaiting collection so they can be delivered ashore and picked up by you after disembarking. We sometimes hear people making a big deal about needing time to pack to go home and it puzzles us as we’re of the mindset that everything is going to need to be washed anyway so just wrap up the souvenirs and anything vaguely fragile, then stuff the cases with everything from the closets, drawers, and wherever you’ve been storing your dirty underwear (one of the cases does this job for us). If this takes us more then four minutes then we get concerned. It’s not a happy task, and the cabin always looks so cold and bare immediately afterwards, but it is a quick task.

Our cruise was finishing with some lovely bright weather. It wasn’t super-warm as we were just in April at this point, but the views were lovely.

We joined forces with another couple for trivia for the first time and we won comfortably, then engaged in another spot of prize-swapping with other cruisers to give away our bottle of fizz again and ensure we ended up with one of every type of keepsake prize that Ambassador gave out. Were they good prizes? No. But that’s half the joy of them.

Our last dinner aboard Ambience was spent in the company of our irregular dining companions. Irregular in the sense that I’m not sure we sat with them for dinner for two nights in a row at any point of this cruise as one or both of us couples seemed to have other plans. We had four courses on this final evening in the main dining room. We usually have a starter or a soup or salad, but not both, but as we were sharing a table and our fellow diners had ordered from each course it felt only polite and sensible to do the same so we weren’t sitting there and twiddling our thumbs while they ate.

We couldn’t afford to go crazy in the nightclub until the early hours as I’d be driving home the following morning, but we spent some time there, had a farewell drink or two, enjoyed the music, then made our way to bed for the last time on Ambience. Even the polar bear in one of the elevators seemed to be sadly saying goodbye to us.

We needed to be out of our cabin considerably earlier than our scheduled disembarkation time. Cruise lines like to get a head-start on cleaning those rooms ahead of a new batch of passengers and you can hardly blame them for that. The same people who moan that they’re being turfed out of their rooms so early will generally be the same people who moan that their rooms aren’t ready on embarkation when they’ve boarded at the first possible moment too.

One advantage to this early start for us was that we got to see some of the early morning approach to London Tilbury cruise port along the Thames. It’s a river that you associate with skyscrapers and bascule bridges and people selling internal organs to pay for a glass of wine at tables outside bars alongside it, but this far to the east there’s far more of a river cruise through the countryside air to it all. Not that we’ve done a river cruise through the countryside. We don’t think we’re river cruise people.

And then Tilbury cruise port came into view and the wait began for our disembarkation at the end of a superb cruise with Ambassador Cruise Line. For a little more information about Tilbury cruise port and a few more photos of it, the ship, and the Thames, you can look at our Ambience embarkation write-up from the start of this cruise.

I mentioned that we were entertained by the disembarkation process. There was a schedule that you can see in the first photo in this post and we were informed numerous times over the speakers on the day before and on this morning that we had to wait until our section was called before disembarking. Now, this didn’t apply to anyone who self-disembarked – that’s people who carry their own luggage off – but for everyone else who’d put their cases out for collection the night before it was important that we wait.

Some people who’d put their luggage out didn’t want to wait, possibly under the assumption that as soon as Ambience got within range of the dock it would start loading up the cases onto teleporter pads and beaming them ashore in batches. However, Ambience is an old ship without fictional matter-energy transportation systems, and she uses an older method of crew pushing trolleys loaded with cases into the luggage hall in the order of cabins in that disembarkation schedule. And if you get off early – and many people did – then you’re left to stand in a cavernous space with doors open to chilly April winds, no cases in sight for you yet, and – because you’ve got off the ship at this point – no way to get back on. There were some upset people standing around and asking if they could re-board. Oh. Sorry. No.

As I said earlier, we laughed.

And that concludes this first experience of cruising with Ambassador. It was spectacular. We loved the itinerary, we adored the ship, we found ourselves loving the way that Ambassador do things, and this was a cruise with a fabulous crew aboard. And we will be back and cruising with Ambassador again. At the time of writing this we have plans to try out Ambassador Ambition out of Portsmouth in early 2027, then we will be jumping back on Ambience out of London in late 2028 for a return to Norway’s Arctic Circle when we’ll also be treating ourselves to a suite as it will be a big wedding anniversary for us.

In an ideal world, Ambience would have docked right in the middle of the city and we’d have had a decision about whether to take a tour at all or simply walk straight into the city for a good look around, but we’d been told ahead of time that it was far more likely that we’d be at the South Harbour port instead, about three kilometres away. That’s not too far to walk but it did mean that we paid more attention to whether there were any excursions that might interest us instead, using the reasoning that if we really, really wanted to look around Aberdeen we could always drive up this way at some time. We probably wont, because there’s a good chance that a car drive to Scotland will find itself low down the list of Things That Might Be Enjoyable, but we could.

Aberdeen’s South Harbour is not the most thrilling of cruise ports.

It was handy, then, that we’d booked ourselves on a trip to visit Crathes Castle. The excitement began before we’d even arrived at the historic site – and, indeed, that arrival was in some doubt for a while – when our bus suddenly came to a halt on a long road somewhere along the 25 kilometres route from Aberdeen. The traffic had stopped and it wasn’t clear what was happening so the guide eventually got off the bus and made her way up the road on foot to see what the problem was. What had occurred was that a farm vehicle had tipped over off the side of the road and was leaking fuel. Traffic couldn’t go past it for safety so cars were being told they needed to turn in the road and head back the other way. But there wasn’t enough room for the bus to do this and reversing several kilometres was out of the question. In addition, there was no phone signal where we were so nobody could get in touch with the cruise line to let them know what had happened. To say that our guide was panicking would be an understatement, even though we were mostly all calm and telling her to not worry about it.

But, as you already know because this write-up isn’t titled “That Day We Got Stuck On A Road And Didn’t Go On A Tour And Got Left Behind By Our Cruise Ship“, the problem was resolved. At some point a determination was seemingly made that the leaking fuel wasn’t that dangerous after all, or it had stopped, or a bus of tourists were expendable, and we got the okay to proceed, even if would now reduce the amount of time we had at our destination. We’d still have more than enough, though.

The land at Crathes had been given to the Burnetts of Leys family by Robert the Bruce in 1323, and wooden fortifications were built on it, but it wasn’t until the second half of the sixteenth century that the present tower house was constructed. Additional wings and improvements were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What you can see now if you’re visiting isn’t a castle in the traditional sense and it wasn’t a building that saw any action of note, but it does have some lovely interiors and gardens, as you’ll see below. One thing to note, though, is that accessibility is somewhat limited with very narrow staircases and small rooms, plus a decent slope up from the car park to the building and again down to the gardens. One of the women on our tour was restricted from seeing much of anything inside as a result and needed quite a bit of assistance just to get her to and from the gardens.

Crathes Castle has quite a few original pieces of furniture on display, but the ceiling decorations in places were more interesting to me. Alcoves in the grandly-named if not grandly-sized Grand Hall were particularly interesting. In here, over the fireplace, we could also see the Horn of Leys which, in addition to being a great euphemism for an erection is also reputedly another fourteenth century gift from Robert the Bruce.

The narrow stairwell in the photos below should give you some idea of what you’ll need to be capable of climbing if you visit this Scottish site although there were some routes that were less constricted.

A design fad in Scotland in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was “Scottish Renaissance Painted Ceilings” and the ones that survived later renovations in Crathes Castle are very good examples of this type of decoration.

That covers the interior, and we were fortunate enough to be visiting Crathes Castle on a very sunny day in April so we then had plenty of time to explore and enjoy the walled garden area too. We’d have probably done so even if it was tipping down but we’re rather glad it wasn’t. The garden is split into eight sections and some of the yew trees and topiary were planted in 1702 but the majority of the work involved in laying out the garden in this attractive way is more recent, generally from the early parts of the twentieth century.

And that’s some of what you can see inside Crathes Castle and its walled garden. Where else are you going to be able to make comments about the Horn of Leys and nicely-trimmed bushes and get that level of eye-roll from your wife while protesting your innocence?

The journey back to Aberdeen was without incident and we were offered the chance to be dropped off in the city in order to look around and make our own way back. We’d only have an hour or two there, partly due to the reduced time at the castle, and all the walking up and down slopes and steep, narrow staircases had aggravated my wife’s knees a little so we decided we’d leave Aberdeen for another day. Maybe.

A quiz was won by us back on the ship and we swapped our bottle of fizz for a luggage tag, but you probably only want to see what we ate in the dining room aboard Ambience that evening instead. You and your cruise ship food obsession.

This penultimate night of the cruise was spent in the Observatory nightclub until the early hours once again.

All that remains of this cruise is one more sea day heading down the east coast of England before arrival in London the following morning, and that will all be covered in the next and final post from this Ambassador Ambience cruise series.

This, then, is a photographic record of what we got up to for these sea days. There is the remotest of chances that you might have read one of the previous sea day accounts from this cruise and remembered how we like to spend sea days, but for everyone else reading this then it’s fair to summarise these days as ones where we generally do sod all. We eat, we read, we do trivia, we drink, we stay up late and dance. We don’t go in for many activities even though we keep saying we should, if only so that these sea day accounts in cruise travelogues aren’t quite so similar all the time. The first of the two sea days was very much in this tradition.

After the rain and wind and rough seas of the night before we were greeted by blue skies when we opened our curtains and stepped out onto the balcony. It was still a little rocky and that meant we had some lovely views of the waves slamming into the front of the ship and crashing past in thundering foam sprays.

Assume we did all the usual things we tend to do and that I didn’t photograph anything worthy of showing you, because that’s what happened next. As usual, here’s what we ate in the main dining room on our shared table for four in our late fixed dining slot.

After dinner we did something we don’t normally do. Not that, you filthy-minded swine. There was a comedian doing a set in the theatre and we thought, why not? There were some laughs and I’d rate the overall set and quality of comedy as okay, but nothing more than that. It’s all subjective. There’s a comedian who does the circuit on P&O ships that loads of people love and he is, quite frankly, in our opinion, abysmal. Horses for courses. The theatre space on Ambience is worthy of a quick mention, though, as it’s wonderful. So much space, tables by the seats, and even waiter service while you’re watching a performance. We don’t do shows, as you know, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t done shows in the past, and the contrast between this venue where it was designed around passengers’ comfort and modern theatre venues which seem to be designed simply for passenger quantity was impossible to miss.

We spent the remainder of the night in the Observatory until the lights came up, then it was off to our cabin with a quick reminder to change our clocks to UK time awaiting us. We didn’t go straight to bed, though, because there was another lovely aurora show in the sky to gaze at first from our balcony. It was a bit of a shame that the moon was so bright and right in line with where all the activity was taking place.

Day two was a little busier for my camera.

It started after breakfast with an ice carving demonstration out on the top deck. We’ve seen these sorts of things on several ships and there’s a nice amount of skill displayed by the artists, although it’s not always the easiest job in the world to work out what the final sculpture actually is. Please feel free to guess.

I then left my wife in a quiet lounge area to read her book while I took advantage of the bright conditions and took a wander around Ambassador Ambience to snap some photos.

I started around the atrium area and the SW19 bar which, as you may be able to guess from its name, is Wimbledon-themed and includes some tennis memorabilia dotted around. We didn’t spend a lot of time at this location on this cruise, and not just because tennis is one of the dullest sports to have been invented, although if the other bars and lounges were busy then it was the place to come and get a drink. For a central hub of a ship, it was generally far quieter than anywhere else.

A couple of photos from the theatre that we’d seen the comedian perform in the day before, mostly just to show off the seating space and tables all around.

Our history of visiting casinos on board cruise ships is a brief one. We used to do the penny-drop, Tipping Point-style game on Princess ships and we have in the past had the odd dollar bill on us that we’ve fed into one-armed bandits so long as they’ve got proper arms to pull, but as these are typically smoky spots on ships we mostly avoid them unless we have no option but to pass through. The casino – if you can call it that – on Ambience is… tiny. I don’t think we saw two people in it at once at any point in the cruise.

Like all cruise ships, there’s an area where plaques are displayed to commemorate first times in ports. These are always interesting to us, partly to look through and think “Been there… been there… going there next year… been there…” and partly to see which ports make an effort with their plaques and which are a bit more perfunctory.

If you’re into crafts and games then Ambassador seem to have you covered from our limited experience of seeing some room space given over to them and to what activities were arranged on sea days. I’ve mentioned before that taking part in these sorts of things is something we keep saying we should try, but we are terribly introverted and have managed to find excuses not to, so far.

Raffles is a very different sort of venue during the day. It’s amazing what darkness and lights – and the availability of cocktails – does to a room.

The elevators on Ambience are decidedly quirky. Not only are they decorated in unique styles, which allows you to play a game of guessing what sort of decoration you’re going to get when you call for a lift, but some were remarkably unreliable too. Did we get trapped in a lift once? Yes. Did a lift one day just choose its own direction and floors to stop at for both us and other confused people? Also yes. It’s just part of the character, though, and we loved it.

I finished off my solo stroll around the ship by popping out onto the promenade deck then up to the top deck for some shots. A shot of the wake was included because of course it was. You can see that by this point on the second sea day we’d slowed right down and were in far calmer waters.

After a lovely sunset at sea – well, every sunset at sea is lovely – it was time for the usual mix of drinking, trivia, and dining, before more drinking and dancing into the early hours. There was a Baked Alaska Parade in the main dining room so no surprises what we had for dessert.

The next post sees us reach the last port of call on this cruise, and another new port for us as we stop at Aberdeen but head off on an excursion to see Crathes Castle.

The expected long day in the Lofoten Islands and subsequent day in Bodø was pushed to one side during an early morning announcement. The captain of Ambience informed us that the stop in Lofoten was still going ahead, albeit rather truncated, and that Bodø was being cancelled in order to get the ship ahead of a storm projected to otherwise cause the ship some serious problems. Furthermore, with this being a tender port, priority would be given to those on booked trips that still had enough time to go ahead, so for those of us who’d been intending to have a more leisurely, play-it-by-ear day on land that short time would be shorter again. We were still absolutely going to get off the ship, though. A new port? You’ve got to step ashore at the very least.

We had a relaxed breakfast and kept an eye on the tender boats shuttling between the ship’s anchorage and the small cruise port a couple of kilometres south of the town of Leknes.

Our original idea for how to spend the day in Lofoten had been to get out somewhere to take photos of the landscapes which we’d been told were stunning, then to circle around to Leknes, see if there were any museums or similar places of interest open, see if we could grab a drink, then walk back to the port. But, of course, that idea was based on the premise that we’d have a long day here and we were down to just a few hours ashore now. So, by the time the tender boats were available for general use we’d already adjusted what we were going to do to a far simpler one of taking the shuttle bus into town to save time, having a quick look around to see if anything was open, then seeing if we could find a reasonably scenic walking route back.

On the short ride across the water to the port we could see a large building with the sort of architecture that said “Oh yeah, I’m a modern museum dedicated to the stunning nature you see around you” and that’s the sort of thing we like. We had a quick nose at the map to see if it was open, only to realise it was a school. Our schools did not look like that, and they didn’t have those views.

At the small cruise port where the tender boat docked we could see what looked like a small tourist operation in place for water-based trips. On another day it might be something we’d consider.

The shuttle bus ride to Leknes was short and also along a rather dull and surprisingly busy stretch of main road. I could see that my wife was looking at it and thinking it would not be pleasant to walk along it back to the port so I reassured her that I’d identified something a bit more rural when we returned and this made her feel worse. She is prone to anxiety when she doesn’t know where she is, and when it comes to travelling that turns out to be almost everywhere, almost all the time. Her sense of direction would be worthy of study if she had one. Fortunately, never fear, Mark and his magnetic-sensing mind is here! I can typically pinpoint myself and where we need to go with expectations of turns and waypoints to look out for after a short glance at a map, and even on a cloudy day I can usually just tell north, south, east, and west by intuition.

Oh, I am so going to get absolutely lost the next time we’re somewhere off the beaten path now.

Anyway, we were dropped off in a car park between some shops, none of which interested us. Sure, Norwegian supermarkets can be a source of saying things like “Jesus! How much for a packet of crisps!?” and “What the!? Liquorice-flavoured bread! But why!?” but we had water on us, we weren’t hungry, and we didn’t know how long the weather would remain dry so it wasn’t very long before we’d ascertained that we might as well just start a slow bimble back along the road I’d spotted.

Leknes isn’t quite a one-road town, but it’s not far off it. While the bus had brought us to it on a newer road that curves around the eastern side of the town, we were heading out on what was clearly the original main road, now very lightly-used. Further from the town centre the houses became more spread out which gave us occasional glimpses at the mountainous landscape that wrapped around the place but the low and complete cloud cover didn’t help matters so I mostly enjoyed some of the functional architecture of businesses we were passing to start with.

It wasn’t long before we could tell we were outside the town and onto the quiet single road that headed south, and at last the views we’d been hoping to see came into sight. Mostly. It’s a place that would be lovely to see on a clear day, that’s for certain.

The weather didn’t entirely hold off for us, and our walk was accompanied by a fine and very cold drizzle. We could see plenty of signs around that the temperature was holding at or below zero and a brisk walk might have made this more tolerable but one of us does like to take photos so that wasn’t going to happen.

The sudden appearance of signs of industrialisation let us know that we were nearing the port but there were still some pleasing sights to see in the vicinity. When you’re in Norway, you’re usually only a short distance from a gorgeous view.

There were enough people in the queue to get back on the ship that we had to wait for a second tender boat. The wind was picking up, the chilly, misty drizzle was persisting, and only the thought of hot drinks and alcohol aboard were keeping us warm. The first thing we did when we got back on Ambience was head straight to the café in the main atrium.

Another reason for not heading straight to our cabin where the promise of a hot shower awaited was that we realised we were close to the time for some afternoon trivia in the Botanical Lounge on Ambience so, after finishing our drinks in the atrium, we made our way there to challenge our brains. A science-fiction theme helped a lot and the low attendance didn’t hurt – there were still some boats due to return as we’d not left it to the very last moment to get back – because we won the trivia and picked up our second prize of the cruise to go with the stress ball we’d already won: a flimsy, Ambassador-branded fridge magnet! The prizes on Ambassador were wonderfully woeful.

Time for showers and changing into evening attire next, even though it was late afternoon. That’s the crazy sort of rule-breaking we do when we’re cold.

At this time, everyone was aboard and Ambience started to head away from Lofoten. The wind was getting noticeably stronger, the clouds were getting fuller, the seas were getting choppier. It was easy to see why the captain had made the decision he did.

Lounges for entertainment either side of food then occupied the remainder of this day, and that started with the evening trivia in the Purple Turtle where we actually won again, picking up some fizz this time around. We had the top-tier drinks package anyway so winning the bottle wasn’t a big deal for us, but we would make use of it later in the cruise in a way that caused a member of staff to look at us like we’d grown another head each. No, it’s not what your filthy mind is thinking.

And here’s dinner.

With an unexpected sea day coming up we were free to stay up as late as we wanted in the Observatory, and we did. It was quieter up there on this evening and that was due to some definite lurching of the ship in the front edges of the storm we were trying to outrun. If there are rough seas then you can usually find us at the highest point of the ship near the front or back as that’s where most of the fun can be had. It’s quite surprising just how few people share this opinion.

The next post in this series covers two sea days on Ambience, and, in a break from the tradition I’ve established in these cruise write-ups, there are some actual things to show off other than the sea and food: more Northern Lights, ice carving, and some actual photos taken around the cruise ship like I’m one of those cruise bloggers who seems to think that what the world needs most is another ship or cabin tour.

We were on the Norwegian Sea and heading south! Did you even know there was a Norwegian Sea? No, us neither, but there is, and it’s apparently a “marginal sea”, which is something that geographers have invented so they can re-classify existing world features to justify retaining employment now that everything has been mapped.

Here’s a look at the sorts of things you could get up to on a sea day aboard an Ambassador ship.

Food preparation demonstration, sales pitches masquerading as talks, bingo, dance classes: these are just some of the things we weren’t interested in, but that’s because we’re not representative of everyone and some people will actually want to do these activities. Maybe not the sales pitches. Earlier in the day there were lots of craft-based events (something Ambassador seems to do very well) which is something we keep saying we should join in with, then never do, while later events coalesced around music and game show or trivia entertainment. That’s more our thing. Mornings for us tend to be for relaxation and reading and recovering from hangovers until our brains and livers feel rejuvenated enough for a session of punishment and reward again.

We typically bounce around the ship’s venues during the morning on sea days, sometimes to avoid busier spots, sometimes to track down some trivia taking place, but always to give our room steward time to clean our room. In the afternoon we like to hit our room for a while if we’ve got a balcony as it’s our quiet space, and watching the sea roll past and thinking about how small we are on it is part of the utter joy that is cruising. The distant Norwegian landscape was still as wonderfully icy and enchantingly beautiful as it had been on the northbound cruise along this part of the world.

Not photographed, but mentioned here because it’s a thing that happened and this is an account of things that happened, is that we saw an orca surfacing very close to us. To date, it’s the only orca we’ve ever seen – we’ve become a bit blasé about whales and dolphins now, don’t you know? – and it was a fabulous experience. They have such distinctive fins. The size of it suggested it was a male.

We took part in Ambassador’s “Nice & Easy Trivia” once again, and once again unsuccessfully. It’s definitely trivia, it’s definitely nice. Easy, it ain’t. However, spoiler alert: we’d do a lot better tomorrow. This quiz on Ambience takes places in the Purple Turtle bar, and, like the easy quiz that isn’t, it’s a misleading name as there’s next to no purple to be seen. And don’t get me started on the lack of turtles. It did have cocktails, though.

After our lovely speciality dining experience the evening before in Saffron it was back to the main dining room tonight. Ambassador have fixed dining and shared tables, in line with many other smaller and older cruise lines, and our dining companions were actually present on this evening. We probably only saw each other on a quarter of the evenings for meals as one or both of us booked other things. We got on perfectly well with them, though.

It won’t be a surprise to learn that after dinner we spent time in Raffles, the absolutely gorgeous piano lounge on Ambience. It was a night when there was no scheduled entertainment taking place in there so it was quieter than normal and we’d become attached to the comfy wingback chairs around the edges of the venue so thought it would be nice to sit and relax for a bit. We’d only intended to stay for one or two drinks but because it was so empty in there we ended up speaking for ages with one of the members of staff who had nothing else to really do, hearing about her life back home and what it was like working for Ambassador, then with a solo cruiser from Essex who told us tales about the single men she’d met aboard. Oh, there was good gossip.

After the late-night tray of snacks had made their rounds we popped up to the Observatory for music and drinking into the early hours, as normal. Because we’d seen the Northern Lights the evening before and there was a chance to see them again we took our hoodies with us in case there was any extended time out on the deck oohing and aahing, and my wife ended up leaving her Nightmare Before Christmas-branded one in the club at the end of the night. We only realised this in the morning but, fortunately, it had been handed in at reception.

In the next post we reach what should have been the penultimate Norwegian port of call on this Ambience cruise into the Arctic Circle but the weather would have something to say about those plans. We still get off the ship and have some time ashore in the Lofoten Islands, though.