There wasn’t a whole lot of photographing around the ship on this sea day because pictures had been taken earlier in the holiday but I did decide to snap some shots as we completed a walk around the ship’s promenade.

Not every cruise ship has a promenade and not every cruise ship with a promenade has a full wrap-around promenade, but the Grand-class ships operated by Princess do. Located on deck seven – the top of the piazza and where the main entertainments lounges are located – it’s possible to step outside and walk around the ship’s exterior with just a small raised section requiring you to ascend then descend some steps. The promenade is a popular place for those who haven’t got balcony cabins but seek some peaceful, ocean-staring action, and for those who like to get some exercise to offset the calories all-too-readily-available on the ship; you’ll often see people power-walking laps and you’ll see signs on the deck telling you how many laps there are to a mile if you’re keen on tracking such information and still fond of imperial measurements. If you like getting close to the wave-cutting action of the bow or the powerful, churning beauty of the wake then it’s a lovely location for that, and if the weather’s behaving itself then one side might be shaded and the other in full sunlight to give you options to suit your preferences there.

This post, then, is simply a photowalk around the promenade deck of Crown Princess. Pictures of the sea, of distant oil and gas platforms, of the deck and other cruise ship passengers, of bits of the ship, just to give you a feel for the experience.

This final photo is a little bit of a cheat since it was taken from our balcony at the conclusion of our gentle exercise around the promenade deck, but it was also the last picture taken on Crown Princess on this Norwegian Fjords cruise back in 2013 and it’s not a bad one as it turns out.

Let’s start with a small bit of history to set the scene. In 2008 we got married, and after flipping a mental coin to decide between spending a lot of money on a ceremony that makes us the centre of attention or spending a lot of money on a foreign holiday as a honeymoon we chose the latter. The mental coin was loaded. There was no chance we’d have had a proper wedding; we’re introverts. In addition, despite being together for twelve years and living together for a decade at this point in our lives we’d never had a proper holiday. A few days away somewhere in the UK was all we’d managed because a mortgage and relatively low-paid jobs didn’t allow for much else. Saving up for a honeymoon made sense for, let’s say, our mental health, and since this was a big occasion we looked around for something big – two weeks on a beach somewhere was never going to be an option – which eventually led us to the idea of getting on board a cruise ship. We knew some relatives who’d cruised and they’d liked it so we were persuaded, particularly when we saw some of the places we could go that hadn’t even really crossed our minds, and the end result has been captured as our Diamond Princess Far East Cruise.

As amazing as that cruise was, cruising hadn’t injected itself into our veins by then, and the likely explanation with hindsight is that money was a problem. I’d taken voluntary redundancy immediately prior to the honeymoon and finding a job I actually wanted to do on our return took longer than expected. Cash reserves dwindled and a few years passed before we started to recover. In the meantime: no foreign holiday; no big trips.

That changed in 2011. My wife’s sister had moved to America and we had some help to fly out and visit her. We got to experience new sights again and to take lots of photos. In 2012 we did the same thing because my sister-in-law was now pregnant, and we also spent a week in Spain with my family. We started to get an itch for seeing what else there was to see in the world but hadn’t made any firm plans until an email arrived in the summer of 2013. It was from Princess Cruises, with whom we’d cruised on our honeymoon, and they were offering an ocean view category cabin (a room with a window of some description) for the price of an inside category (a room without a window; the cheapest rooms; the type we’d had on our first cruise) on a cruise departing to the Norwegian fjords in a few months. The price was right and the timing was right – it would coincide with my birthday – so we went for it.

Unlike our first cruise we wouldn’t need to fly across the world for this one, with the departure and return point being Southampton, just half an hour from us in the car. Arriving at the terminal at the correct time we joined a long, snaking queue to check in which was handled quite efficiently although we did look on jealously at the shorter queue in which certain people were directed and which was given priority at the check-in desks. We would discover that this would be a perk for loyalty and in a few years time it would be us who’d be jumping ahead of relative newbies to Princess cruising at check-in.

We’d had to wait until check-in to be allocated a cabin but we had known, of course, that it would be an ocean view category. If our 2008 cruise had been taken with very little research into the ship, and it had, that wasn’t quite the same in 2013. I was more aware of travel blogging in general and this time around had done some basic snooping about what to expect where we were going (we’d pre-booked excursions almost everywhere) as well as on the vessel. I knew, therefore, that we would almost certainly be on Emerald deck, one above the promenade, and with views perhaps through or above the lifeboats and tender boats on the ship. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when we were handed our cruise cards and a slip indicating we were on Riviera deck instead, right at the top and towards the front of the ship. I guessed that I’d just missed out on some ocean view rooms that high (I had, but that’s not relevant) and said nothing while we boarded then found an elevator to take us up to the right deck. We opened the door to our room to be met with a far brighter interior than we’d remembered from cruising five years earlier. We could see directly in front of us some full-length curtains beyond which was a full-length pane of glass. Not a window. Not a porthole.

I think we’ve got a balcony.

Don’t be stupid.

I’m pretty sure that’s a balcony.

We didn’t pay for a balcony.

I think they’ve upgraded us to a balcony.

You are fucking kidding me.

That is definitely a balcony.

I wasn’t wrong. We’d paid inside cabin prices but we’d been given a balcony view, starboard-side, and high up. Room R209 to be specific.

In terms of layout, the room was effectively turned 90 degrees to what we’d experienced aboard Diamond Princess before.

But the first thing we did, naturally, was open up the balcony door and step out. So, what you’re looking at below are the first two photos I ever took from a cruise ship balcony. An overcast day in September, the Queen Elizabeth II terminal at Southampton cruise port, and plenty of concrete and vehicles. It’s not the most pretty of sights but in terms of what it represents it’s utterly gorgeous. It’s really hard to convey the levels of excitement that stepping out onto a balcony on a cruise ship still envelops us within now, but back then, this virgin experience, it was incredible beyond words.

Giddy with excitement, we read through the various bits of blurb in the cabin to acquaint ourselves with where and when we’d need to gather for the muster drill, what else was scheduled, then with nothing else to do until then and the subsequent sailaway but wait for our luggage to be delivered we went for a walk around the ship.

We’re what we’d consider to be old hands at cruising these days but in 2013 this was for all intents and purposes like cruising for the first time again. We’d forgotten a lot about that first cruise – there was no website keeping a copy of all our photo and video memories of travelling at that time because we hadn’t done a whole lot of it – so exploring Crown Princess was a combination of being wowed by what we were seeing and having flashbacks to our honeymoon cruise due to the similarities in the ships. Both Diamond and Crown are sub-classes of the Grand-class design of ship so they follow very similar layouts and have similar facilities. From the top deck – just up one flight of stairs from our room – we could even see the P&O cruise ship Ventura docked in Southampton behind us and it too is a Grand-class variant vessel.

There are plenty of swimming pools on these cruise ships; one or two smaller ones to the aft, two larger ones midships, and another smaller pool towards the front. But on the first day aboard you’ll hardly find any passengers in them because lots of people will still be waiting for their cases to be delivered to their rooms. In more recent years we’ve learned the benefit of including a carry-on case with a couple of days of clothing and swimming gear so that we’re not stopped from enjoying ourselves should our luggage fail to join us at our destination (Iberia airlines, I’m talking about you here).

Passengers already on Crown Princess were soaking up some weak sunshine in Southampton, enjoying their first drinks of the cruise (possibly; I’m not sure how long some of them had been on the ship), and even keeping an eye on some live football being broadcast on the ship’s large movie screen beside one of the main pools.

The small swimming pool at the front of Crown Princess was the Lotus Spa (or Sanctuary) pool. It was adults-only, being part of the spa treatment area (although free-to-use), and conveniently close to our room, and it would be the swimming pool that we mostly used on this cruise and the one we have tended to use most often on subsequent cruises on this type of ship too.

The Sanctuary is an adults-only area that is charged at an additional half-day or daily rate for those wanting to guarantee a lounger and get away from the crowds. Potentially, that’s something of use if you’re cruising the Caribbean or Mediterranean with lots of families aboard but our trips with Princess Cruises over the years have taken place in school time or in far-flung destinations and we’ve found that the cruises have attracted an older, quieter crowd naturally as a consequence. Which is a long-winded way of saying we’ve never booked into the Sanctuary yet.

In addition to P&O’s Ventura which we’d already spotted, a smaller ship from the same fleet, Oceana, and Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas were also in Southampton on the day of our cruise departure. All would be leaving at around the same time.

The emergency muster drill was held at half past three, prior to departure. It’s less of a necessary-but-minor irritation these days thanks to common sense and, now, distancing precautions for viruses, but in 2013 this still required us to grab our life jackets, head to the theatre, get scanned in, sit through a demonstration of what to do in an emergency, don the jackets, remove the jackets, then return them to the cabin.

We watched the sailaway from our balcony because it was the first time we could. Thrusters moved us away from the dock, the ship backed into the main part of Southampton Water, then swung around as it had been facing towards the city. As Crown Princess began to sail towards the Isle of Wight we caught sight of Hythe and Calshot from our starboard viewpoint and could see the other ships that had been docked at the city following in our wake.

The rest of that first day on Crown Princess would have been unpacking our bags, freshening up, getting dressed for the evening, eating, and drinking, but I’m only guessing here as this was still back when I didn’t keep better notes about what we were doing.

Day 2 was a day at sea. The week’s Norwegian fjords cruise would have one day getting there, one day getting back, and days among Norway’s landscapes between.

We read through the Princess Patter to get a feel for what we might do during the day. You can usually find something to entertain you during the day and if nothing takes your fancy then just relax or make your own entertainment. You’re an adult. You can do it. We’re fond of reading and drinking and taking part in trivia, and cruise ships turn out to be great places in which to do these things, but we saw some other activities we thought might interest us too.

The North Sea was dark and grey, mirroring the sky that accompanied us. We were also accompanied by a persistent westerly wind of Force 8 (I know this from the log of the cruise) which put a halt to activities that had been planned for outside and made using the swimming pools an exciting prospect that nobody felt brave enough to attempt. You can get a feel for the wind and its effect on the ship and the water in the pools from the video below the next lot of photographs. For the record, we absolutely love sea conditions like this. Part of the fun of taking a cruise is knowing that you’re definitely at sea and on this day aboard Crown Princess we knew we were definitely at sea; if you don’t like the motion of the ocean then you might as well stick to hotels on land.

I didn’t take anywhere near as many photos in and around the ship as I should have and I suspect the reason was that we’d cruised before and taken pictures and videos so why take many more? So, so naive. Don’t be like naive me. Take lots of photos and videos. Yes, you want to experience the holiday at the time but you’ll also want to relive those memories later, and never rule out the power of boring people you know senseless by showing them yet another shot of the same thing.

Still, pictures were taken as we shifted around various locations on the ship during the day. Crooners was a bar we’d loved on Diamond Princess and it would turn out to be a place we’d love on Crown Princess too. Situated at the top of the central piazza on the ship it was typically fairly quiet during the day, turning into a piano-based lounge bar in the evening, and always offering fabulous cocktails and gorgeous nibbles to accompany them.

The largest entertainments venue on the ship was Club Fusion. This was the spot for dance lessons, bingo, some demonstrations, occasional shows, and evening music. It’s not a place that we’ve often visited on Princess ships because by the evening we’re more disco-oriented and head to the nightclub instead, but it can sometimes be a quiet spot for a read in the day if there’s a noisy activity taking place in the piazza that makes Crooners less peaceful.

The Piazza is the central space on Princess ships. It’s not an atrium because it doesn’t have window views to the top, but it’s effectively what other ships think of as the atrium. Shops, passenger services, and places to get food and drink hang off this spot, and this sea day saw it probably busier than had been intended since the weather had made planned fruit-carving and Martini demonstrations unviable on the outer decks.

Other than our reading and drinking and some quizzing on this sea day there was one other thing we wanted to see, taking place in Explorers Lounge.

Now, art auctions aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but just because you don’t like a thing doesn’t mean you’re right not to and it doesn’t mean you’re better for telling people they’re idiots for liking something you don’t (in fact, these days they’re not ours either but we won’t go into that). Everything you need to know about the art you’re buying is explained. Nobody is stupid enough to think a few hundred dollars is going to buy an original masterpiece. Everyone is told what sort of print, how many of the print, etc. are produced.

The reason we wanted to attend this auction – other than because you can get a free glass of fizz for doing so – was because of a memory we had from that first honeymoon cruise. The TVs in the cabins used to show promotional programmes alongside general entertainment so you could usually see jewellery offers or reasons to book excursions or what sort of spa treatments were available, and one that stuck with the pair of us was a documentary about one of the featured artists, Michael Godard. He looked like a rockstar and he painted fun artwork that connected our loves of cartoon and street art with alcohol. We also remembered some of his art around the ship in Asia but we couldn’t afford to buy any of it with our aargh-I’m-redundant! budget at the time. Fast-forward to 2013, though, and things were financially better for us, and, as it turned out, we even saw a variation on the art piece we’d really liked half a decade before. As you can tell, we came away from this cruise with something to hang on the dining room wall that tied together that first cruise and this second one.

That concludes what was documented photographically from those first two days on Crown Princess cruising towards Norway’s fjords. The next day would see us make the first of our stops in the first Scandinavian country we would ever have visited and you can read about it in Crown Princess Cruise Into Bergen.

Even with cloud cover – some of it very low and forming interesting-looking streamers within the mountainous walls of the surrounding fjord during our 2013 visit – Flåm is very attractive, but being a village with only a few hundred inhabitants it does suffer from not having a whole lot to do and on our arrival it all seemed very quiet indeed even allowing for the serenity emanating off the scenery. I will make some allowance for the fact it had been raining for most of the day on this occasion, too.

Certainly, businesses have sprung up to cater for the influx of tourists, increasingly from cruise ships, but generally these are simply shops and cafés plus a couple of small museums. There is a local railway line running from the village that provides for some spectacular views (we’ve not done it but it’s supposed to be excellent) but if you’re thinking of visiting this village port on a cruise ship then it’s probably best you plan to take a trip inland when you’re there if you want to see something more of interest than wooden buildings and souvenir shops selling sweaters. This lack of captivating attractions can completely skew the financial benefits that a cruise ship can bring to a port especially when the ship is as easily accessible as it is in Flåm; given a choice between spending some money to buy food ashore – and in Norway that can be a lot of money as you’ll see further down – or eating as much as you want for no additional cost aboard, a significant proportion of travellers will choose not to support the local economy and to channel their inner-tightness to save a few quid on their multi-hundreds of pounds holidays. Well, we’ve paid for it already, haven’t we? they’ll say, and we’ll smile tightly and nod and think dark thoughts. Yes, I know that anecdotally some people have real reasons to act that way. We’ve just never met any and this is a site about cold, hard facts, damn it!

Now, that being said about there not being a lot to do in Flåm, there is one thing that leapt to the forefront of our attention when our guide mentioned it on the bus back to the port: Flåm has a brewery. Thus is was that we had exactly one thing on our mind as we jumped down from the vehicle by the water. Let’s buy a sweater! No, wait, that wasn’t it. To the brewery! That sounds more like us. Long story short, we went and we had a fabulous time there.

Here then is our recommendation for the top thing to do in Flåm: make sure you’ve got plenty of money and spend a couple of hours in the gorgeous Ægir BrewPub. You can get some food there too if you want but the beers are the stars of the location. We love frequenting microbreweries back home because there’s nothing nicer than beer freshly-made and we always seek them out when we travel too. For as good as the cocktails are on a cruise ship, it’s fair to say that beer quality is an area where all the lines do disappointingly for our tastes (P&O usually keep a decent range of bottled beers in theory, but good luck with them being stocked) so a chance to get something malty and amber-coloured or darker and with a connection to the port of call on the cruise is something we jump at. In this respect Ægir excelled. Three drinks each set us back fifty-four pounds in 2013 so factor that into your budget plans if you must but also consider that we were well-aware of the price and ended up spending that amount anyway.

In addition to the brewery having a lovely, wooden interior it also sported some fabulous chairs with rotating, cupped seats. Interesting enough when we first arrived they provided even more spinning-based enjoyment as each drink slipped down and it was all I could do to convince my wife that buying and/or stealing one of them and trying to get it back on the ship was not the most sensible of things to be considering.

We did take a look at the shops in Flåm but didn’t see anything to make our souvenir-spending juices run and concluded our time in the pretty village with a slow wander back to the ship.

With our cabin being located on the starboard side of the ship we had a view of the landscape opposite the village from our balcony. This was effectively just the innermost part of the Aurlandsfjord and the few buildings along its shoreline; mostly the village marina and rental cottages. It was nice to see the wispy string of low cloud level with it in the fjord valley.

The next day would see us visit the final port on this Norwegian fjords cruise, that being Stavanger.

The Princess Patter – the daily programme of events aboard ship when you’re cruising with Princess Cruises – provided all the information we needed to know that the morning would include trivia and nothing else. Sadly, the trivia clashed with the Zumba class which we would definitely have 100% liked to do had we been suffering from possession by the spirits of people who’d died keeping fit. And the trivia overran the start of the acupuncture seminar which would have been thoroughly interesting if parasites had eaten away any of the rational parts of our brains. Some knowledge-testing, then, with a stroll up to the top deck afterwards to watch the approach to Stavanger.

A very quick aside: the front of this particular day’s Princess Patter included the following statements from the senior doctor at the time. As I’m writing this in 2020 it’s worth reminding those who think (or who have a vested interest in promoting the misguided belief) that cruise ships are “petri dishes” and unclean and the sources of viral infections, cruise ships and cruise lines have always promoted higher levels of cleanliness than you would ever have found while travelling by air or staying in hotels.

And with that out of the way let’s get on with the purpose of this post: our approach to Stavanger on Crown Princess.

The morning was cloudy with showers forecast for the day ashore in Norway, but the temperature was pretty good and it was thankfully dry as we headed out onto the top deck of the ship. We started at the aft because you’ve got to start somewhere. One thing you might be able to discern from these pictures is that there was noticeable vibration towards the rear of Crown Princess on this cruise. You can see the effect on the surface of the aft swimming pool. This never bothered us, and we even chose an aft balcony when we cruised again on Crown Princess to the Baltics four years later, but if you’ve not cruised before and feel this is something that could be a problem for you then book a cabin away from where the propellers are.

Heading forwards towards midships brought us to the two main swimming pools that Crown Princess sports. Both pools are open to the elements so it’s not the most ideal ship for cruising to colder climates but don’t let that put you off her as a vessel. We took in some of the views of the mainland and I snapped plenty of photos of exciting things such as telephones and railings. It keeps me out of mischief.

When your cruise ship is scheduled for a port day you may not get much organised in terms of outdoor activities unless, as was the case on this day, you’re not due to anchor or dock until fairly late. To keep passengers entertained, a morning golf chipping challenge was arranged around the Neptune pool, and a good mix of talented and talentless would-be-golfers sent balls into the water, the assembled crowd, and occasionally the target shower unit to general enjoyment.

The day was getting surprisingly brighter as the ship started to see the first signs of the outskirts of Stavanger appear alongside, and we decided to watch the remainder of the sail into the Norwegian port from our cabin balcony. There was a mix of attractive residential properties along the water’s edge and reasonably heavy, industrial sections. While the cruise ship of necessity kept her speed low to stop from producing waves to swamp the shoreline, the same restriction didn’t apply to smaller boats that merrily zipped along between the vessel and the land.

One sight that caught our attention was an old ship. This turned out to be the Rogaland and she’s a ship with a moderately interesting history. She was originally built in 1929 as a combined cargo and passenger vessel making runs from Stavanger to Oslo and Bergen. In 1944, while docked in Bergen, an ammunition barge that had come into the port for repairs exploded (killing a waitress on the ship in addition to numerous dock workers) and the resulting damage sank Rogaland. She was re-floated but not fully repaired until after the war when she resumed coastal routes. In 1989 veteran ship enthusiasts bought Rogaland with the intention of restoring her to her 1929 original look inside and out. Rising costs have reduced that plan to restoring her to her 1964 look instead which was when she last ran the standard passenger and cargo routes and before she worked around shipyards. Finally, if you’ve seen the movie Dunkirk then you might have spotted Rogaland acting the part of a hospital ship.

For the final approach to Stavanger, Crown Princess swung around, bow to port, stern to starboard, in order to reverse into its designated spot alongside. This gave us the chance to see what we’d been missing from our balcony on the northeastern side of the channel into the city, that mostly being some smaller islands connected to the mainland by bridges. Plenty of fellow passengers watched the same views from atop the bridge wings.

Our day in Stavanger included an organised excursion and some free time to explore the city. The first part of our day’s excursion would see us travel to the Ullandhaug area of the city in order to take a look at an iron age farm and a telecommunications tower.

June 3rd: Southampton

It’s a tradition when we’re cruising with Princess Cruises these days that we always head for Crooners Bar for the first drink and this trip on the Crown Princess was no exception with our first two drinks happening there. On the Grand-class ships operated by Princess this is a lovely place to sit and people-watch and invent back-stories to explain away what they’re wearing. “Lost a bet” features a lot.

We had a lovely summer sunset to see us off from Southampton.

This was our first Princess cruise travelling at Platinum level loyalty which meant we could indulge in a discounted cocktail of the day and some free snacks in Skywalkers early evening so we took advantage of this on our first night aboard. For the most part, though, we didn’t bother with this as the cocktail offerings weren’t to our taste. This was also our first time in the Adagio bar at the aft of the ship. Convenient both for our cabin and for Skywalkers above it at night this would become a regular haunt mostly because of the superb service of the bar staff there.

June 4th: Belgium

Drinks and views from Adagio and Skywalkers again with the great BOGO hours being taken advantage of in a few of the photos. BOGO (Buy One, Get One For A Dollar) has sadly now been discontinued by Princess with no explanation as to what might replace it (if anything) despite repeated requests to their media and PR people. Like many PR groups you can only get a response so long as your question and their answer fall within the “positive propaganda” guidelines of communication and voicing a dissenting opinion or asking something they don’t want to answer gets met with silence. The current Princess alternative to paying for every drink at full price is to pay for a drinks package and this is a sensible move if you are a raging alcoholic but we aren’t and haven’t decided if we’ll go down that route yet. Let’s see how much the world falls apart and make a decision later.

June 5th: Sea Day

A day at sea meant a chance to try out a wine-tasting onboard. Canapés were nice and the hosting was reasonably entertaining but the wines were very hit and miss. Princess are no P&O when it comes to wines but we keep persevering. We’re little troopers.

The great thing about having a balcony is that you can retreat to it if you want to have a read or look out at the view and you can always take a drink back with you from one of the bars. So we did.

The rest of the day included spotting the champagne fountain being poured (we’ve never really bothered with it but are happy to oblige ourselves to a glass of fizz if it’s being passed around, just out of politeness you understand) and grabbing a few drinks at our usual venues.

June 6th: Denmark

We’d had a long day in Denmark (and had tried some local beer) and with a long cruise out past the country in order to look across at Hamlet’s Castle (although we’d already visited it) there were only a few drinks on this day. But they were nice ones as you can see from the photos.

June 7th: Sea Day

Our to-date only Movies Under The Stars experience happened on the second sea day. The sun is, of course, a star. “Let us watch a movie outside on a cruise ship!” “What a splendid idea! Something action-packed? Something invoking the surroundings, perhaps, a pirate movie or something of that ilk?” Yeah, you can tell this conversation is heading straight towards The Boss Baby can’t you?

The rest of the day included a smattering of cocktails and I was taken with dessert at dinner that evening which was a Norman Love signature chocolate piece.

June 8th: Sweden

More cocktails after we’d returned from our excursion in Stockholm as you can probably guess from looking at these photos.

We also decided to try out Vines wine bar at the bottom of the piazza on the Crown Princess. We weren’t expecting great things as we’re familiar with the rather thin offerings and low variety of wines on Princess and our expectations were met. Would it kill Princess to have just one full-bodied red wine on a ship? Apparently, it might. Cannot fault the service, though.

June 9th: Estonia

The part of the Baltic Sea between Estonia and Russia (our next stop) was ridiculously calm and beautiful to look at.

We didn’t have very many drinks on account of having had a few in Tallinn during the day and knowing we’d have a very long day ahead of us in St Petersburg.

This was the night, however, that we booked in to dine at the Crown Grill. We’ve had fabulous experiences at the Crown Grill every time we dined on Princess with the exception of the infamous Royal Princess Cruise Of Immense Disappointment (read more) and this one was everything we hoped for. We even got a window booth seat so we could stare out at the sea between gorgeous courses. The steak was fantastic, as usual, and those flavoured salts are just wonderful.

The end of the evening included some more gazing out at the sea and, as we were heading east, staring at the long, drawn-out sunset that was occurring later and later as we cruised towards Russia. I don’t think it got dark before one in the morning at this point in the cruise.

June 11th: Russia

No chance for a drink on the ship on the first of our days there with us having a full day in Russia culminating in a trip to the ballet (highly recommended) but we returned to some attractive cocktail-imbibing along with my favourite tipple, Lawford’s Libation, as we started on our return leg back to the UK.

June 12th: Finland

It had rained the entire time we were in Finland and as we set off from Helsinki it was in a thick fog so while this post is supposed to focus on sea views you’ll have to make do with the same volume of water, just in cloud form in this video (removed temporarily).

Fortunately, that dissipated pretty quickly.

You can tell it’s a formal night if you spot a photo of a Vodka Martini with three olives in it. It’s the only time I’ll drink it and, amazingly, I’m getting used to the taste. Of course, one never eats the olives; they’re there to add some saltiness to the drink until about a third of the way down after which they are removed and stared at with pure hostility.

We grabbed what had become our regular seats by the dance floor in Skywalkers for the evening to see the people in their formal wear strutting their stuff to the sounds of DJ Iron Mic who we quite often talked to in the evenings.

June 13th: Sea Day

The odd drink as you’ve come to expect and the decoration changed in the Crown Princess’s piazza enough to warrant some photos too.

In the evening we were treated to more wonderful sunsets to stare at. We’ve yet to see any sign that we’re getting bored with looking at sunsets at sea. I suspect that becoming bored of views like that are a sure sign you died somewhere on the ship and you’re now haunting it so definitely a goal to aim for but I’m not there yet.

And there was more dancing into the early hours in Skywalkers with dancers being led on the floor by the DJ himself.

June 14th: Poland

Drinks from a couple of BOGO hours and just in general rounded off our final port stop on our Baltic cruise aboard Crown Princess.

June 15th: Sea Day

Our penultimate sea day began with another flat stretch of water and long wake to look out on from our balcony as we rose.

With a fair chunk of the day having been spent securing our viewing spot to experience cruising under the Great Belt Bridge, then quizzing and swimming there wasn’t quite as much drinking going on during the day that saw balloons installed in the piazza ready for some celebrating later in the evening.

Our evening, though, was spent at Sabatini’s, the Italian specialty restaurant on Crown Princess. This was the first time we’d booked at Sabatini’s with all our previous specialty dining having taken place in the Crown Grill. In terms of service and general range of food on offer it was an exceptional experience indeed.

The only blot on the evening was my wife’s steak which she’d asked for rare (the only way to eat steak and I will fight to the death with a lump of myoglobin-dripping meat anyone who argues differently). It and my food arrived and we tucked in except that on slicing into her meat we could both see immediately that it was medium well done. This in itself would have been a minor problem except that our very friendly waiter also spotted it and whisked her food away to have it re-done. In principle, a great idea; in practice, it left me with a plate of food that would go cold unless I ate alone. So that’s what I had to do. When her food returned the waiter was accompanied by the head waiter and they gathered to make sure that the steak was better. My wife said yes, there were smiles all around, and we were left alone once more; me with my nearly-finished plate and my wife with a plate containing a steak almost as well done as the previous one but which she couldn’t face telling anyone it was still hopelessly wrong. Again, a minor thing in the grand scheme (although if you’re paying extra you expect it done right), and the service was so good we can overlook it this time. It certainly won’t put us off trying Sabatini’s again although, as I told my wife, probably best leave ordering steak to the steak house in future.

June 16th: Sea Day

In all our cruising this was the first time we’d been at dinner when they did the traditional Baked Alaska Parade. Surprisingly noisy and long.

Our last day at sea and on a wonderful cruise ship was so depressing I clearly forgot to take any photos of drinks during the day. I’m pretty sure we had some, though. Instead, enjoy this final view from our cabin of the wake view after we’d rounded the top of Denmark and were heading down towards the English Channel and home.

I am a sucker for photos of massive industrialisation especially where they appear in a location as contrasting as the wide ocean under soothing skies.

Sea day activities on Princess Cruises ships are generally pretty laid-back affairs – cruising with Princess is about relaxation and returning refreshed and invigorated from your trip, not over-excited because of marginal interest gimmicks like racing tracks or zip lines – and we stumbled upon a putting competition taking place on the top of the ship. We watched for a couple of minutes but the location was a bit of a sun trap and it was surprisingly hot and we’re delicate little flowers both with genetic heritages that includes the gene that only permits pasty white and fire engine red skin tones.

Although this was a Baltic Heritage cruise, with this being the first sea day we were travelling northwards from Belgium up to and around Denmark so at this point any views of the water are showing the North Sea.

Around the swimming pools it was fairly crowded with practically no spare loungers to be had. This is always a bone of contention for many people and it’s a little annoying for me too.

A brief interlude for another classic Mark’s Grumble:

My biggest wish is that some of the loungers nearest the pools were reserved for those who actually want to swim in the pools. We frequently see people spread out on the beds right by the pool who clearly haven’t swum nor look like they have any intention of doing so. What is so important about being beside the pool? And why does it irritate me? Well, my wife and I like to swim, get out and read and drink for a bit, go back in for a swim, etc. Having to leave our bags and books up two flights of steps and around a corner completely out of view because every single chair within a 20-metre radius of the pool is taken up by people who don’t appear to like swimming always plays on my mind, affecting the swim (what if someone thinks we’re just hogging a lounger ourselves?) and if I’ve got my camera with me then it completely stops dead any planned swimming activities anyway.

One of the strong plus points of our cruise aboard Royal Princess was the adults only pool where availability of spaces close to the pool was far, far better. The Sanctuary area does have a small pool on the Grand-class ships but the shallow depth and small size make this barely adequate if you like to swim. On the plus side it is usually devoid of anyone else other than a few couples using the hot tubs. On this particular day wandering around the Crown Princess it was also devoid of water.

From the top deck we then descended the stairs to take in a stroll around the promenade deck, another feature we like on this class of ship.

Is there anything nicer than a wake view on a cruise ship with barely another object to be seen from horizon to horizon? Yes, as it turns out; plenty. However, it’s still a nice view and it’s not the sort of thing you will find on a land-based holiday unless something has gone catastrophically wrong.

Before returning to our cabin to drop off the camera and head off to one of the day’s attempts at winning the trivia (a regular event for us whether it’s a sea day or not, and we do pretty well on Princess cruises having won at least one quiz on every cruise we’ve taken with them) we finished off by hovering around the piazza for a few minutes to soak up some of the air-conditioned atmosphere out of the glare of the sun and to see what everyone else was doing with no port to distract them: drinking (we approve!) and queueing at the customer services desk (each to their own!) seemed to be the main things.

It’s difficult to keep me from snapping photos if the camera is in my hands even if I’d probably taken nearly-identical photos to those from the platform on previous Princess Cruises ships (or even the same one, as this was our second time on Crown Princess). You can never take too many photos, though.

We’re always fond of seeing or experiencing things that are the most or the least or the biggest or tallest or smallest, etc., so it was good to know that outside Asia the suspension bridge span of the Great Belt Bridge under which we would cruise was the longest in the world. There was a bit of haze on the horizon as the Crown Princess headed north between the two Danish islands of Zealand and Funen and it felt a little odd to notice the time ticking down when we were due to pass beneath the bridge yet still have no sight of it ahead. Slowly, the area on which we were standing in the shade started to fill up with more people.

Looking back at one point I noticed quite a bit of smoke coming from the stacks on the top of the ship. If you’ve seen many of my photos then you might be aware that I’m fond of the industrial feel in a photo; there’s a sense of brute force there and I think it forms a lovely contrast to a pleasant cruising picture. There’s no point pretending cruise ships don’t cause pollution, because they do. However, they’re vastly outnumbered by all the cargo transport systems around the world many, many times over so whenever someone moans about it using their phone or computer that will certainly have contributed to it all as well just roll your eyes and say nothing.

There was a noticeable buzz of excitement as the bridge started to loom into view and a sudden influx of more passengers onto the top deck and platforms of the ship. I’d selected my spot at the rear of the foremost, highest platform for a couple of reasons: because it was the highest, obviously, and because I quite like having some foreground interest in photographs. Whereas there seemed to be a lot of jostling for position and holding of cameras up high to take photos without obstructions I was more than happy to ensure people made up a portion of the pictures I was taking.

Cruising under the Great Belt Bridge was exhilarating. You can almost hear a whoosh! in your head as the concrete structure slips overhead surprisingly fast. You never really get a feel for how fast you’re travelling on a cruise ship at sea – especially one as placid as the Baltic – until you pass some static marker very close. And the underside of the bridge felt very close indeed. With the various masts ahead of us on the ship forcing the perspective somewhat there were gasps from people all around as it seemed like we only just cleared the bridge by a couple of metres; the reality was probably four-to-eight times that amount, but it still made for a fabulous experience and memory to treasure.

Another wonderful thing about an experience such as this one where a large group of strangers share a moment of amazement is the sudden sense of camaraderie that breaks out. Cruising with Princess over the years we’ve found that people who also enjoy our love of holidays at sea are generally sociable people anyway but you could see instantly far more talking amongst the groups who’d gathered to see us pass by the bridge. People were showing the photos they’d taken to everyone to compare and there was lots of small talk about how close the ship had been or how it compared to other under-bridge cruising that people had witnessed. I ended up speaking for some time to a solo traveller about photography in general who then turned out to live only a few miles away from us. Nice when that happens.

We waited for the stairs to clear a bit before making our way slowly down and back to the cabin to put away the camera, stopping for some shots of the busy top deck of the cruise ship. The day was young, there was a quiz coming up, and the lure of beers or early cocktails was starting to grow.

By the time we reached our room the Great Belt Bridge was starting to fade away into the haze in our wake.

To date this has been the only time we’ve passed under a bridge while on a cruise ship and it was a wonderful experience. Personally, I’d recommend getting where lots of other people are when it’s happening so that the excitement that emanates from your fellow travellers washes over you. I also think that if you can then try to get some people in the photos you take when you do something like this as they make for more emotive pictures to look back on later.

From our aft cabin balcony we had a lovely view of Gdynia first thing in the morning under clear blue skies and with favourable light conditions. The first thing that struck me was how much the harbour master’s office in the port looked like a duck. Maybe it was designed that way; maybe it’s just a case of pareidolia.

We were docked alongside the Polish Emigration Museum and from our position could see across to the naval ships in the Oksywie area of Gdynia and a great deal of commercial docks almost spanning the rest of the horizon. Not far from the port there appeared to be a monument made of boulders although the reason for it being there was not one we discovered.

We’d picked an excursion into Gdańsk for a number of reasons (history and amber availability) and had pretty much discounted Gdynia as a location to explore but our coach ride through it showed off some fabulous modernist architecture and quite a lot of street art, and reading about the port city afterwards I’ve realised that it seems like it has a lot to offer a traveller.

At the conclusion of our excursion we were returned to the port to board the ship.

Back on Crown Princess there was time to gaze out of our aft-facing balcony once more at Gdynia and grab some more photos of the area. It was interesting to see how the movement of the sun and the changing light conditions affected the vibrancy of the photos and I pulled out my telephoto lens as well to see some more distant details of the port area at the expense of further picture quality degradation and narrower light range.

The presence of the naval vessels reminded me of our cruise on Star Princess to Chile where all the ports there seemed to contain representation from the country’s sea-going military power.

There was also a tall building in the port of Gdynia, appropriately named the Sea Towers, that brought to mind endless hours of time playing Half Life 2. I can only hope its interior is less heart-stopping.

It was quite interesting that while I was leaning out from the back of the ship to take photos of the area there were people in the area taking photos of the ship; whether they were locals or people from our cruise ship who hadn’t boarded or other visitors to the city I couldn’t say but one of the photographers was wearing socks and sandals and I’m only mentioning it because that’s a crime against humanity in my book.

For a port with a lot of commercial activity it was nice to be docked some way from the containers and cranes for a change. Neither the most attractive nor interesting of ports we’ve visited while cruising over the years but the city itself warrants some further exploration at some time.

Following on from our cruise stop in Poland we would have two days at sea returning home with a highlight to witness coming up of cruising under the Great Belt Bridge as we passed Denmark.

The speed of the cruise ship was necessarily low and with little wind to cope with this made for a wonderfully tranquil transit through the thousands of islands protecting Stockholm.

One interesting thing to keep an eye on from our aft cabin balcony viewpoint was the Tallink cruise ferry that was following us and would continue to do so through the night as our next stop would be the Estonian capital to which it was also heading.

At one point we slowly overtook a yacht enjoying the pleasant summer sunshine of the evening in the Swedish waters.

It had been almost uniformly dull weather-wise during our day exploring Stockholm but we’d had a wonderful time there and seen enough to know that it would be a place we’d love to return to at some point. Having really nice weather to finish off our flying visit to Sweden and help us appreciate the spectacle of the archipelago was the icing on the cake.

Back on board the ship I took a few more photos from our aft cabin balcony – more-or-less the same sights but from a slightly lower angle – as we waited for departure and what would turn out to be a pleasant cruise through the Swedish Archipelago.