Bergen would also be the first Norwegian port of call for our 2025 Ambassador Ambience cruise in search of the Northern Lights, but only because we’d not been able to dock at Haugesund as planned for the day before and had been treated instead to a lovely bit of scenic cruising along Hardangerfjord instead.

We still hadn’t seen any excursions that really grabbed us by the neck and said “Do us!” so we’d decided we were going to tackle the city on foot once more, only this time with more of an idea about what to see and with modern technology in the palm of our hands allowing us to track where we were. It’s weird to think about those early cruises when something as simple as opening a map on the phone wasn’t actually possible and when you relied far more heavily on printed material and a general sense of direction.

We decided to stay aboard Ambience for a late, quieter breakfast and the early morning trivia, and with the ship being emptier and there being less competition this allowed us win a coveted Ambassador Cruise Line stress ball. If you’re feeling envious about this then you may borrow the ball to squeeze it a few times and return to something approaching your normal temperament.

While I don’t know for sure where Crown Princess had docked back in 2013, I suspect it was to the south west of the city centre. Ambience, however, was docked on the northern side of Vågen, the bay that enters the central part of Bergen and around which the oldest buildings can be found. Our loose not-much-of-a-plan for the day was to walk around, pay a bit more attention to the sights and architecture, and to make our way to the city’s aquarium which was on the southern side of the bay. The first sight we came to was that of Bergenhus Fortress and the Rosenkrantz Tower nearer the road. The fortress, built to protect the harbour entrance, dates to the middle of the thirteenth century when Bergen served as the capital of Norway before Oslo supplanted it.

A statue of Sigurd Asserson was initially a bit of a puzzle as this particular civil servant’s history didn’t seem to connect him to Bergen at all, but he did serve as director of the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries from 1918 to 1937 and that entity’s headquarters are in the city. Understandable, really, given the easy access to the North Sea and the large number of fishing vessels in Bergen’s harbour.

As we were passing the area we popped into Bryggen, the old Hanseatic quarter of the city and popular tourist spot. We’d explored here on our previous visit to Bergen and my wife had bought a ring there that she’s wearing now even as I type this. It’s an attractive part of the city with distinctive, tall, wooden-boarded architecture, but there wasn’t a whole lot of places of interest to us within its narrow alleys on this particular trip.

The building with the distinctive stepped and crenellated gable below looks like it is or was a church but the religion in this case was meat, as the structure, Kjøttbasaren, built around 1874, was originally a bazaar dedicated to controlling food fraud and hygiene. These days those inside or out will still be worshipping food and drink as the building hosts a restaurant, bar, and global coffee brand.

As we reached the innermost point of Vågen we passed another building familiar to us from our first visit to Bergen. The prominent, white-boarded building promoting its restaurant and microbrewery was something I photographed over a decade before so I had to do so again from about the same position, this time taking advantage of the sunshine and bright blue sky to really make the structure pop. We do like microbreweries but from reading online it looked like this was a place you could only visit as part of a group tour and tasting experience rather than just arrive and sample some beers. Possibly true, possibly not. I guess if you were to eat there then you could order drinks too, but none of the online information was very clear and as it was still quite early in the morning we didn’t pop in to verify one way or the other. It was in the back of our minds that we might visit it on the way back to the ship later in the day although we wouldn’t end up doing so.

We continued our walk on the southern side of the harbour, looking across the cool and inviting water to the parts of the city we’d already passed by.

Probably my favourite piece of architecture on this side of the water was Skur 14 Øvningslokaler For Musikk, a repurposed space for musicians to rent out rehearsal spaces and put on small concerts. I couldn’t find anything about the building history but it has a blend of late 1930s Art Deco Streamline Moderne with the sci-fi feel of Googie architecture that emerged from it in America in the 1940s.

Despite being surrounded by hills, Bergen is generally pretty flat, but as we neared our destination on the Nordnes peninsula we did need to head up a relatively short slope and it was here that my wife aggravated an old injury. We would end up curtailing several other vague plans for the day as a result, not wanting to make an irritation into something worse with the promise of snowy destinations later in the cruise, but for now we pressed on towards the aquarium.

For reasons I can’t remember we couldn’t get in to see the fish tanks but the rest of the aquarium was open and with penguins, otters, seals, tortoises, lizards, and frogs featuring highly in my wife’s list of favourite animals (everyone’s got one) this wasn’t too much of a disappointment. We spent a lot of time in particular around the penguins. Coloured tags on them could be matched up to a list of names around the enclosure and we were thoroughly entertained by the occasional inelegant diving off the rocks into the water.

With the aforementioned aggravated injury to my wife on our minds we decided we’d make a slow loop back around to the ship via one other identified target to hit. First up, we passed another fortress – Fredriksberg – which didn’t provide any option to explore inside although a statue outside it dedicated to mothers and children in war made for a decent framing device for a photo.

The place we’d aimed for, and eventually found after a few wrong turns, was Apollon Platebar, which the website may lead you to suspect is just a vinyl record store. It is one of those, and a very nice one too if you want to find something a little different, but it’s also a craft ale bar with a great list of beers to try. Did you know that we like local ales and ciders when we travel? Well, now you do. We stayed for two and, with no need (or desire) to rush back to the ship, we would have stayed for more but we’d come dressed for the conditions outside – surprisingly warm and sunny – while the interior was apparently kept at “just above fridge levels”. The locals possibly found it toasty but we got cold enough to cut our planned drinking session short. A bit of a shame but we’d definitely come back, albeit with more layers.

We started now on the bimble back towards the cruise ship and this took us past several sights we remembered from visiting Bergen in 2013: the pavilion, the Sailors Monument, the Grieg statue, and Sæverudmonumentet, which appears to be a deconstructed Stargate. The person with gull on his head represented in the statue atop the tall pillar is Christian Michelsen, involved in the dissolution between Norway and Sweden, and the first prime minister of an independent Norway in 1905.

We’d been informed that Ambassador Ambience would be staying in port overnight so there was some discussion between me and my wife about whether we would head back out after getting on board, showering, and having some dinner, just to see what Bergen’s night life was like, keeping an eye out for places that wouldn’t be too far from the ship as we headed towards it, but in the end we decided not to risk any more strain on already injured limbs. We took our time retracing our route along the harbour waterfront as the sun got lower in the sky with an occasional halt to do some souvenir shopping.

To finish off this day spent in Norway’s second city here’s a look at the view from our balcony and some food and drink we enjoyed on the ship.

It was good to be back in Bergen and there are more things there that we’d like to see whenever we next get around to visiting it. Hopefully, less than a decade between trips this time. The aquarium would be worth a return just to see the tanks we’d missed out on viewing on this occasion, and we certainly wouldn’t be averse to revisiting the bar too in order to see how many other beers we could check off.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series my wife gets the chance to rest her injured leg on a sea day after a morning sail away from Bergen.

Hardangerfjord is Norway’s second longest fjord and it’s actually the fifth longest fjord in the world. We wouldn’t be cruising its entire length, though. We’d be making our way slowly as far as the waterfall Furebergsfossen, a distance of about eighty kilometres from where the fjord met the North Sea.

The earliest parts of the scenic cruising through Hardangerfjord didn’t offer a lot to see as the land near the coast was low-lying, although the very distant snowy peaks promised there would be more impressive views of mountainous peaks to come.

We’d booked a balcony cabin for this cruise even though for older, smaller ships such as Ambience this can push the price of a cruise up quite significantly. Our balcony was on deck 10, forward, starboard side, and while this provided a great, sheltered spot from which to see at least one half of the scenery passing by, it also had another benefit in that it was about a dozen metres back from a forward viewing platform. I would be able to spend the time during the scenic cruising either sitting in our room to warm up, popping out onto the balcony, or braving the elements at the front with a few tens of other passengers. It was bitterly cold as the ship was moving and, even though it was sunny and the ambient temperature wasn’t awful, there was a wind that seemed to be coming down the fjord from the snow-topped mountains, carrying a lot of ice in its grasp.

Hardangerfjord has good conditions for fish farming and we’d seen several examples of farms already when something more unusual caught our eyes. Impossible not to, really. From a distance it looked like an alien spacecraft had crash-landed onto the water, and the similarity to the ship in the film Flight of the Navigator was hard to miss. This was actually Salmon Eye, a floating exhibition centre educating visitors about the aquaculture industry which also offered a rather unique dining experience in its restaurant. It sounds like it would be a fabulous place to visit.

The village of Ænes looked absolutely stunning on the lower land framed by mountains.

The wind that had felt like it was blowing over the snowy peaks down to our ship could actually be seen doing exactly that at points along Hardangerfjord.

We eventually reached the furthest point along Handangerfjord that we were going to go. This was Furebergsfossen, a glacier-fed waterfall. It’s sometimes easy to lose sense of scale when you’re cruising through Norway’s fjords and this was an example where it happened to us as we’d initially thought “Okay, it’s a nice waterfall, but it’s not that spectacular.” And then we spotted the cars passing by on the road and we had to reevaluate the size of the natural wonder.

Ambience stayed at Furebergsfossen for a little while, giving everyone a good chance to see it wherever they were on the ship and also allowing the ship’s videographers to launch a drone to record some footage. We took the opportunity to grab ourselves a light lunch on the top deck and it was good to see how many people were out to enjoy the views.

And then it was time to turn around and head back down Hardangerfjord and out to the open sea.

The low, early evening sun absolutely transformed the colours of the Norwegian landscape.

Rounding off this day of scenic cruising along Hardangerfjord here’s a look at what we had for dinner that evening in the main dining room aboard Ambience.

We had a few drinks in Raffles and then spent some time in the Observatory at the end of the night. We’d do that a lot on this cruise. They’re each some of the most beautifully-decorated spaces we’ve ever experienced on any cruise ship.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at Bergen which was the first Norwegian city we ever visited, taking place on our second ever cruise over twelve years earlier, and this would be the first time seeing the city again since that occasion.

What was the purpose of that preamble? Was it just to pad the content out on what’s going to be a post devoid of very much information at all? That definitely factored into it, yes, because I am a verbose bugger even when I’ve got nothing to say, but it’s also to point out that just because we did absolutely stuff-all on this first day at sea aboard Ambassador Ambience, that’s just what we like to do. Everyone’s different. For the sort of activities you could get up if you were cruising on this ship, here’s the programme of events for the day.

On another day we might have attended the guest lecture or the other talks aboard, or we might have set ourselves up somewhere so we could at least watch one of the games taking place, knowing that we’d have needed to be absolutely hammered to even consider joining in (we’re shy, you see). However, on this particular day we grabbed our books, found quiet spots, and contented ourselves with some reading and trivia, just as I explained at the start of this write-up. Naturally, there was some sea-gazing too because a guaranteed sight on any sea day is the actual sea, and we really like the sea. This was the North Sea and we were on our way to Norway having left Tilbury on Ambience the evening before.

One of those quiet spots for reading was the Botanical Lounge, a place I’d somehow not managed to photograph on embarkation day. This was a bright and airy space, bringing the feel of a stately home’s orangery onto the ship. During the cruise it would be where some trivia games were held, the book club met up, and some acting vignettes took place, and in the evening it often hosted the piano and violin duo who were certainly a pair of characters. We weren’t entirely sure that they weren’t international assassins stationed at sea.

There are people who cruise who really like formal night. It’s a chance to dress up and embrace the rigid class structure aboard ocean-going liners of high society of the early-to-mid twentieth century. We’re not huge fans, but we don’t mind making an effort occasionally just to be part of the crowd. I don’t have the sort of body that looks good in a tuxedo and bow tie but I suffer through it because when all is said and done, it’s just for a few hours. We’re not the sort of people who think that just because they’re paying for a cruise (just like everyone else) they should get to do whatever they like. That’s a very selfish and immature attitude and it immediately means you’ve got no grounds to ever complain about anything anyone else ever does in any situation. Trying to enjoy a special occasion in a restaurant with your spouse but there’s a naked man on the next table watching TV on his phone and shouting at the top of his voice while coating his body in spaghetti? Well, he is paying for the meal so…

I went off on a tangent there. You could probably tell.

Formal nights on cruise ships tend to coincide with sea days and so we duly donned our poshest of clobber as the afternoon sailing northwards drifted into evening. We hit the Purple Turtle pub ahead of dinner in order to take part in the “Nice & Easy Trivia.” The name is a deliberate lie as the trivia on Ambience was anything but easy, but that made it that much better. We like a challenge. And I also like to have a Vodka Martini when I’m dressed up for the occasion. If I’m going to look like James Bond – well, if you squint, and you’re far away, and you haven’t actually seen James Bond to compare – then why not act a little like it? Nobody makes a Vodka Martini as well as I do (if I say so myself) but the ships do a passable job most of the time and this was perfectly adequate on Ambience.

Onto the dinner then. If you’ve read the first part of this cruise series then you’ll know that our dinner companions for our fixed dining hadn’t made an appearance on the initial evening aboard, but they were present this night and we got on perfectly well with them.

The food was of good quality, with nothing standing out but also nothing disappointing.

After one drink in the Botanical Lounge we ended up spending most of the evening in Raffles with the very talented Alex Dennis on piano.

The first full day aboard Ambassador Ambience then concluded for us up in the absolutely gorgeous Observatory (as it would do most nights). We arrived at the end of a Silent Disco taking place. We’re not fans of these things – they’re rarely silent, and they’re horribly awkward things if you’re not sporting a pair of headphones yourself – but a lot of people do enjoy them and that’s all that really matters. Entertainment for us came in the form of someone dancing on the floor with whom we’d been chatting the previous evening. He spotted us walking into the quiet venue of shuffling bodies, squeaking shoes, and a small chorus of tone-deaf singing of multiple songs at the same time by different people, only to loudly shout “You’re late!” across the dance floor to us. Bar staff and others in the club who weren’t wearing headphones all turned to stare at us and wonder who we were and what we were late for.

The next day would see us stop at the port of Haugesund. Unless the wind had other ideas and the captain decided to take us on an unplanned scenic cruise along Hardangerfjord instead. Yeah, that.

This would be our first cruise with Ambassador although back in 2018 we’d spent a night sailing aboard the now-defunct Astoria with the now-also-defunct Cruise & Maritime Voyages, which can be considered a precursor cruise line to Ambassador or the ashes from which the Ambassador phoenix arose. Only less purple.

Cruising with a line for the first time brings with it some risk. Every line does things differently and targets different sorts of cruisers so it’s vitally important to do some research first to make sure it’s a good fit for your age, temperament, and expectations. Additionally, cruise durations have a big impact on what sort of cruising experience you’re going to get aboard. Short cruises attract a younger, more of a party crowd, and the vibe on the ship might be very different to something longer. If the cruise line doesn’t quite suit you then too long a cruise will feel like torture. If I was the sort of person who handed out advice to people looking for cruise answers, then I’d say that a week to ten days is a solid length of time you should aim for if this is your first time with a line, or with cruising at all.

We’re quite contrary people and we’re also pretty experienced now so for our very first cruise with Ambassador we decided to book a seventeen-day cruise above the Arctic Circle (our first proper time cruising that far north although technically we’d been on a ship that just straddled the line of latitude a few years earlier) in search of the Northern Lights at the top of Norway. We like Norway so this would be a chance to see more of the country and tick off some new ports. We like seeing the aurora (we’ve been lucky enough to see it a few times now). We’d dug into Ambassador enough to know that there was a very good chance we’d like cruising with them. It wasn’t that big a risk, and, thanks to Ambassador running a promotion at the time, the price per person per night worked out good enough to opt for a balcony cabin on the ship too. And we like balconies when we can justify the additional cost.

Among the many new things that this cruise would bring would be a new cruise port to depart from and arrive at. Tilbury lies on the north side of the Thames, just to the east of London. It’s certainly a place we could have driven to on the day of the cruise but for a more stress-free holiday we decided to travel up after work the evening before, staying at a hotel near Waltham Abbey. It was cheap, easy to find, cut a lot of the cruise day travelling out of the equation, and there were a couple of pubs close by so it worked well for us. We’d almost certainly do the same on a subsequent cruise from Tilbury, and at the time of writing this we do actually have plans for that very thing in late 2028.

Whether you’re heading to Tilbury for an Ambassador Cruise from the clockwise or anti-clockwise direction around the M25 you’re going to need to get off at the A13 and head east. As we’d stayed at Waltham Abbey we were coming from a clockwise direction so it was a longer drive than it needed to be, but it did mean we could avoid the Dartford Tunnel. I’m sure the tunnel is fine most of the time but we’ve been caught in it once before and our lives are better without that worry.

The signs to the docks were easy to follow and we were soon pulling into the car park where we were directed to a place to drop our cases off, then to the parking bays. From this point to stepping on board Ambience was about ten minutes and that includes walking with our hand luggage to the port building, checking in, having a photo taken, picking up our cards, and following the throng through the walkways jutting out from land to the jetty against which the ship was docked. It was so quick that I didn’t have any chance to take any pictures from within the cruise terminal building itself which is a shame as it’s truly lovely, but below you’ll see what the building looks like from the outside, as seen from our balcony a little later in the day.

The cruise terminal building was completed in the 1920s, just a little too early to embrace the Art Deco that would have totally suited its role, instead favouring some lovely neo-Georgian touches. Of historical significance is that the Empire Windrush docked there in 1948, bringing migrants from the West Indies to help in Britain’s post-war restoration efforts.

Boarding the ship brought us straight into the heart of Ambience. This was the spacious Centre Court, spread over three levels. We had arrived before the rooms were ready and we had a carry-on wheelie case with us so we decided not to have an explore of the ship – there was no rush, after all – but instead grab a seat in Centre Court as we could see some vacant. It would have been rude not have some drinks and we’re not rude people.

We were finishing up our second drink when the announcement was made that our cabins were now ready. As I’ve already mentioned, we’d booked a balcony room for this cruise, deck 10 forward (always nice as we’re Star Trek fans), starboard side, cabin 10135. The cabin was bright and clean with the bathroom coming across as understandably dated but perfectly fine. We weren’t on the cruise to spend copious amounts of time showering. Storage was incredible. You could pack for four people for a world cruise here. The television was small with none of the on demand offerings we’ve come to expect, but that wasn’t a big deal. We weren’t on the cruise to watch TV either. One thing that was a problem in this room – and this might have been a transient thing that’s since been fixed, or it might have been because we were heading to the far north in winter time with a lot of old people aboard – was the air conditioning’s base temperature of too bloody hot. If the thermostat did a thing then we never found out why or how. It was very warm in this room, to the extent that we ended up wedging a chair in the doorway to the balcony just to sleep at night. Yes, we slept with our balcony door open while cruising past snowy landscapes in the Arctic Circle.

We had time for a little explore now before muster and that began on the top deck where Ambience’s pools and Ambassador’s purple and green colour scheme took centre stage. We didn’t actually venture into the pools at all on this cruise and I’m not entirely sure why as they looked very inviting.

A friendly member of staff decided we looked parched and convinced us to grab another drink outside before we went forward to the Observatory, Ambience’s nightclub venue and crow’s nest area. We were blown away by how lovely the Observatory was during the daylight hours and we’d come to the decision very quickly at night that it was in fact the most beautiful nightclub at sea. The ship was designed with passengers in mind, not profits at the passengers’ expense, and you could really tell. The public spaces on Ambience aren’t just big and airy, they’re also gorgeously decorated. She may be an old ship with a somewhat unique look from the outside but she’s one of the classiest vessels at sea once you’re aboard.

Muster was held in the theatre for us and this was another venue that immediately surprised and impressed us. Leg room! So much leg room! We could stretch our legs out and not touch the seats in front.

If we have a balcony cabin then we will typically enjoy the sailaway from our balcony with a drink in hand. However, not only was Tilbury a new port from which to disembark for us, it also meant we’d be sailing along the snaking course of the Thames before hitting the open sea. This would all be new to us and so we wandered out both forward and aft to catch the evening departure views. One of the big benefits of our cabin being forward on deck ten was that we were on the same deck and only a dozen metres back from a forward viewing spot under the bridge. We’d end up popping out here a lot on this cruise because Norway’s landscape encourages that sort of behaviour. The sunset scenes from the ship’s aft were a particularly nice view for our first night aboard Ambience too.

Ambassador do fixed-time dining which isn’t our preferred choice but we understand why a lot of the older and smaller ships do things this way. We had the late sitting and were on a table for four, only our table companions didn’t join us for this first night. In fact, we probably only saw them about half the time as either they were trying some speciality dining or we were or we’d eaten late and hit the buffet or they’d decided on the buffet or they’d got talking to other people and missed dinner entirely. That saved us having to come up with new conversations every day, at least. Service was superb. Food across this cruise was good, without being spectacular, with the exception of one speciality evening which very positively impressed us. You’ll have to wait for that write-up.

After dinner we found ourselves in Raffles, the up-class piano lounge on Ambience. Again, just stunning decor with a height that just made it feel that little bit more special again. The pianist was excellent on this cruise – actually, all the performers were excellent – and this would be our early evening venue almost every evening. We finished this first night by taking an elevator up to the Observatory and this started our fun game of seeing what elevator decoration we’d get. Polar Bear on this occasion, as you can see. Quirky, but simple fun.

The Observatory at night was utterly stunning. Various sorts of entertainment would take place here across this cruise but it would always end with a late-night disco, and we’d almost always be some of the last people in it each night. On this first evening aboard Ambience we got talking to a guy who’d known Divine. Disco royalty.

Ambassador don’t run a late-night buffet but they do bring around trays of nibbles at about eleven o’clock each night. Odd, we thought, on our first night on the ship, but by day three we were already experiencing a Pavlovian response of extra salivation as snacking time approached and we wondered what choice there’d be to tempt us now.

That’s the end of our first day aboard an Ambassador Cruise Lines ship. In the next post in this Ambassador Ambience cruise travelogue series there’s a sea day and formal night dinner to look forward to.

Yes. A lot better. Aren’t you happy that I’m not one of those people who asks a preposterously leading question and then says something inane like “Find out at the end”? I like to save people time. You probably don’t even need to look at any of the pictures now at all.

This final post in the travelogue series will simply contain some of the many photos that I took while we spent close to ninety minutes aboard a paddle boat on a sightseeing tour along the Fort Lauderdale waterways. This was a trip that allowed us to see a huge number of houses owned by obviously rather wealthy individuals, some of them famous, plus a great range of architectural styles. We’re fans of architecture, and we’re nosey and love a good look at fancy houses, and we like a good boat tour, so this ticked a lot of boxes for us. I won’t go into all the details of the houses, even though many had histories and famous owners (past or present), and yes, that’s because I wasn’t paying attention to the boat commentary, but the photos should serve as a good taster for what to expect on a tour like this if you’re either visiting Fort Lauderdale for pleasure, or starting or concluding a cruise in the port city.

For far more photos of this tour – and larger ones too, just the way you like them – you can check out my Fort Lauderdale Flickr album.

First up, the view from Caribbean Princess just before we disembarked.

Next, after a short ride by bus from the port – which was crazily busy as their computers had gone down so they needed to revert to manual processing – we arrived at where the Carrie B was docked on the New River.

People who like cruises like ducks for some unfathomable reason, and there was a big one opposite our paddle boat as we found a seat on the top deck.

And now for some of the sights on this tour.

Always nice to do some cruise ship-spotting when we’re out and about, whether we’re on a cruise at the time or not. On this particular day we could see Enchanted Princess, one of the Princess Cruises fleet of ships we’ve not sailed on yet. Of course, as soon as the opportunity turned up to snap a shot of what had been our home for the previous sixteen days we had to grab a picture of Caribbean Princess too.

We finished our tour where we started it. The embarkation and disembarkation point for our boat tour in Fort Lauderdale was next to the Historic Stranahan House Museum, the oldest surviving structure in the county in which Fort Lauderdale sits. Naturally, with this being America, terms like “the oldest” come with the caveat that us Europeans tend to snigger a little bit when we hear them. Stranahan House dates to 1901 which makes it about the same age as the very standard, terraced house we call home.

And a short ride to the airport later was followed by a flight home that finally marked the end of our lovely holiday.

A daily account of the actual eight days-long crossing of the Atlantic wouldn’t be of huge interest given that this was the relaxation phase of the cruise so, while we’d headed off to explore new things at every port during the first half of our trip from Italy to America, at this point everyday life consisted of reading, swimming, doing trivia, listening to music, enjoying the sea views and sunsets, drinking, eating, and hitting the nightclub, often until they switched the music off and lights on.

Instead of all that, and following on from a post where I took some photos of Caribbean Princess, this post is going to focus lightly on some of the dining venues we enjoyed during this latter half of the cruise. If you head back into the series posts you can see some of the daily meals we had, including sample dining room menus and speciality dining at the Crown Grill steakhouse (you can find that here: Two Mediterranean Sea Days Aboard Caribbean Princess). There’ll be no main dining room menus here, just some sample meals grouped by course, but the other speciality options on Caribbean Princess were all tested on this week on the ocean so you can see what we thought about them below.

Planks BBQ

You never quite know what you’re getting when something says “barbecue” or even just “BBQ”. Is it just going to be a smoky, charcoal taste like you’d get from something grilled over a pit in the UK? Is it going to be something coated in a super-sweet sauce? Is it going to be something with heat (i.e. revolting and painful chillis)? I don’t mind the first two types. My wife can just about cope with the first type. Both of us can’t stand so-called “heat”. All of this is why we approached a booking at Planks BBQ with a small amount of apprehension. Worst case scenario, though: we could always eat in the buffet if none of this meal was palatable.

As it turned out, however, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal at Planks but we would have needed another stomach each to eat everything. We skipped out on the dessert (much to the waiter’s shock) because we couldn’t face another bite, and no, we didn’t want a doggy bag (much to the waiter’s shock again). In fact, we were both full after the chowder starter, and this would impact how we dined at Steamers later in the week (coming up after the photos), with the two dining options operating on alternate nights in a section of the buffet area.

You can see how much food there is below, and it was great quality. If we were on another Princess Cruises ship with Planks BBQ on it then we’d almost certainly book it again after a full day of starvation.

Steamers Seafood

When it comes to seafood we’re both quite picky. I can eat fish of most types, and that’s about it. My wife will only eat white, boneless fish, but she’ll also happily devour lots of other seafood: prawns, mussels, lobster, etc. I would gag in those situations. We knew that Steamers Seafood would present a challenge but, thanks to also expecting it to be massive thanks to the previous visit to Planks, we changed up the way we ordered (much to the waiter’s shock), electing just to have one main course between us despite paying for two. He was the same waiter we’d been attended by at Planks and he remarked that we were unusual in not wanting the doggy bag option again. Unusual, or just not American. Who would take cooked seafood back to their room? There’s no oven, no microwave. Madness.

We enjoyed Steamers – and the sea view for the evening was lovely – and it’s certainly good value for money, but we preferred Planks of the two alternating dining options.

Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria

We will typically pick an Italian restaurant over any other type; it’s a cuisine that suits us. And Sabatini’s on Princess ships suits us very well too so it’s a venue that we’ve dined at many times on many ships. You can find examples of this on this site if only you knew how to use the search button, and, to be brutally honest, most of those occasions were better than this one. There were unavailable courses, poor quality bread, and service that was all over the place. It wouldn’t stop us eating at Sabatini’s again, but recent price hikes would.

Main Dining Room

As I’ve already mentioned, rather than present menus and meals in full here – there are numerous other examples of what you can expect to have for dinner in the main dining room on a Princess ship elsewhere on this site – I’ve grouped some of the starters, main courses, and desserts from our second week on the ship together as more of a photographic feast for your eyes.

I tended to find more choices among the starters that I could eat, or would be prepared to try, than my wife. All the soups below are hers, as a result.

One of the main courses below is lentil burgers with fried eggs and it’s a meal I had on another Princess ship once just to see what lentil burgers were like, and it was surprisingly nice, and nice enough that I was happy to see it on the menu again.

Princess usually do very well with desserts, and if there’s nothing great to choose from amongst the options of the day then there’s always the “Princess Favourites” including the usually gorgeous New York cheesecake to pick. Usually gorgeous. For some reason on this cruise if there was a chance to put gelatin in the recipe then as far as the chefs were concerned there was no such thing as too much gelatin. The desserts looked very pretty even if sometimes you wondered if you could bounce them off the walls.

International Café

We remember cruising with Princess Cruises before they had International Cafés on most of their fleet, and we’ve cruised on ships that don’t have one since then, and let me tell you this: the International Café is fabulous. We weren’t using it while coming back aboard after a day in port during this second week on the ship (for reasons that should be obvious), but it was the place to head for something to soak up some alcohol in the early hours of the morning after Skywalkers thanks to its 24-hour opening. Savoury snacks, rolls, cakes, and cookies. Lovely.

A perk of the Plus Package that we had booked at the time of this cruise was that you could get two premium desserts a day, which could be a fancy sundae or it could be a slice of large cake from the International Café. We tried a sundae each once, and we tried a slice of cake each once, with the cake mostly chosen just so we could send a photo of us enjoying it in the sunshine on our balcony with a glass of Prosecco to people back home who were experiencing terrible weather at the time. You would, too. The sundae was disappointing but the cake was perfectly fine. I’ve no idea who in their right mind would want two a day and I’m guessing that message filtered back to Princess Cruises because they’re no longer included in the packages. Are they worth paying for? Depends how much you like sundaes and cakes.

Conclusion

Food variety on Caribbean Princess was very good, even if the quality was a bit hit-and-miss on this cruise. A transatlantic cruise is usually a repositioning cruise for most lines so they’re good value for money – this certainly was – but that can mean that stock levels aren’t quite what they could be or the lack of port days might lead to grumpy crew since they can’t disembark. I’m just guessing. We’ve had better, basically, but that’s no reflection on any cruise you might be thinking of taking as these things will always vary from day to day, ship to ship, line to line, chef to chef.

As for the cruise: it was great. The combination of a busy first week with lots of new ports followed by a relaxing second one at sea worked wonderfully. It’s a ship class we know and love and it was fabulous to experience the Skywalker travelator once again, with this being the only ship in the fleet it’s now present on. There were members of crew aboard who’d we’d met before and who remembered us, so that made it special too.

That doesn’t quite conclude this cruise. There’s one more post in this series to go and that will describe our arrival at Fort Lauderdale and our debark tour to tour the intracoastal waterway by paddle boat.

We’ll start at the aft of the ship and the pool overlooking the wake.

The pool is sheltered above by Skywalkers nightclub, a unique arrangement within the Princess Cruises fleet now that Star Princess and Golden Princess have been sold. The travelator walkway leading to the nightclub is the Skywalk after which it’s named, and after which the nightclub is still named across the fleet’s Grand-class ships even though no other ship has the travelator. The reason for that is due to fuel efficiency as the raised nightclub adds drag and instability to the ship’s normal operation. A shame, because it’s a lot of fun to ride it.

A children’s splash pool area was also present around the nightclub walkway area but this wasn’t a cruise that families were interested in so it was never in use. Right under the walkway is another small but deep pool that was rarely if ever used to my mind, but the reason for that might have been that the high lip on it and metal walkway overhead didn’t make for any sort of view. However, it could be a good option for a quiet soak if it’s windy.

Below are photos of the Skywalk travelator and the daytime interior view of Skywalkers. At night the club would be flashing lights and disco music, but in the day it was usually a nice quiet spot for reading until the early evening when it served as the Elite Lounge, the private snacks and drinks venue for those who reach Platinum or Elite loyalty with the cruise line. Like us.

A generic sports court for all your generic sports needs, which typically involves bouncing balls noisily.

Moving forward along the top deck, this class of ship has two large swimming pools for use by everyone.

The pool photos above were both looking forwards on the ship. In the photo below you can see the view backwards instead, catching one pool and the Movies Under The Stars screen over the other pool behind.

At the front of the ship there is the Sanctuary Pool (also called the Lotus Pool). The Sanctuary is an additional charge retreat area at the front of the ship but the pool is free to use and for adults only. It’s small, but good enough for short laps and lounging about and because there are no children allowed and it’s not surrounded by hordes of people taking up all the loungers, it’s the pool that we most often use on these ships. The only real problem with this pool is that because it’s small but has two different depth levels in it, neither of which are particularly deep, it is susceptible to a lot of wave-generation if the sea conditions aren’t great and that means this pool tends to be closed off for safety more often than others.

You can’t say you’re not spoilt for choice when it comes to swimming pools on Grand-class Princess cruise ships.

Staying outside for the moment but moving down a few levels, Caribbean Princess features a full wraparound promenade deck and this affords the closest view of the ship’s wake which is noisy but mesmerising and a firm favourite sight for many cruisers.

The central atrium on Princess ships is known as the Piazza just to be different, and on these ships it spans three decks. It’s where some games take place – typically ones involving the ship’s crew versus passengers, or throwing games where the wind would be a problem – and music is played at points throughout the day. Shops encircle the upper and central decks around the atrium, while food and drink can be found in bars and the café on the upper and lower levels.

At the aft of the ship on deck seven there’s Club Fusion. Captain’s Circle events take place here, trivia is sometimes held, dance classes and group exercises sometimes take place, and in the evening there’s typically a mix of live music and/or comedy, followed by a late night disco session just to compete with that going on in Skywalkers.

Moving forward brings you to the Sabatini’s speciality restaurant (not pictured here) and the Wheelhouse Bar.

Crooners, around the top of atrium, is the Martini bar on Princess ships, and it’s a good one with a great range of drinks, so no surprise that we spent a lot of time here.

Down one deck there’s the Shore Excursions desk – which wasn’t getting a lot of attention during the second half of this cruise for obvious reasons – and the other main speciality restaurant, Crown Grill.

We didn’t really visit the theatre, the gym, or the casino so you’ll have to hunt elsewhere for photos of them.

A general outline of a typical sea day for us, not just on this cruise but certainly also on this cruise, was to get up, have breakfast, do trivia, find somewhere to read for a bit until our cabin was cleaned, go for a swim, have some lunch, read some more but on our balcony now, do more trivia, drink, eat, and disco into the early hours.

Our balcony was very large because decks 9 and 10 on this class of ship have some double-sized ones. We always pick deck 10, though, as it’s partly covered in case the weather is an issue. Deck 9 is fully exposed to the elements and potentially to people looking down from above (it’s never really an issue) but the rooms have lounge spaces too. It’s a trade-off for what’s most important to you.

The next post in this series will be the penultimate one and it will feature some of the food we enjoyed aboard Caribbean Princess on this second week, including speciality dining we treated ourselves to.

The Plaza de España was a lovely little spot and full of interest. I’ve already mentioned some of the architecture around the area when we first walked along this part of Santa Cruz’s waterfront earlier in the day. The public square hosts a shallow lake that was sadly dry when we were there and the design of the lake was undertaken by the architects Herzog & de Meuron which tied in nicely with our very first cruise and the pre-cruise tour when we spent time in Beijing and got to visit another of their works, the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium.

The plaza was originally the site of the Castle of San Cristóbel, the ruins of which were discovered during work to install the lake. We’d not realised it at the time, but you can view some of the remains in tunnels under the square, and it’s something we’d probably try to do when we next return.

We continued towards the port and passed a sculpture that caught my eye. Most sculptures catch my eye. This one was Arborea by Fernando García Ramos, and while it was clearly inspired by trees – the name was a big clue – I couldn’t help but notice that it also resembled the Sea Witch logo used by Princess Cruises.

Time for a little bit of ship-spotting now that we’d reached the port.

Firstly, here’s the aft view of our home for this sixteen-day cruise, Caribbean Princess, the only remaining Grand-class ship in the Princess Cruises fleet with that “shopping trolley handle” mounting configuration for Skywalkers nightclub. It may not be the prettiest aft view of a cruise ship but being able to ride the travelator to it is an experience that’s just not equalled on other ships.

Fred Olsen‘s Bolette was in port. At the time of writing this travelogue account we’ve only spent a single night in port on a Fred Olsen ship but we do have plans to cruise aboard Borealis in July 2026.

MSC Cruises Opera was the only other cruise ship docked in port but there were two ferries present, including one – Marie Curie – from Fred Olsen Express, the ferry service run by the operator in the Canary Islands. The other ferry was the Volcán de Tagoro, a fast catamaran ferry operated by Naviera Armas and named after an underwater volcano.

And that was that. We were now back aboard Caribbean Princess and we wouldn’t be getting off for another eight days. We ordered drinks to our balcony and sat out to enjoy the sailaway, watching the volcanic island slide past and give way to unbroken views of the ocean and sky.

We ate, we listened to music, we drank cocktails. All the things you do on cruise ships when you’re not in port. And because this was Caribbean Princess we rode the travelator to Skywalkers late in the evening to dance.

The next post in this transatlantic cruise travelogue series will cover the actual Atlantic crossing by our ship, starting with some photos of Caribbean Princess.

We had a bit of a trek with some backtracking on occasion to get to the museum to start with and that is due to the two-dimensional nature of maps on phones and the three-dimensional nature of some of the roads in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. What looked like a sensible route on the phone ended up taking us over a bridge overlooking the museum before we realised we needed to find a way to descend, walk past, then double-back to the building’s location. Still, it was a fairly nice walk on a hot (but not too hot) day, we weren’t in a mad rush, and I always enjoy chances to snap photos of streets and architecture as we stroll around new places.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife is twinned with Rio de Janeiro and part of the reason for that is that both locations hold what are considered to be the two largest and most important carnivals in the world. I won’t pretend that either of us have great interest in carnivals – although I very much enjoyed visiting Notting Hill one year for all the people-watching and photographing it enabled – but we do like museums, especially ones with quirky or unique themes, so the Casa del Carnaval was always going to be something we’d try to look at.

Casa del Carnaval was inaugurated in 2017 and broadly features two main areas, one with a permanent exhibition including costumes and historical items such as posters for the themes of each year’s carnival. Upon arrival we had a short chat with the people at the entrance who were interested in knowing where we were from and who seemed quite surprised when we mentioned that we’d arrived on the cruise ship. That might suggest it’s not a popular attraction for cruisers (I think there were two other people there while we were exploring and they didn’t look like they’d got off the ship) and that might be explained by the many excursions that tend to take ship visitors off elsewhere on the island along with the museum’s location, far enough back from the waterfront and tucked away to require a dedicated visit as opposed to stumbling upon it by chance. We enjoyed the look around, though, and if it’s not something you’ve done before and you’re after something a little different then it’s well worth the walk to see.

Colourful museum visit complete, we now knew that the craft ale place we’d identified would be open so headed that way. This took us towards the coastline and port, and as we approached the Puente Serador bridge we spotted some very nice, large, and colourful (again) street art decorating the arches. Always love to see street art.

A short walk from there brought us to The Craft Room. It wasn’t a large place, only had a few beers on tap, but had a great range of bottled ales and seating that opened up onto a shaded, peaceful, public square. We stayed for several beers, chatted with some of the locals about the state of craft ales on the islands, and bought some glasses to take home. In fact, the only downside to the place was that it closed during that early afternoon siesta period, and as this was a Sunday, it didn’t open again afterwards, so there was only a short window in which to enjoy the beers before we had to leave.

On the way back to the waterfront area of Santa Cruz de Tenerife we passed a large bronze sculpture of a mask, reminiscent of the comedy and tragedy masks of theatre and appropriately so as it was situated outside Teatro Guimerá. The sculpture is called Per Adriano and was created in 1993 by Igor Mitoraj.

The next post in this transatlantic cruise travelogue series will conclude our time on the island with a walk back to the ship and sail way from Tenerife to begin the eight-day Atlantic crossing part of this trip.

We’re not hugely into plants, or at least not to that extent that we make a point to identify them or notice particular species for any particular reason, but we do like visiting botanical gardens when we’re travelling. If nothing else then they usually provide the opportunity for nice photos of flowers or trees but in the Palmetum’s case there’s also the views from the location to add to the mix. Ultimately, this is a place we could recommend visiting if you’re in Tenerife for a number of reasons: fresh air, exercise, views out over the sea and back to the island, and more palms than you can shake a stick at.

Palmetum’s history can be briefly summarised as a landfill site until 1983, then early formation of the gardens from 1995 until 2000 when funding ran out, general maintenance thereafter, then additional work in phases from 2007 onwards with the first guided tours starting in 2013, and finally general admission for visitors appearing sometime after its official inauguration a year later. The botanical gardens host plants organised in broad geographical groupings with many of the species on endangered lists or categorised as extinct in the wild.

We entered, paid, used the toilets, and set off into the Palmetum. Initially, this required us following a climbing, twisting path on the landward side of the hill.

From this point we could see the Refinería de Santa Cruz de Tenerife which, even if you don’t like the look of industrial buildings and machinery and how they contrast with their environments (and I do, for my sins), is interesting simply in that it dates to 1930 and it was the very first refinery to be built in Spain. It actually closed down in 2015 and is due to be dismantled at some point with the land then to be split between public and commercial uses so this little bit of industrial history may not be around for much longer.

Signs had indicated a variety of birdlife that could be spotted but we saw very little of any animal life other than a few butterflies, some lizards, and some ducks and dragonflies drawn to the ponds around the top of the hill.

Some of the plants in the botanical gardens were more susceptible to the environment than others and were protected under a recessed, shaded area in the centre of the green space known as The Octagon.

Another lovely view from the Palmetum was back along the Santa Cruz de Tenerife shoreline towards the port with the impressive architecture of the auditorium in the middle ground. We could also spot the aft of Caribbean Princess from this vantage point showing just how far we’d walked.

In the next post in this transatlantic cruise travelogue series we conclude our time ashore on Tenerife with a visit to the Carnival Museum and a stop for some craft beers. No surprise there.