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.