Haugesund is very much more an industrial port than one for cargo, fishing, or tourism, and we could see lots of buildings and dockside equipment to facilitate the manufacture and maintenance of ships large and small as Britannia pushed away from the town.

An obvious item that caught our eyes in Haugesund as Britannia departed was the Penguins FPSO. Quite what the name meant, we had no idea, and just looking at the huge structure didn’t provide any further clues.

“FPSO. First Prussian Stationery Office?”

“That seems over-the-top for lever-arch binders and coloured card supplies even for the Prussians, and I’m not sure there are any Prussians any more.”

“There was a Franco-Prussian war in the nineteenth century. This might be the place where the captured troops were interred to be never heard from again.”

“The Franco-Prussian Soldier Oubliette, you mean? It’s plausible when put alongside a stationery office, but less so on its own, and since when did you become an expert – if that is the word – on nineteenth century European conflicts?”

Thanks to the internet we’ve since discovered that FPSO is a Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading unit, and Penguins is a field in the North Sea that Shell UK will extract non-renewable resources from in order to please its shareholders. Okay, all of us who aren’t sociopathic aren’t pleased by that, but from an engineering perspective it’s an impressive piece of manufacturing, and when you further consider that it was built in China and shipped to Haugesund on the back of a vessel designed to carry things like this weighing well over 30000 tons, that vessel then semi-sinking itself to slide out from under it, and remember that the F stands for “Floating” once more, it’s quite mind-boggling.

You didn’t visit this page to look at extraordinary lumps of red metal bedecked by cranes, though, so on with the views from our balcony on Britannia as our cruise ship sailed away from Norway.

Haugesund features on lots of cruise itineraries that will market themselves as “Norwegian fjords” cruises but it’s not located along or at the end of a fjord itself so the majestic sight of sheer rock faces gliding past and nearby snow-capped mountains is not one you will experience on a ship while approaching or departing Haugesund. But, once you’re just away from the port area there are lots of low-lying islands with aesthetically-pleasing rocky coasts and an abundance of trees and grass on some, and these are lovely to see. If you’ve spent the day ashore in town, as we had, then the rocky islets make a great natural contrast to being surrounded by houses and other types of buildings for the most part.

As our ship lost the sheltered protection of some of the larger islands nearer Haugesund, so those smaller land masses we now started to pass lost the short grass, bushes, and trees. The wind, especially with the ship now able to increase speed, became more biting and it wasn’t too long before we headed in from the balcony and into the warmth of our room.

On this penultimate evening aboard P&O Cruises Britannia we’d made a reservation at one of her speciality dining venues, Epicurean. We’d had overall good experiences at this particular venue on other ships in the P&O fleet (no, not you Iona) and with this being our first cruise on Britannia it made sense to compare.

The restaurant itself was very nice and there were no complaints from us about the service or location or menu, but my notes from the day simply state “good, but not great” and that’s been a growing feeling with successive Epicurean visits on different ships. There was a sense that the food was good enough to warrant the speciality tag, but not as clearly so as it had been when we’d first tried this dining location on a P&O ship. That may be partly us, becoming older and more jaded, but looking at the menu and photos now there’s not enough difference and innovation from the main dining options to me. I do believe these speciality dining rooms on ships should maintain a core identity but they also need to evolve a little more faster.

I’m being picky to some extent, and if you’ve never cruised with P&O before or you’ve never had an Epicurean meal on a P&O ship then it’s definitely worth doing as we all have different expectations and tastes, but we’re more likely as time goes on to become more selective in choosing to pay extra for these places if they can’t entice us in with something new.

So now we reach the final day on board Britannia and as I’ve already mentioned, it was grey, cool, and not particularly inviting outside – although the pools still attracted some hardy swimmers – and there wasn’t a whole lot to interest us inside either, although there’s nothing unusual in that. We like to relax in quiet places, do quizzes, read books, and have a few drinks, and the delights of free foot assessments, seminars on the benefits of sleeping with pink quartz under your pillow, and bingo (for which the jackpot still hasn’t been won!) don’t excite us.

A few photos from the top deck during our post-breakfast wander, and the view from our balcony a little later in the day after we’d given our room steward enough time to clean our cabin.

To finish this final sea day, some cocktails – we didn’t drink many because we weren’t on the drinks package (never worth it for us with P&O) – and the last evening’s meal in the main dining room.

We ended up chatting for some of the evening with a couple consisting of a Danish husband and German wife which I only mention as it’s fairly unusual to have non-Brits cruising on a P&O ship. A lot of these more regional cruise lines mostly appeal to and are patronised by their home nations’ travellers so P&O is almost exclusively British, AIDA is German, and Costa is Italian, but there’s nothing to stop anyone else from booking a cruise if they’re prepared to jump through a few hoops to do so. We may even try something like that ourselves one day.

And that brings this cruise on Britannia to a close.

We weren’t sure we’d like Britannia ahead of this holiday for a number of reasons. Being a Royal-class derivative we knew she’d have small balconies, the lack of an affordable drinks package for cocktail drinkers is not in P&O’s favour, and cruising on ships with fellow Brits is never our first choice for getting away from it all. We also didn’t know where she’d lie on the scale that has the older, smaller, better ships (for us) at one end and the larger, more modern, awful ships (for us) at the other. As it was, closer to the better ships by far. We liked Britannia and we’d be happy to cruise on her again with the right itinerary and pricing.

We were very happy with this itinerary too, giving us a chance to head back to some ports we’d not seen for a decade on what had been at the time the cruise that really instilled the cruising bug into us, and we got to new places too; not as many as planned, but that’s the weather for you, and if you’re going to have a cruise affected by the weather then you could do a lot worse than have it happen in the stunning surroundings of the Norwegian fjords.

If you’ve read the previous article in this 2023 Britannia cruise travelogue series then you’ll know that we’d already left our cruise ship Britannia and walked to the national monument Haraldshaugen, and if you’ve not read that but are interested in any of the bits in this article that reference the first post then now you know where the link to that is.

This post will take us on a walk from the monument south to Rådhusparken, the square and gardens in front of the town hall, then back to cross the bridge to Risøy, the small island at which our ship was docked, and fair warning here: there will be sculptures. Lots of them.

As mentioned in the first write-up from Haugesund, one of the things I really liked about the town and which wasn’t unduly affected by the rainy conditions of the day’s visit there was the variety of architectural styles present in the buildings. There was a lovely mix of traditional-looking houses with fish-scale roof tiles and wooden board panelling painted in a variety of muted colours as well as more modern structures. Nearer the monument it was the older style that dominated.

We had a closer look at Skåre Church on the way back. It wasn’t open, sadly, There’s a little more about its history in the previous post on this.

We next reached Byparken, a public space with grass, benches, a pavilion, and a number of sculptures dotted around. Ludolf Eide, who warrants a bust in the park, was a shipowner, merchant, chemist, bank director, and politician, perhaps owing to the small population of Haugesund in the second half of the nineteenth century and the need for locals to buckle down and take on two or three or more jobs to help out. In that lattermost occupation he served as local councillor, mayor, and vice-consul to both Britain and Denmark. Bjarne Dankel was trained in – and trained others in – church music, and after stints in other parts of Norway returned to his birthplace of Haugesund in 1971 to serve as cantor in one of its churches. Fløytespiller (“Flute Player”) was sculpted by Hanna Jessen in 1954 to celebrate the town’s centenary.

We passed more lovely examples of buildings in Haugesund before entering the more commercial area where shops and cafés were open and doing some business from the locals and tourists alike. The shops didn’t interest us, but we do like a nice sculpture and there were several animal ones here and there in the precinct area. These were by Skule Waksvik, a Norwegian sculptor who specialised in this form.

We’d been walking on a roughly straight route but I departed from it when I spotted an odd-looking sculpture off to one side. From a distance it looked like it had been adorned with garlands by the locals but this turned out to actually be part of the artwork itself. This was Gledessprederen, a 1979 piece by Fritz Røed, commissioned by Bergen Bank. It’s one of three copies of the piece. Don’t look into its eyes. That’s how it gets to you.

Our goal was to get to an open square in the town we could see on the map and the architecture started to modernise quite quickly at this point. Brutalist blocks and more abstract modernist pieces caught my eye and these not-so-historical places also served as canvases for street artists to add some splashes of colour to the place.

That square we were heading for turned out to be Rådhusparken, which had the town hall on one side, a large fountain, and a few more sculptural works of art around.

We’d noticed the name “Amanda” on several buses that had been passing us on our walk through the town. This turned out to be a sculpture by that name, named for a character in a song, and a life-size version of a far smaller award given out annually at a film festival held in Haugesund. The artist is Kristian Kvakland and this was unveiled in 1985.

City And Country is the name of the fountain that resides in Rådhusparken. Carved from red granite, this was the winning design by Nils Flakstad in a competition held just before World War II to sculpt one, but which wasn’t actually completed until 1949 for obvious war-related reasons. Imagery relating to the sea and daily life decorate the panels on the sides of the fountain’s octagonal basin.

Another shipowner got his own bust, although his wife got one too on this occasion. Knut and Elisabeth Knutsen gave back to the city in which they helped drive a lot of improvements to the infrastructure and port facilities that were also highly important to the business that gave them their wealth. The town hall in the square was built with funds from the couple in 1931 while Elisabeth later donated another large sum to improve the square itself. The Doe With Calf sculpture by Arne Vigeland (not to be confused with Gustav (see: Vigeland Park, Oslo, Norway)) was purchased with some of those funds. Another of the animal sculptures by Skule Waksvig – sea lions in a small splash pool that was popular with a little boy while we were there – completed the elements in the town hall square that caught our attention.

We started to head back towards the ship at this point, catching sight of Little Arild, a boy with sailboat sculpture by Sigurd Nome, some more of Skule Waksvig’s many animal art pieces in the town, and further examples of street art.

One of the things we’d very much liked to have done would be find a local bar and have a drink, preferably something relatively locally-produced, but the only place we could find on the map that looked like it might address this desire in Haugesund only opened one hour before our ship was due to leave. That time constraint and distance we’d need to cover to get back aboard, along with our recollection of just how steep a bridge it was we would need to traverse, plus our natural aversion to not leaving things like “getting back to the ship before it sails off” to the absolute last minute all added up to us skipping out and leaving the Hauegsund mainland behind us.

That bridge was as steep and unforgiving as we remembered it from the crossing earlier in the day, and just like then I made sure to stop a couple of times to take photos and have a short break. We’re not fit people.

Those old wooden buildings in their muted colours and variations on several designs looked lovely as we reached the ground level of Risøy and made our way to the port.

In the next post in this series we’ll be back aboard Britannia when I’ll share photos of the views seen from our balcony during the sail away from Haugesund, and then it’ll be just one day at sea before this enjoyable week’s cruise to Norway comes to an end.

It was raining first thing in the morning so we waited a while for the worst of it to ease off before setting off for our day ashore. The views from the ship weren’t the best. Haugesund may feature in cruise itineraries marketed as visiting the Norwegian fjords but if you’re expecting stunning landscapes even under the best of weather conditions then you’re in for disappointment.

Haugesund’s rise to some prominence in this part of Norway is due to being located on a stretch of water between land masses that provided ships with a shortcut that avoided what could be troublesome waters in the open sea. Fishing and trade naturally grew up in the area and Norway’s first king lived near Haugesund and was reputedly buried near here too, but more on that in a bit.

Our cruise ship docked at one of two islands that group together with the mainland to form Haugesund. Getting to the town from Risøy involved a short walk past some lovely buildings to a bridge which was only completed in 1939. Prior to this point moving between Haugesund and Risøy required use of a ferry. You’ll see from the photos below that the water over which the bridge crosses isn’t too wide but you might notice that it’s quite a height. It’s a pretty steep bridge to ascend so consider that if you’re walking.

Haugesund might not have had the high rocky faces of the fjords surrounding it but it excelled in its architecture which was incredibly varied. Art nouveau façades, modernist concrete structure, and wooden buildings of indeterminate ages were around every corner as we threaded our way roughly along the coast northwards once we’d reached the mainland.

We passed by the bottom of a public area given over to some water features and a statue at the top. Unsurprisingly, the statue was of fishermen. If you travel to any port in Scandinavia you can more-or-less be assured that there will be a statue of fishermen. This particular statue was donated to Haugesund in 1920 and was sculpted by Sofus Madsen. When we’d made our very first trip to Norway back in 2013 we’d visited Bergen and one of the first things to have caught our eye in the city back then had been a statue of a crying boy which, it turns out, had also been made by Sofus Madsen. Always nice to find connections like that.

The most important figure in the history of Haugesund is Harald Fairhair, first king of Norway, and ruler from 872 to 930 CE. Allegedly. Details of the period are a little spotty and owe much to considerably later tales passed down through subsequent centuries. There’s doubt that he even existed. That’s just the way of things, and it’s not unique to Harald here. I’m sure you can think of plenty of people far more-widely-known for whom much has been written but who likely never existed at all. Rupert the Bear, for instance.

Harald’s name appears in several Norse sagas, and in the nineteenth century his name became more prominent in Norway during the country’s move towards independence from Sweden. Everyone needs a hero figure. It was around this time that the determination was made that Harald lived and died near Haugesund which was very handy for the town and future economic benefits from tourism.

Our walk was taking us towards the Haraldshaugen monument dedicated to the king but before we reached it we happened upon a statue to Harald Fairhair on the coastline that was surprisingly popular with visitors. We bided our time to grab a shot without anyone in the way. From this point we could also see our cruise ship docked nearby.

When you travel around Scandinavia a fair bit like we do then you recognise a Lutheran church when you see one. Skåre Church is a mid-nineteenth century place of worship built around an octagonal layout. Records dating back to the fourteenth century indicate older churches stood around this area but with Haugesund being fully established as a town in 1854 there was a need for a larger church for the community.

The nearby memorial statue to Haakon Storsteen is a little bit of a mystery. He appears to have been a local man, an engineer in the merchant navy, who died when the ship he was on sank in 1944. I would guess that his family or the nearby church raised funds for the sculpture since he doesn’t seem to be very noteworthy otherwise. You can’t just put up statues to everyone who dies, you know. The living wouldn’t be able to move.

More fabulously variable styles of architecture punctuated our walk as we continued towards the main memorial. I particularly liked the mid-century modern house.

We arrived at the open, grassy area that was Haraldshaugen but the first thing to catch our eye was a large, stone cross on a small hill, and because it was slightly closer and there were fewer visitors around it we took a look at it first.

This was Krosshaugen, one of the earliest symbols of Christianity in the whole of Norway, dating to around 1000 CE, and possibly erected when local farmers were flexible enough in their beliefs to switch deities to worship. It was good to be able to get up and close to a historical piece like this and the small hill provided for some nice views around the area.

The Haraldshaugen monument was erected and opened to the public in 1872, commemorating the thousand years since the formation of Norway as a single kingdom under Harald Fairhair. The site is considered to be the burial location of Harald but nobody’s really checked, and the monument consists of a seventeen metres-tall granite obelisk on a mound surrounded by twenty nine smaller stone monuments representing the historic counties of Norway. Fans of prime numbers will be pleased.

It was a cool, damp, blowy day when we visited Haugesund and walked to the national monument dedicated to the first king so we didn’t spend a lot of time there; just enough really to take some photos from a few angles, climb the steps to the obelisk, and take another look at the views across this part of Norway’s coastline. It was still possible to catch sight of our cruise ship from here.

We’d originally planned to walk further along the coast, and you can see some of that route in the photo above, but it had taken us a little longer to reach this point than we’d accounted for and we decided instead to head back to the main part of the town and see what we might be able to find of interest in it rather than simply admiring the views along the shoreline, lovely though that might have been. Had we had better weather then we might have chosen differently.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover our look around Haugesund before we’d need to return to the ship one last time and head for home.

We’d checked to make sure that the brewery still operated in Flåm before embarking on this 2023 cruise on Britannia, so after our hike to the Brekkefossen waterfall it was to the Ægir BrewPub we headed. The wooden interior with its design reminiscent of stave churches or Viking halls was as we remembered it, only busier and a bit brighter thanks to the lack of heavy cloud and rain that had made up the weather conditions on our first visit. The beer was superb too with a range to suit all tastes, and with prices of everything in the UK having risen so much under an intervening decade of Tory corruption even the cost of the ales didn’t come as quite the shock to the wallet it had originally.

We had plenty of time to enjoy several drinks each in a place that got increasingly busier as more tour groups returned from their trips to see the Norwegian sights and some passengers similarly-minded to us headed for the pub. It’s always nice to see cruise ship passengers doing this sort of thing rather than heading straight for the ship, especially when, and especially so in the case of Flåm, the ship is so close. We had time for chats with people from the ship who we knew and had met before from elsewhere (the world of social media cruise blogging), and we got chatting with some Americans who were touring the country and had booked into the nearby hotel for a couple of days to use the village as a base. A very pleasant couple of hours.

As I’ve already mentioned, cruise ships dock very close to the village of Flåm, and in under five minutes from leaving the pub we were back in our cabin on Britannia. We grabbed a quick snack from the top deck then waited for the sail away on our balcony with a cup of tea – we can be sensible sometimes – taking in some final views of this most picturesque of Norwegian fjords locations.

After the mooring lines had been cast off we got to see the local port operators waving Norwegian flags joyfully to the passengers aboard, something we’ve noticed they do a lot in Norway. For all the talk there is of limiting the access of cruise ships to this part of the world, the locals, generally, seem to be happy enough to see visitors, and local businesses probably do very well from their visits.

For us then, and for you now, some photos taken from our balcony on Britannia as we cruised along the Aurlandsfjord. Aurlandsfjord is an arm of the longer Sognefjord, which is Norway’s longest fjord. If you like geology then you’d absolutely love cruising along this fjord and admiring the deep clefts, the sheer cliffs, the waterfalls appearing from between gaps in tree covers, the distant glacial peaks, and the colourful striations on the rocky faces as you pass. If you don’t like geology then you’d still absolutely love cruising along this fjord and enjoying the views of all those things because, seriously, how could you not!?

It’s entirely possible – indeed, very likely – that nobody in their right mind is visiting this website to see pictures of the food from the main dining room aboard Britannia in May 2023, but it’s also entirely possible – indeed, very likely – that people not in their right mind make up a hefty portion of this travel-related website’s visitors, so here’s what we ate that evening after leaving Flåm and cruising down the Aurlandsfjord.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll get to experience a new port for us in Norway when Britannia docks at Haugesund and we head off for a look at the Haraldshaugen national monument.

We’d last visited Flåm about a decade before when we’d taken our second ever cruise and hit this part of the world on Crown Princess. On that day in 2013 we’d gone off on an organised tour but had been left with enough time at its conclusion to look around the local shops, admire the views of the fjords, and discover a small brewery with fabulous, if expensive, beer (see: The Village And Cruise Port Of Flåm, Norway). The main thing we’d been looking forward to when we booked this week’s cruise to Norway on Britannia was returning to Flåm and seeing if the beer, the glasses, and the fabulous chairs in the brewery were just as we remembered them.

But, other than that desire to have a drink in a fancy pub – don’t sneer at something like that; it’s engaging with locals culturally and spending money locally, and more cruise travellers should do that instead of sloping back to the ship for lunch or not even getting off in a port – we had no plans at all for Flåm.

We’d booked this cruise fairly late – late enough for the more interesting excursions to sell out – so we’d decided that we’d simply see what we could see for ourselves in all the Norwegian ports for a change. It’s not something we normally do, and, to be honest, it’s not something we often really like doing either because we’ve found the things more of interest to us don’t tend to be walking distance from wherever the cruise ship drops you. Our expectation in Flåm was that we’d likely look around the village, see how far we could walk along the edges of the fjord, then spend some time and money in the shops and brewery.

From our balcony we could see Flåm spread out in front of us and in the distance, just visible in front of the ship from our balcony location, I could see a waterfall. We like waterfalls – and Norway’s certainly a good place to come and visit if you like waterfalls – and a quick check of the phone indicated it looked like a fairly easy walking route to it which gave us an additional activity we could enjoy on this day.

After breakfast we gathered our things for the day – camera, water, and sun screen because we’d switched from wearing multiple layers the day before to only needing t-shirts now (the answer to the question “What sort of clothing should I bring for a trip to Norway?” should always be a shrug and “All of them, maybe?”) – and disembarked straight into Flåm. We walked through the centre of the small collection of buildings in the general direction of that waterfall we’d seen.

We came upon a map of the local area pinned to the wall of a building, showing various walking routes that could be taken. What we would end up doing on this day, more-or-less, is the long, green route, number 3, shown in the picture below, walking in a clockwise direction. We didn’t really feel it was that long and with the exception of the ascent to the waterfall itself this was both easy on the feet and easy on the eyes.

One of the things we’ve still never done – and, admittedly, this was only our second visit to this place in Norway so this is not that surprising – is take the Flåm railway trip which, by all accounts, is supposed to be fantastic. It’s also very popular and likely rammed with people if you’ve just arrived on a cruise ship, though, so that’s part of the reason we didn’t consider it on this trip too. However, we did cross the rail tracks a few times while on this walk to the waterfall.

You can see for yourself just how beautiful the Norwegian landscape is around Flåm without me wittering on about it. There were frequent pauses as we enjoyed the late May sunshine in Norway for me to take a photo or ten and what I’ve included here is a small fraction of what I shot.

We eventually crossed over the water and made our way to the start of the climbing path towards Brekkefossen waterfall. This part of the hike was quite brutal on account of the uneven stone steps that led to the outcrop of rock at the waterfall’s base. By all accounts, this used to be a lot easier when it was just a dirt path, although I suspect that might have been only true as far as going up was concerned, and not particularly good for hikers in inclement weather conditions coming down.

The different heights of the steps didn’t allow us to get a good rhythm going and required frequent stops due to the tiring nature of them which I disguised as photo opportunities. My wife – whose dodgy knees, ankles, and hips have made it into many travelogues on this site over the years – made it about a third of the way up this steep climb then admitted understandable defeat and sat down on a step to wait for me to head up alone and return. While I was gone I’m pleased to say that a few other hikers checked to make sure she was okay and some people in another group ended up doing the same thing as us with some continuing and the rest waiting near my wife and having a chat with her.

The twisting, steep, uneven, and strenuous (for me) hike involved passing lots of people on the way down, each saying “Keep going, it’s not far, and the views are worth it.” I did keep going, it wasn’t far – although it took longer than you might think to complete it – and the views were definitely worth it.

Brekkefossen itself was thundering and fabulous from the small plateau on which numerous other hikers were resting or taking in the views, and with the sun out we were even treated to a rainbow in the gentle spray as the water hit the base near us. Gazing outwards and along the valley it was possible to trace the route we’d walked all the way back to Flåm and to see our cruise ship docked at the village port. Snow-topped mountains, fjords, a waterfall, wooden buildings nestled together: what more reason do you need to take the Brekkefossen waterfall hike?

I couldn’t spend too long admiring the scenery of the Norwegian landscape because I had a wife on the trail below somewhere, so once I’d stopped gasping for air and most of the more obvious sweat on my face had evaporated I turned around and completed the substantially easier descent to where she was waiting, passing goats and small cascades and stunning views on the way.

Back on level ground we then proceeded to follow most of the rest of the green walking route back to Flåm, although we crossed a bridge over the river earlier than it suggested and ended up retracing part of the way we’d come earlier in the day.

Overall, and with that weather we had in particular, this Brekkefossen waterfall hike is well worth doing if you like to get some kilometres under your belt and haven’t had enough of beautiful rocky landscape views already on your trip to Norway. As if you could. For the most part it’s a very easy walk but that ascent to the waterfall itself might take you by surprise with the exertion involved. But if I can do it, and you don’t have any debilitating injuries to contend with, then you probably can, too.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll head into the brewery in Flåm for some well-deserved, post-hike liquid refreshments before we wave goodbye to this incredibly attractive port of call.

We like to book excursions when we visit a new place for the first time but we’d booked this cruise fairly late on so a few of the excursion options were already off the table. Of the remainder, they would involve long bus journeys far from the town, and some of those were to places we’d visited before when stopping at other ports. That left us with looking to see what we might do in Nordfjordeid and, to be fair, there didn’t look to be much. But there was a museum and we expected that the scenery of the fjords would be nice enough that a simple walk around would more than satisfy us. We’re not too difficult to please, especially when spending time away from home and on a cruise ship.

We had our plan. The weather had other plans.

Britannia made her way as far as the town of Nordfjordeid in the morning as planned but we could already tell from being out on our balcony during the sail along the fjord that it was going to be very cold and windy ashore with the fjord acting as a wind tunnel whipping the air from distant glaciers along its length. Layers, we’d decided, would most definitely be needed.

That wind, though, turned out to be too much for the ship. Britannia would need more ropes to keep her moored safely than could be actually deployed in the port. An announcement from the captain informed us all that the port was therefore cancelled and we’d instead have a day of scenic sailing along the Nordfjord.

I’m sure a lot of passengers on Britannia were disappointed, and for those who’d possibly made their own plans with local tour companies this likely required some frantic emails or calls to cancel bookings, but for us this would prove to be a lovely day on the ship.

After breakfast and enough time for our steward to clean our room we made our way back to the cabin, spending the day sitting inside, reading, making some quite terrible tea (the only kind of tea you can make on a cruise ship is terrible – a requirement of the global tea cartel that mandates tea quality – but it’s warm, so there is that), and popping out onto the balcony frequently to take photos and videos of the stunning scenery.

It was incredibly cold stepping out onto the balcony of our cabin and long periods were accompanied by rain trying its hardest to become sleet. My wife mostly stayed inside, peering through the glass of the doors if I mentioned that something particularly interesting in terms of geology was out there. I was out enough, though, that I needed to keep my hoodie on and a coat over the top. It was bitter, but the views were so rewarding.

You cruise the Norwegian fjords to see scenery of huge rock faces, evergreen trees, waterfalls, mountains topped with ice and snow, and the Nordjord does not disappoint, no matter what the weather is like.

A beautiful, relaxing day on Britannia with hours of cruising along majestic fjords came to an end as the ship made its way back out into the open sea in order to track along Norway’s coast overnight and head to the next port of call, and one we were really looking forward to seeing again.

To finish this post off a quick look at some of the cocktails we treated ourselves to in the evening and the food we enjoyed in the main dining room. We opted for the same starters and main course; a rarity for us as we’ve got largely incompatible tastes when it comes to food, but it does happen when the meal options aren’t too inspiring or if the mood takes us. It was all very nice.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be seeing whether Flåm turns out to be as wonderful as we remembered from when we’d last visited a decade earlier and found that actually, yes, Norway can produce good beer.

Directly opposite our balcony was the part of Stavanger in which we’d seen the street art and had a drink in the bar just prior to walking back to the ship.

There’s not a lot to be said about the cruise away from Stavanger. While it’s a port that’s often listed on cruises claiming that they’re visiting the Norwegian fjords, it isn’t down a long one with stunning landscapes and towering rock faces to take the breath away. It’s actually a very short journey to get out to the open sea and that mostly involves passing a few low-lying islands. The low-lying islands are very nice, of course, and if you’re at all interested in geology then that adds something else to just the aesthetics, but a sail away or into Stavanger is one of the less memorable, let’s say.

I’m always interested in seeing other ships when we’re cruising around the world, and not just because I’m a fan of being on the sea or because I was born and raised and still live on an island city with strong naval connections, although there might be something to that too. As a keen inhabitant of the Fediverse I like to take part in some of the regular themes of posts that crop up across the various communities, one of which is a German one that posts ships each weekends. It’s nice to find interesting-looking vessels or ones with history to share.

The platform supply vessel Coey Viking stood out for all the obvious reasons you can see in the photo below. Eye-achingly bright yellow. Shaped like a truck without a shipping container to transport. It’s actually a hybrid ship, making use of its battery when operating close to shore to reduce environmental impact, which all sounds grand until you realise that the platforms it supplies are oil and gas ones at sea. I suppose every little helps, and I can’t go into too much about environmental impacts when I like to cruise, after all.

Of course, I won’t engage in any argument from someone trying to talk to me about how damaging all this is while using an expensive device made with rare earth metals, transported at great cost from the other side of the world. We’re all hypocrites, but falling out with those above your own personal line of this much hypocrisy is okay but that much is bad is how religions and cults form, and I’m an atheist.

You’re dying to know what it was we had to eat in the main dining room on Britannia that evening after our sail away from Stavanger, and fortunately I was there to take photos. Cruise food can be very hit-and-miss but I made notes at the time that this was actually very nice which suggests it was actually very nice indeed.

Entertainment on cruise ships is something we often steer away from and that was the case here too as we bought a bottle of wine and retired to our room early to watch a movie in the quiet comfort of our cabin.

In the next post in this Britannia cruise travelogue series we’ll be arriving at a new port for us in the form of Nordfjordeid. Unfortunately, though, arriving is all we end up doing and the day is spent cruising along the Nordfjord instead.

Across from the fairly narrow harbour of Stavanger there looked to be waterfront cafés, restaurants, and shops, and so we headed that way. It would also give us a nice view back towards Britannia at the cruise dock and that’s the sort of thing you’ve got to take photos of when you’re cruising or other fans of cruising will shun you. I like a good shunning as much as the next person, but sometimes it’s nice to oblige.

There was another interesting-looking ship alongside at Stavanger and this turned out to be MS Rogaland.

Rogaland was built in 1929 and served as a coastal liner between Norwegian ports with cargo holds, including cold storage and the capability to transport live fish. In 1944 Rogaland was alongside in Bergen unloading cargo when another vessel, Voorbode, taking explosives from Oslo for the Germans ran into difficulties and came in for repairs. It was close enough to Rogaland that when the German-requisitioned trawler suddenly exploded the ensuing wave knocked Rogaland to the bottom of the harbour and cracked her hull. She was subsequently raised, repaired, and used for other purposes through the decades until 1989 when historical ship enthusiasts bought her with the intention of restoring her to her 1929 glory. That goal was eventually scaled back to return her to her 1964 state instead and that’s more-or-less what you’ll see today.

Back to our walk around Stavanger; we soon came across Fargegaten, and you’ll know you’ve reached it too when Willy Wonka passes by you with shades on, muttering how it’s all a bit too bright and colourful for his liking. Ignore Willy Wonka. Fargegaten is beautiful. Every building – most wooden-fronted – is slightly different from its neighbour in style, and often painted in the most contrasting hues from the colour palette. The result is a vibrant explosion that could probably cut through the gloom of a rainy day, but luckily for us it was nice and sunny.

It won’t take you long to look around Fargegaten in Stavanger unless you stop in any of the businesses eager for your tourist money, and we might have done the same ourselves except it was impossible to miss the street art all around and we are very fond of street art. We ended up following roads – “Is that another one down there?” we’d ask each other – and soon strolled away from the busier area catering to visitors both from Norway and the cruise ship. Stencil work was most prominent from what we saw, some of it not quite obvious as to intention but plenty that proclaimed their messages loud and clear. Some good stuff here.

Before we finally hit a watering hole to reward ourselves for a good day’s exploration and cultural immersion we made a quick detour to take a look at the Valberg Tower. Built between 1850 and 1853, Valberg served as a watchtower for the city and at the time was the highest point in it with the duties of those stationed there including warning the people of Stavanger if there was a fire. The slope leading up to the base of the tower was just angled awkwardly enough to slightly turn my wife’s already-dodgy ankle so we decided not to go inside in case it was possible to climb even higher, because we’d both inevitably have done it and most likely one of us – I’m not saying who – would get injured worse.

We finished our time ashore in Stavanger with a couple of drinks in Bar Bache. Norwegian ale is not the greatest (well, there are exceptions – Ægir in Flåm being an obvious one that we’d visited in 2015 and would be visiting again later during this cruise) but the point for us is not just to spend locally but to experience locally too if we can, even if you have to suffer slightly. The bar itself was small with an old-fashioned English pub feel to it which was nice as well.

In the next post in this 2023 Norwegian cruise aboard Britannia travelogue series I’ll cover the views from our balcony as we depart Stavanger and head off to the next port of call.

The Stavanger Maritime Museum is located within old waterfront merchant buildings, and if you’re visiting Stavanger by cruise ship then they’re a few minutes away from where your ship is likely docked. Rather than a somewhat staid history of maritime industry in this part of Norway, the exhibitions feature authentically decorated and accurately reconstructed representations of businesses instead. This makes for a lovely leap back in time and a very nice way to spend some time ashore.

It’s no secret that we like to cruise – we were visiting Norway on Britannia on this occasion, after all – so it was nice to see some historical nods to cruising featured in the form of vintage posters. The ships featured below are the Sagafjord and Stavangerfjord, both operated by the now-defunct Norwegian America Line. It’s great to see the stylish depiction of the ballroom and unsurprising to see the cabin layouts from the 1960s haven’t really changed at all to now.

The exhibitions in Stavanger Maritime Museum included the Monsen family’s office, the authentic location for shipowners who operated for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there. Reconstructions of a merchant’s home from the early part of the twentieth century and a general store from the same period, as well as a sailmaker’s loft space completed the spaces on show. It was all very well done, nicely laid out, easy to get around, and full of fascinating little details. We particularly liked the incredibly ornate telephone in one of the rooms.

A very nice museum indeed. This was less a place to learn anything new and more a place to absorb some of the feel of the local history, and we very much enjoyed doing just that.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll explore a little bit more of Stavanger on foot, taking in the very attractive, very colourful area of Fargegaten.

Gamle Stavanager was almost demolished in the 1950s but the city architect decided to clean up and restore the by-then near-derelict buildings, and many generations of cruisers would like to thank him for this decision. It’s a very attractive location in an otherwise fairly industrialised city as you can see for yourself below.

In case you’re wondering whether I took another photo of our cruise ship from the same place I’d already taken a photo of our cruise ship, Britannia, when wandering through Gamle Stavanger earlier in the day, then I’m happy to report that of course I did.

As we reached the end of Gamle Stavanger, getting close to our next intended destination, we came across a sculpture, marker stone, and a little bit of street art commemorating the Norwegian philosopher, scientist, and poet, Henrik Steffens, who was born in the city in 1773.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be taking a look around the third of the museums we visited in Stavanger, the Maritime Museum.