We’ve just returned from a week on the P&O Cruises ship Britannia. This was a cruise that took us from Southampton to Stavanger, then Nordfjordeid, then Flåm, then Haugesund, before returning to Southampton. Two of those ports were ones we’ve cruised to before, although that was on Crown Princess in 2013, and the other two, by a process of elimination, were new to us. We’d booked this only a couple of months earlier because the timing, pricing, and fact that this would be a ship we’ve not cruised on before and two new ports worked well for us, even if it also meant we’d be cruising during half term and likely to encounter that most irritating of things: parents with kids.

What We Liked About Britannia

Ooh, get me! Mentioning something positive to start! Did I catch some weird brain disease in Norway?

We liked that even though Britannia was a Royal-class ship and was constructed around the same time as both Royal and Regal Princess, there were a few surprising layout differences on board. We’d expected decor changes, of course, but the Crow’s Nest and Epicurean involved some fairly hefty changes to become accustomed to.

We liked that a few of the bars had drinks menus specific to them with a few unique cocktails listed. Nowhere near enough – if you were potentially thinking that you might try all the drinks on offer over the course of your cruise without going crazy each night then you’d still be done by day two – but at least there was some effort. This was a marked improvement over what you can expect on Azura and Ventura.

Despite this being a full cruise with lots of kids, we found they were mainly unnoticeable and the buffet still had space in which to eat most days, whether for breakfast or lunch (we didn’t try dinner there). We can’t honestly say what the quality of entertainment for kids was like on this cruise but there seemed to be plenty for them to do and we saw queues outside children’s activity venues most days.

The shower in the cabin was large and had a glass door.

The staff and service. We’ve heard a few cruise bloggers and their followers mention that P&O can be a bit cool, standoffish, or unfriendly when compared to other cruise lines, and we’ve seen that to some extent on our previous cruises with P&O too. However, there was a surprisingly high amount of friendly chat, joking about, and useful information offered up freely on Britannia on this cruise. Service is never perfect but the good and excellent far outweighed the bad this time around.

Chesney Hawkes in the Limelight Club was superb.

What We Didn’t Like About Britannia

Ooh, get me! Ranting on about the negative things far more than the positive! Did I receive fast-acting treatment for the weird brain disease I caught in Norway?

Our cabin – C621, since you asked – was a masterclass in taking a successful design on the precursor Grand-class ships and feeding it into an Encrappifying Machine. We’ve come to expect some standard features in a cruise ship cabin and, for some unholy reason this expectation just wasn’t met. Bedside cabinets? No. Bedside cabinet. Just the one, and that on the side of the bed with no nearby plug sockets. The other side of the bed was close to the long desk with a shallow drawer containing a bible and hairdryer. The plug socket that was there fought for space with the phone socket and attached phone, making the desk space even less useful. Obviously, with only one bedside cabinet there was no need for two bedside lamps, but there wasn’t even one. No reading light at all. Everyone has light, or nobody does. And switching the light on for the walk-in closet area by the bathroom also switched on many lights in the main area too. Fabulous dumbassery.

That big shower ate into the space in the bathroom leaving it feeling awfully cramped. “But, Mark, just how much space do you need to stand and pee, and clean your teeth? Not at the same time,” I hear you wail into a rolled-up newspaper. Yes, I get that, but emerging from the shower to dry off involved a forward step, shuffle around the toilet rim, and closing of the shower door to get into that tiny space. It felt… well… naff.

There was a surprising amount of movement on Britannia given the wind and sea conditions. Those conditions weren’t great at times, admittedly, but we’ve been in worse and felt less. Now, we like it when ships lurch and sway and shudder as if they’re running over a whale, but we thought Britannia should have handled it better.

Food and drink quality was way below average. This mostly might just be a matter of timing here, something specific to our cruise and the staff aboard, but we suspect not and I’ll mention it anyway. A pina colada from the pool deck that we started our cruise with was so artificial-tasting and quick-to-separate that it rapidly became revolting, and the cocktails elsewhere didn’t set the world on fire either. The food, though, was arguably perfect if this cruise had been promoted as A Festival Of Dry. One piece of salmon for one dinner was done correctly, and everything else – toast, eggs, beans, cakes, cookies, potatoes, meat, vegetables, whatever – had textures that suggested they’d been under heat lamps for hours before serving. Scrambled eggs at breakfast were good if you got to a new tray in the first four minutes it was put out. Even the speciality dining at the Epicurean fell foul to being not that special.

Food variety was poor again. The breakfast was mostly unchanging, incredibly basic, and often involved checking out at least two of the duplicated stations in the buffet area to find all the foodstuffs available because management of the levels wasn’t all it could be. That extended to the tea and coffee self-service area too when we often found that of the cups, teabags, hot water, milk, and clean spoons required to make a drink, at least one would be unavailable and necessitate a hunt for the missing item elsewhere. The meals in the Main Dining Room were unimaginative and repetitive.

The virtual queue system for the dining rooms and the Glass House was just atrocious. It needs to die a death. So many people were walking around with buzzers because there is literally nobody on this planet or any of the other Earths across the Multiverse who wants to spend a sizeable portion of every evening refreshing the screen on their phone to see if by some miracle the queues aren’t full or if your turn has come around during the small window when you actually managed to join it. The Glass House virtual queue was full every minute of every day of this week on the cruise so we never ate there; it was still reading as full when we saw the place was half-filled on the final evening after leaving the dining room so well done P&O for losing a bit of money there. We spoke to some first-time cruisers who mentioned how much they’d enjoyed everything except having to keep looking at their phone all evening just to get a table for dinner and that there was no easy way to communicate with other members of their family on board.

Whether you call them lifts or elevators, we can all agree on one thing: the lifts on Britannia were terrible. Some were frequently out of service. One time, after a ridiculously long wait with no indication any lift was ever going to come to our floor at all a lift suddenly binged and opened its doors. We stepped in on deck 12, pressed the button for 16, and waited for it to send us to deck 5 and promptly stop working.

Norwegian Cruise Itinerary

We generally liked this itinerary because it covered a lot of bases for us, but there’s a caveat to come.

Booking the cruise fairly late and wanting to keep spending down a bit, we decided not to book any excursions in any port, and just opted to see what we could see off the ship.

Stavanger was first, and this ended up checking off the social and historical and cultural aspects of Norway for us. Cruise ships dock right beside the attractive old town area of Gamle Stavanger which we wandered through before buying tickets to visit the museums: the printing and canning museum ticket also covered admission to the nearby maritime museum. We’d heard that the canning museum was boring and, yes, we could see that might be what you’d think if you looked around on your own. There are audio guides available, but we were lucky to bump into an employee who asked if we wanted a free guided tour and this proved to be excellent. That’s the way to visit that. We spent several hours in those museums before wandering more of the city, enjoying the colourful street of Fargegaten and the street art around, and popping in a bar for a drink.

Nordfjordeid was sadly cancelled. Ships can only drop four lines to hold them at the port beside the floating pontoon but the wind gusts exceeded the safety limit for Britannia. Instead, we were treated to a slow cruise down the Nordfjord and the Innvikfjord that we watched from our room, occasionally popping outside onto the balcony to take photos while wrapped in multiple layers and wishing we’d brought gloves. It was freezing, but beautiful.

We had one plan in Flåm, and that was to visit the brewery we’d been to a decade earlier. We did that, drank loads, chatted to other tourists, and bumped into some other cruise bloggers there too, but before that we spotted a distant waterfall from our balcony when we docked so thought it might be nice to see how close we could get to it on foot for some photos. That waterfall turned out to be Brekkefossen and there turned out to be a hiking trail to it. We are not fit people but we attempted it, with sweaty, achy, heart-pounding, breathless success for me before coming back down to recover alongside my wife who’d sensibly stopped part of the way up (as did other people).

Haugesund completed the cruise itinerary and it was on paper and on first viewing the least inspiring of the ports so something that should be scheduled earlier if possible so as not to finish a cruise with Norway’s Exciting Showcase of Industrial Buildings. That’s still true, but there were some interesting things to see, one of which was historically very significant, and we ended up walking an eight kilometre route that more-or-less matched that taken by the hop-on-hop-off bus or highlights land train. Haugesund was better than we first thought, but a one-and-done stop for us with nothing obvious left to explore should we return.

So, we ticked off great landscapes, a hike, history, culture, art, drinking, and scenic fjords cruising on this Britannia cruise, but what’s the caveat? Well, Flåm, the arguably biggest draw, is going to become a rare visit in a few years time when the heritage fjords restrictions come into effect and only zero-polluting vessels are allowed to cruise there. That probably means that somewhere like Haugesund features more on cruise itineraries and, well, there’s not enough there, and it’s not terribly attractive. That’s got some interesting potential knock-on implications for Norway as a cruise destination in general, and for ships that currently have to use Norway heavily because of their own fuel requirements.

Overall, a tiring break because we walked a lot (because we didn’t do excursions), but a good one that mostly saw us experiencing new things and sights. Britannia isn’t our favourite P&O cruise ship, but she’s certainly not the worst either. Full travelogue posts will appear on this site… eventually.

We had nevertheless tried to book a cruise on Britannia just before the pandemic for some reason but that plan had been scuppered and we’d put the ship out of our mind once more. However, following a better experience on Royal Princess’s sister ship, Regal, coming out of the pandemic lockdowns and some enjoyable cruises on the next generation along in the Princess fleet in the years after and seeing that Britannia had undergone a bit of a refresh to bring it kicking and screaming into the 21st century we started to reconsider. In May 2023 we made it aboard Britannia after booking a late deal just two months earlier.

As is so often the case with a cruise on a P&O ship, we started just along the coast at Southampton.

I don’t often post photos of what our cabin looks like on cruise ships, largely because for familiar ships it’s not something I think will be interesting to anyone who might read any of the travel write-ups on this website. That’s not to say I don’t take those photos, though, because we often like to taunt friends and family on social media with an “Oh, woe is us! This will be our home for the next week or two weeks while we explore strange new lands!” post. That said, I do know that there are people absolutely obsessed with what a cabin looks like, what a bathroom looks like, etc. and in this case, since this was a new ship, but mostly because I have some things I want to point out, I shall present some pictures.

Let’s take a look at our balcony cabin on Britannia, which was cabin C621. Further back than we typically cruise but beggars can’t be choosers when you’re booking late. We liked the look of this cabin; muted but modern decor, good-sized TV opposite the bed, an additional chair so two entire people could sit down at the same time. But… the bedside cabinet count came to one which was the first annoyance. With a long draw on the desk this wouldn’t have been too bad but the bedside charging points also came to one and that was nowhere near the side I usually sleep on and therefore nowhere near my phone which plays sea sounds at night and has the alarm set to avoid missed breakfasts and port excursions.

Sea sounds at night? On the sea? Yes. I have tinnitus and silence is unpleasant, and leaving the balcony door open is both frowned upon for environmental reasons and something you only do once when trying to open the door to the room before you learn an important science lesson in air pressure dynamics of moving vessels.

To a typical cabin bathroom on Britannia now – I guess; I’ve not been in anyone else’s to be fair – and first impressions, like the room, were that it was bright, airy, modern. A large shower cubicle with a glass door was good. However… the gymnastics involved in getting out of the shower, shimmying around the small space onto a towel without stepping on the tiled floor with your wet feet and skidding off into the mirror, just to get enough room to close the door so you could actually commence drying was a chore. A small chore, yes, but one that the layout caused. And I’m easily irritated.

The balcony was no surprise for a ship of this class in that it was barely worthy of the name. Seats that can’t face the sea unless you’ve had your legs amputated at the knees only make sense when you consider the conspiracy theory I’m just now inventing that this is all a plan by the onboard spa to create sore necks for those who actually like looking at the water on order to generate more massage bookings. That said… it’s always nice to get outside in a little private space of your own, even if it’s just a quick look at the stars at night followed by a “Jesus! That wind’s bitter! I should’ve put some clothes on!”

With it being a bright day in Southampton we decided to go crazy and head up to the top deck and soak up some of the atmosphere of those boarding and getting ready to enjoy a week ahead cruising up to the Norwegian fjords. There were a lot of families around because it was half term – not a time we typically will pick to cruise in but this worked well with my wife’s work schedule – but it wasn’t too hectic. It was, however, quite chilly, so we had one revolting Piña Colada each beside the pool area – very artificial-tasting and it started to separate out as we were drinking it – before making our way to a lounge.

We ended up at the Crow’s Nest. Despite Britannia being derived from the Royal-class, itself an evolution of the Grand-class, both of which were initially designed for Princess, Britannia did have a few unique design quirks and the Crow’s Nest was one of them; a spacious area high up at the front of the ship with panoramic windows out to sea. It also had its own drinks menu with some exclusive offerings, which was nice to see, although the ones they actually had available were few and far between and not of great quality. Nice idea, poor execution. We ended up having one cocktail here then grabbing something larger to take back to our cabin ahead of the sail away from Southampton.

I’ve included scans of the Crow’s Nest drinks menu on Britannia, simply because you just know that someone, somewhere may be looking for them yet be unable to locate them in any of the other million places they’re uploaded on this increasingly awful internet we’ve allowed to fester. Just bear in mind that this is a snapshot of available drinks (well, in theory) and pricing from May 2023, and if you’re reading this site in the future – and if my recently-completed twelve-part course on What Direction Does Time Flow In? is any guide then you will be – then things may be different. And by different I mean more expensive. Wouldn’t it be great if drinks prices went down one year? Can you even imagine!?

Back on our balcony it was time for us to leave Southampton – always a good time even if you’re not on a cruise – and the first sight was that of MSC Virtuosa sailing out down the Solent ahead of us.

“Good prices but terrible reviews,” I mentioned to my wife. “I can’t see us cruising with MSC at all based on what I’ve read online.”

One year later we’d be on that very same ship sailing down that exact same stretch of water. Just goes to show what I know.

Not long afterwards Britannia was on her way too.

In the next post in this 2023 cruise to Norway on Britannia travelogue series I’ll break with tradition and not jump to the next day but continue with what we got up to on this first evening of a new P&O Cruises ship for us: dinner in the Limelight Club and entertainment from Chesney Hawkes.

The meal before the show was perfectly fine even if, as on our previous experience at the Limelight Club, it didn’t exactly excel. What we most enjoyed was that we’d arrived to queue early enough that we were seated with a great view close to the stage. Each table was nicely-spaced from neighbouring ones too, making Britannia’s design of the club far superior to that on Iona, in our opinion.

And after the meal, Chesney Hawkes took to the stage. There’s not a lot to say about this other than he was very talented, had a very polished set, was very funny, and had some great anecdotes. A very good performance that I think anyone would enjoy whether you like his music or that of his dad’s band, the Tremeloes, and if you get a chance to see him perform then we’d definitely recommend it.

Photos of parts of Chesney Hawkes’ show in Britannia’s Limelight Club are below. I have video too and may add that in at some point.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series it’s a sea day aboard Britannia and a chance to take a look around this new ship for us.

I have eased off taking pictures on the cruise ships over the years – not that you’d really be able to tell if you took a look through my cruise history photos here or elsewhere online – as we’ve cruised on some ships or with some lines often enough that there’s little new to see, and even with some new-to-us cruising experiences, once you’ve cruised a lot you tend to see the same things over and over again and it’s nicer to just enjoy it rather than try to capture it all. However, Britannia is P&O’s only Royal-class design of ship so I was keen to see how it compared to other ships in the P&O fleet and to the similar class that Princess operate.

Some pictures of the top deck of the cruise ship to start with, simply because I made sure to take my camera with me when we left the room for breakfast in the buffet. It was a little overcast to start with and with this being the North Sea in May, it wasn’t very warm, hence the lack of many other people around.

One of the things we’d seen in photos of Britannia from years ago was a lot of straight lines in the decor and design, although we knew she’d had a refurbishment that had tried to round and soften some of that. On the top deck you could still see a lot of straight edges and symmetrical layout, but it worked there. The huge deckchair – a staple feature of P&O cruise ships – was also present.

You can’t take photos from the top deck of a cruise ship without making sure that there’s a wake view in there, somewhere. Everyone likes that ship’s wake.

Inside Britannia it was easier to spot more flow and curving elements in the furnishings and layout. There’s no doubting that Britannia’s design was very stylish across every venue we ventured into even if the darker colours sometimes made a place feel a little claustrophobic when the designers were possibly looking for cosy.

Britannia’s atrium was a lot better than older photos of it showed, and the central art piece was nicely abstract, but the layout and design of the decks around it with those thick pillars kept bringing to mind a sort of shopping mall from the 1990s feel. To be fair, though, we rarely hang around the atrium areas of any cruise ship, largely because the space makes them so very noisy and completely at odds with the relaxation we’re after when we travel by sea. Good for five minutes of people-watching, sometimes, but for us it’s a hub to get to better places – well, hopefully – and not somewhere to hang out.

A large point of booking a balcony for us is that it does give us the perfect spot to relax, soak in those sea views, and not get deafened by music and tens of dozens of people trying to hold audible conversations over that deafening music. With our slow amble around the outside and inside of Britannia done, and once we’d judged we’d given our room steward enough time to clean our cabin, we returned to it for a cup of tea with the sea air, our books, and one another for company. The morning’s cloud cover had disappeared but the sun was behind us and our balcony was in the shade so it wasn’t the warmest place to be, but still fabulous.

We don’t do an awful lot on sea days normally but prior to this cruise on Britannia we’d booked the additional cost Afternoon Tea at the Epicurean. We’d had this before on P&O and enjoyed it – although Virgin still wins the cruise line afternoon tea prize for us, I’m afraid – and it was good, but it wasn’t quite as good as we remembered. Some people on a table near us had some allergies that needed to be catered for and that seemed like that took an awful long time to resolve for them, leaving them sitting like lemons while we and others made our way through the food selections and teas. Yes, of course we had a glass of fizz with it. We were on holiday, I’ll have you know.

The afternoon tea filled us up nicely enough that we decided to forego dinner in the main dining room. Cruise lines like to put their formal nights on sea days if they can so this saved us having to dress up too smartly, although we were then limited to certain bars and lounges. That was okay with us, though, and we spent a bit of time in The Live Lounge being entertained by P&O’s house band, Pulse, performing a mix of songs from the 1970s.

We grabbed a bite to eat in the late-night buffet, just because we could and it had now been long enough for that afternoon tea to weigh less heavily in our tummies, then called it a night.

In the next post in this Britannia cruise travelogue series we’ll be making our first stop in Norway when we arrive at Stavanger for the first time in nearly ten years.

If you’re on a cruise ship that visits Stavanger then you won’t have far to walk as the berths are right beside the old town area – Gamle Stavanger, as it’s known – and other interesting spots aren’t much further away. For us this meant we didn’t have to get up too early to make the most of our time in the port but we were still awake before Britannia had fully come alongside. We were able to watch plenty of cruisers disembark for tours or to head ashore early while we had a leisurely breakfast.

The old town area of Gamle Stavanger was where we wanted to head first. It’s impossible to miss with the ship docked right next to it, but if you do have any trouble then simply look for the largest grouping of white buildings.

We’d been to this part of Stavanger back in 2013 but we did have a specific reason for wanting to return to the cobbled streets and white, wooden-fronted buildings again. When we’d looked into the details of this cruise and mentioned it to my in-laws they’d scoffed at Stavanger’s mention and remarked that they’d been several times, it wasn’t very interesting, and there was a canning museum there that they’d stated was the most boring place they’d visited on Earth.

For us, though, this is the sort of thing we look out for. It might be boring. It might not. But doing different things or having good, old-fashioned, new experiences every now and then is all part of the joy that is travelling in general. And we’re very contrarian too. Tell us that something’s not worth doing and there’s every chance we’re going to try it. We’d made up our mind that the Stavanger canning museum would be the first thing we’d visit.

Something that hadn’t been ashore when we’d visited Stavanger before was the very colourful street art pictured below. Stavanger Houston was created by Houston-based artist GONZO247 in 2018, a gift from the Texas city that is twinned with it.

Being in Gamle Stavanger brought back a lot of fond memories from the 2013 cruise to Norway that had really cemented our love of this form of travel. It was great to see certain buildings and actually remember them, although I tried to snap some different types of shots on this occasion too. I enjoyed getting up close to the various mosses and other plants growing around the place.

One thing you’ll see whenever you look at anyone’s photos or videos taken from this historic area of Stavanger, though, particularly if they’ve cruised to Norway, is a shot of the cruise ship showing just how big it is compared to the buildings and how close it is to them too. I took almost the same photo of Britannia below as I did of Crown Princess the decade before and I can assure you that if we visit Stavanger in the future on another ship there’s every chance I’ll take the same shot again.

In the next post in this series I’ll show off some of the photos from our visit to both the canning museum and printing museum that was all part of the same complex and you’ll be able to find out whether we thought it was as boring as we’d been told to expect.

Purchasing our ticket for the canning museum also granted us access to other museums in Stavanger, one of which was in a modern building beside the more historical one we’d come to see. We decided to wander around the Printing Museum first.

As you might expect from a museum with this name, it housed equipment covering the history and importance of printing in and around the Stavanger area in Norway. Printing presses, book-binding, typesets, and various other bits and pieces were in abundance but there wasn’t a lot of explanation as to what anything really did or what it was for, and we were the only ones there so our visit was one of a casual wander, taking a few photos, oohing over some of the machinery because we like a nice bit of industrialisation, and wondering why this particular museum was part of the same complex that showcased the canning industry we’re really come to see. That would become clear afterwards, though.

We then made our way to the Canning Museum, a very different sort of building indeed. This was a place where actual canning of fish had taken place and you could see lots of machinery, smoking ovens, examples of the cans produced, etc.

Was this the most boring museum in the world, though, as we’d been told? Absolutely not, and the reason for that was simply that upon entering we’d been approached by a man sporting a badge that read “Piers” on it. He asked us and a few other people around if we’d like him to show us around and tell us about the exhibits and we said yes. Oddly, nobody else wanted to at first, so the pair of us got a personal tour showing off all the various things on display along with some demonstrations of some of the equipment in operation, and gradually other visitors drifted over and started tagging along with us as well.

Having a knowledgeable guide for this museum was fabulous and really helped to bring the place to life and we also learnt about the connection to the printing museum next door: the labels, of course! At its peak there were over fifty canneries operating in Stavanger preparing fish to send around the world but the last of them closed down in 2002.

The upstairs section of the canning museum featured rooms set out as they would have been during the height of the canning industry in Stavanger. If you’re a fan of old telephone equipment and pieces of furniture then you’ll love these glimpses into the past.

So, we’d have lied and told my wife’s parents that we’d found the canning museum interesting just for the hell of it if we hadn’t enjoyed our visit there, but thanks largely to Piers we genuinely did like the Norwegian Canning Museum. If you’re visiting Stavanger then you’re likely to take a look around Gamle Stavanger because everyone does, and if you’re there anyway then it’s a decent way to spend some time, maybe learn a few things, or even just pick up some sardines in the gift shop.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll take a walk through Gamle Stavanger on the way to another museum included in the ticket price we’d just paid.

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.

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.

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.

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.