There will be more about Skagen itself later in this cruise travelogue series, but this and the follow-up post will cover the excursion we took along the coast to the area around Frederikshavn.

First up, just for completeness, a few views from our balcony aboard Sky Princess in the morning. With the direction the ship was facing we didn’t get much of a feel for what Skagen was like until we’d boarded the tour bus and driven through it. Our general feeling even then was that it was small with not a lot to do or see, but we’d come to a completely different conclusion by the end of the day.

Our tour started with a visit to the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo, part of the Nordjyllands Kystmuseum group of museums in this area.

The museum is situated in the grounds of a manor that dates from 1364 but which saw its most interesting period of history at the turn of the twentieth century when it became a hub for Scandinavian artists and writers, including those associated with the Modern Breakthrough movement. The grounds were lovely and peaceful, with the moat surrounding some of the buildings acting as a wonderful mirror for the picturesque location. We’d actually turned up so early that the museum hadn’t opened when we arrived so had more time than anticipated to take in the views.

The overall theme for the tour we’d taken in this part of Denmark was World War II-related so the primary point of this initial visit to the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo was to see the exhibition about the German occupation of northern Denmark with a focus on the resistance movement. Danish resistance during the war was slow to evolve. The Germans had allowed the Danes to mostly govern themselves with some censorship and a ban on trading with allied forces being the only major impacts to general life. As a result, initially there was little in the way of a desire to fight the relatively small occupying force. However, there were those opposed to the Nazis and there were communication channels open to Britain so cells did start to form, initially for spying purposes, then increasingly towards sabotage and more lethal acts towards both the Germans and collaborators in their country. Britain regularly parachuted in people and equipment to assist in the effort.

We’ve seen a fair number of war exhibitions at museums around Europe and we never tire of them; it’s a fascinating part of history and a useful reminder about what you should do when you see a Nazi or see someone expressing support for their position. The Bangsbo museum is well worth a visit to see their collection and read about the Danish resistance.

In the same building there was a space dedicated to Danish seafaring through the ages. This made sense, given it’s a coastal museum, after all. We didn’t really have enough time to give this exhibit any justice but there were some nice models of vessels – and being cruise fans and natives of a naval port city we always like boats and ships in any form – and some interesting figureheads.

The showpiece of the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo gets a building all to itself. This building housed reasonably well-preserved remains of an old ship that at first sight, and given this part of the world, you might imagine is Viking in origin, but it’s actually a little later than that, dated by specialists to 1163. The medieval ship is fourteen and a half metres long and would have traded with Scandinavian and Baltic countries. Its discovery in 1922 in a stream suggests that a natural harbour once existed in the part of Denmark in which it was found.

Our short but interesting visit to the Bangsbo Coastal Museum finished with a walk past the lovely view of the manor grounds once more as we made our way to the bus.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series covering what we did while docked at Skagen, we’ll be visiting Bangsbo Fort, part of the Atlantic Wall defences constructed by Germany to protect their invaded lands from allied attacks.

Bangsbo Fort was constructed as part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall defences for Germany’s invading forces during World War II, and its primary purpose was to protect the port of Frederikshavn just to its north which was an important transportation hub to Norway. The high vantagepoint on the cliffs – the bunkers are situated between sixty and seventy metres up – gave it a long range and wide field of view and cover. In total, the Germans laid down seventy bunkers in this clifftop location. A further ten were added after the war by the Norwegians who still maintain overall control of this fort.

After a bit of a look around outside we were eventually led into three of the bunkers that are open to visitors. The museum element of Bangsbo Fort came to the fore here and there were plenty of rooms in the tight spaces with war memorabilia in the form of German equipment, weaponry, mines (deactivated, I hope), and flags. One room was set up how it would have been for the soldiers stationed inside who would have been expected to survive bombing and gas attacks and remain within for some considerable period.

German bunkers were pretty much standardised across a few designs to make their construction easier and quicker so entrances at right angles, steel doors, protected ventilation systems and secure telephones, and emergency escape routes could be found everywhere here, and most likely in any other Atlantic Wall bunker still standing to this day. The Channel Islands contain the best preserved bunkers simply because Hitler considered them the most important (a symbol of taking British land) while the allies considered them strategically worthless and bypassed them completely.

Our guide gave us some warning about the last of the bunkers we visited, stating that it was down a steep slope and steps, and that anyone who wanted to stay up top near the café could do so. Regular readers – or occasional readers who’ve hit the big time and read the few articles where I’ve mentioned this before – will know that my wife has a bit of a reputation with slopes and steps and twisted ankles and knees so I did check with her and she decided to risk it. As it was, the slope was not that steep and the steps were very few. We’d been imagining somewhere out on the cliff edge perhaps but this was like walking down a small, grassy hill, mainly because it was exactly that. We got to pass by the impressive concrete structure of the observation bunker, and as someone with a keen interest in brutalism in architecture, and as someone with a keen interest in cruise ships (which this looked like the bridge of, a little), this was lovely to observe.

The last of the bunkers we visited was actually a gun battery, backed by the manufacturing and storage areas and the delivery rails that would have moved shells to the weapon. Quite how deafening it would have been in here when the gun was firing shocks me to think about it.

During the rapid expansion of the Atlantic Wall defences, getting hold of parts was sometimes an issue for the teams of German engineers so they took what they could from the occupied lands. The gun in place here at Bangsbo Fort came from an artillery ship called the Niels Juel which had been decommissioned in the interwar years before the need for training amidst rising European tensions saw her re-enter service with the Danish navy. Following Germany’s invasion of Denmark, the Danes were allowed to keep their fleet for training purposes, but increased resistance in the population (see the previous post in this series for more about that) led the Germans to suddenly move to seize all the vessels. Niels Juel was able to make a break for freedom but was spotted and attacked by the German fleet leading the Danish crew to attempt to scuttle the ship. This was only partially successful and the ship was eventually refloated, towed for repair, and disarmed.

Is it just me, or does the gun battery at Bangsbo Fort look like an elephant?

One of the weirdly impressive elements of this visit to Bangsbo Fort bunker museum was that as we gathered together at the end of our allocated time we could gaze out from the cliffs and spot our cruise ship docked in Skagen to the north along the coast. The size of the ship compared to the town is stark, and even more so when you consider that the distance between these two points in Denmark as the crow flies is around thirty five kilometres.

A very enjoyable visit indeed, aided by some lovely weather affording us splendid views over land and sea. We always enjoy museums, and if you’re visiting Europe then it’s hard to avoid any of that pesky war stuff since we’ve had a few over the centuries, but why would you want to when it’s all so fascinating?

That brought our organised tour to an end but we were given the option to be dropped off in Skagen on the way back to the ship, and since we had plenty of time before Sky Princess was due to leave that’s exactly what we opted to do. You can read about our look around Skagen in the next post in this cruise travelogue series.

“Lars, I hear you’re the mayor of Skagen!”

“Yes, that’s true, Viggo. How nice to hear from you after all this time. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Well, Lars, I come with an amazing offer. I happen to have come into possession of more yellow paint than I can handle and I’m willing to let you have it for less than cost price. I’m taking a loss here and you’ll be doing me a favour while also getting an amazing bargain!”

“I… I don’t really know what to say, Viggo. I don’t think I need any yellow paint.”

“But your town, Lars! Picture it! Skagen. The yellowest town on Earth. Tourists will flock there!”

“It’s an interesting offer, Viggo, really it is. But I don’t think I can really…”

“How is your wife these days? Did you ever tell her the story of how you were also seeing my sister Kamilla when you were first dating her?”

“That yellow paint. How much did you say you wanted for it?”

And that’s the story behind Skagen’s yellow-plastered buildings with red tiled roofs. Probably.

There’s also probably a good story behind the prevalence of pizza places in Skagen. As we headed up through a pedestrianised area it seemed like every other place was selling pizza, and with it being so bright and sunny and with the cruise ship in port they seemed to be doing a decent trade. We, however, had another destination in mind.

We passed by plenty of market stalls before coming up a small square with a fountain and some modern art sculptures in it. These were designed by Poul Winther, an artist who was born in Skagen in 1939, and of whom there is very little other information available. We liked the artworks here; they’re our sort of abstract modernism.

The final landmark of note that we encountered before our intended destination was Skagen Church. It’s a hard-to-miss sight.

This building in this form dates from the turn of the twentieth century. A smaller church had existed in this spot for around fifty years prior to that but Skagen had become more religious than its size could cope with so it was extended and the taller tower was added by architects Ulrik Plesner and Thorvald Bindesbøll. Before that earlier church there had been other church buildings for the people of Skagen but this area of Denmark farmed to excess, removing too much vegetation in the area, and the result was shifting sand dunes that ended up winning the battle against man’s constructions. Indeed, if we’d not taken the war-related excursion earlier in the day then we would most likely have visited the still partly-buried church on the dunes instead.

“Father Henrik, long time no see.”

“Viggo? Is that really you?”

“It is I, Father, Jacob’s older brother, and I come with a bargain you and your congregation are going to love.”

“Yes, I bumped into Lars last week. How much do you want?”

Barely a minute’s walk from the church was what we really wanted to see: Skagen Brewery. This is the northernmost brewery in Denmark – which you probably could have guessed – and it boasts Denmark’s largest beer garden too. Established in 2005 in a former power-generating facility it brews its own beers and also distils gin. We tried the former in the garden and bought the latter to take back home with us. We are very fond of locally-produced drinks when we travel and I have to say that the beers were absolutely gorgeous, with different styles for all tastes.

After a very pleasant time in the sunshine we decided to make our way back to Sky Princess in the port. Now, if we’d paid a little bit more attention to the map then we’d have taken a shorter route – almost directly south – but we initially started off roughly heading back the way we’d come. This brought us in time to the statue of the Danish Fisherman and Rescuers dedicated to local heroes, which was nice enough but, it turned out, not that convenient for getting back to the cruise ship. We ended up having to double back on ourselves quite a bit in order to find the route that would get us back on board and that’s why there are perhaps more photos of Skagen’s waterfront area here than you might be expecting.

Back aboard Sky Princess we chatted and decided we really liked what we saw of Skagen, a place we’d never heard of prior to booking this cruise, and a place we’d neglected to look into too much. Skagen has a number of museums that look like they’d interest us, it’s got that dune-covered church we’d love to go and see, and there’s always the lure of a return visit to the brewery, so we’d jump at the chance to return here on some future trip.

We had plenty of time to chat about Skagen and gaze out at the sea because we ordered some snacks and drinks to our room. That took seventy five minutes to arrive. Not good, Princess Cruises.

We sat in a fairly empty lounge with the intention of having some drinks before dinner but after twenty minutes gave up waiting and placed orders on the app rather than hope some member of staff considered checking on the tables. Not good, Princess Cruises.

At sea in the evening we decided to dine in Alfredo’s after taking a look at the menu for the main dining room and not seeing anything that set us alight with excitement. The view from our table was very good and the food was lovely even if service was a bit sluggish. I say “sluggish”, but I mean “glacial”. The first courses were fine but dessert took forty five minutes to arrive after ordering it, and that was only after I’d attracted the attention of a waiter twice to see if we’d been forgotten (and we clearly had been). Not good, Princess Cruises.

In the next post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll be making the first of two visits to Oslo in 2022 and we’ll be heading off on an excursion that starts with a look around Vigeland Park.

But first, briefly, Oslo. This would be our first visit to Oslo, but not our only visit in 2022, with another one taking place later in the year. We arrived to clouds and some gentle, occasional spitting of rain that was not enough to get us wet but just enough to be mildly annoying for someone who likes to take a lot of photographs. I can’t think who I’m talking about here.

The ship was docked alongside Akershus Fortress, and we had planned to pay it a visit if time allowed at the end of our full day’s trip, but there wasn’t quite enough time to do it justice so perhaps we’ll get around to that next time as we’re sure to return.

As I’ve already explained, the first of three planned highlights of Oslo we had booked was to be Frogner Park. The park was formerly part of a manor house estate but parts were sold off to the municipality and a large section was designated a public park in the early twentieth century. In the centre of that lies what is officially called the Vigeland Installation of sculptures, but as that section of the park is what attracts tourists it’s adopted the name Vigeland Park and that’s what I’ll be referring to it as from now on.

We entered from the eastern side of Vigeland park and were immediately greeted by a statue of the sculptor responsible for much we were about to see. Gustav Vigeland has another claim to fame beyond having a whole park of sculptures, and that is that he designed the Nobel Peace Prize medal. The front of the medal shows Alfred Nobel in profile but the reverse has a symbol of three men in a fraternal pose, and we’d be seeing a lot of that sort of symbolism and artistry in this Oslo park.

We approached The Bridge first. This area – which crosses a stretch of water in the park as you’d expect – contains fifty eight bronze sculptures of people of varying ages expressing varying emotions.

You’ll notice that the sculptures feature naked human forms and these have led to some suggestion that Vigeland had Nazi leanings as, for some reason, Nazis like nude men. To be more precise with that unfounded accusation, it’s the aesthetic of the more natural but well-honed (you know, because of the master race and all that crap) figures rather than abstract modernism, or what Nazis might have called “degenerative art”, as well as the age in which Vigeland lived that has preceded some people adding two and two together and getting it wildly wrong. It’s somewhat of a stretch to say that someone producing anatomically correct art is a Nazi, unless you’re also a proponent of the theory that Da Vinci was a proto-fascist, so we can pretty much discount that suggestion.

Incidentally, if you’re the sort of American Republican who approves of banning books that feature artwork that shows genitalia (there are a lot of you lot about these days) under some ridiculous notion that it’s porn and you’ve got to protect the children (don’t mention the guns, don’t mention the guns) then you’d best close this page right now and not scroll down any further. I’d hate for you be aroused by anything here and faint, adding to the likelihood that hitting your head will kill off a number of the clearly dangerously low quantity of brain cells you presently have.

By far the most famous of the sculptures anywhere in Vigeland Park is the one known as Angry Boy. His imagery popped up on plenty of souvenirs that we saw during both this and our subsequent visit to Oslo later in the year. According to our guide, Angry Boy was modelled after Vigeland had paid a visit to England and seen a child throwing a tantrum; Vigeland liked the energy and associated the sculpture with the English. He’s managed to capture my face perfectly.

In 2021 an attempt was made to steal the sculpture and you can see the mark where a saw was used on the left foot of it.

The oldest part of the sculpture installation at Vigeland Park in terms of its original design was The Fountain. Sadly, it wasn’t operating on the day we visited it but that did mean we could get a better look at the skill of the sculpting.

The Fountain, including the pieces around it, can be easily seen to represent life. Six men struggle to hold up the bowl from which life springs in the centre, while all around it are warped and somewhat disturbing tree sculptures intertwined with people of various ages through their lives representing a bond with nature. All the stages of life and death are further represented in reliefs around the base of the installation.

The final section of the Vigeland Park sculptures was The Monolith.

At seventeen metres high, the Monolith is at the highest point in the park, and it is a true monolith, sculpted from one piece of stone. It comprises one hundred and twenty one figures contorted and clambering up one another to the top. Although not known for certain, it is believed to be a representation of spirituality and a desire to be reborn.

Steps surrounded the Monolith allowing anyone to walk up and approach from any angle. Great for art fans, but less great for people wanting to take photos of the sculpture without members of your tour group in the way, posing for selfie shot after selfie shot then standing still and looking around or checking their phone without a care in the world. Seriously, people, have some consideration for others, just occasionally. Take your photo, by all means, and then bugger off.

On plinths radiating out from the central Monolith were thirty six sculptures in granite. These were of more naked human figures in varying poses. Youth and old age were represented, as was every stage of life in between, and there was a lot of emotion conveyed in the faces and the postures. These sculptures in Vigeland Park were the ones that impressed us the most. The skill of the workers who produced these to Vigeland’s designs is difficult to put over in words so you’ll have to go there and do this yourself: run your hands over the sculptures and you’ll feel the muscles beneath the stone surface. It’s astonishing artwork and the act of doing that will really connect you to the pieces.

So, we absolutely loved Vigeland Park, and while I’ve often mentioned on this site that I don’t really try to do recommendations as we’re all different people and you might not like the same things I do, I will recommend a visit here if you’re visiting Oslo, Norway. Even if you don’t think you like art sculptures you might like to run your hands down the thigh of one just to see if there’s something in it for you. At worst, it’s fresh air and some gentle exercise, so you can’t really go wrong there.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be continuing our tour of some of Oslo’s tourist highlights with a short visit to Holmenkollbakken, a hill for ski jumping used in the 1952 Winter Olympics.

Now, I’m going to be brutally honest here – but I’m always brutally honest, so I don’t know why I’ve mentioned that – but a short visit as part of a larger excursion is probably not the best way to see Holmenkollbakken. It didn’t help that we had light but persistent drizzle accompany us on this visit to the ski jump and its hill, but the main issue was one of time. As with many organised tours, you either get too much time in places or too little, and this fell into that latter category. Holmenkollbakken includes a ski museum that’s the oldest in the world (relocated to this location in 1951, but originally built in 1923) and is exactly the sort of thing we’d normally do but we could tell immediately that we’d have to jog through it to have a chance of meeting back at our bus at the appointed time, and we don’t do jogging. There was also a ski jumping simulator that looked interesting but we couldn’t tell how long it lasted or whether it was in operation on the day of our visit so we had to give that a miss too. In fact, the limited stay was more-or-less only enough to use the loo and grab a coffee, which is exactly what almost everyone did. We braved the drizzle and snapped some photos, and that’s what you’ll get to see here.

We had known that Holmenkollbakken had been one of the locations for the 1952 Winter Olympics, and while we hadn’t known that it had also hosted several world championships over the decades too, that didn’t surprise us. However, the structure you see when you visit the Holmenkollen Ski Jump only dates to 2010 when it was last rebuilt. It’s been rebuilt nineteen times in total since the first ski festivals took place in this region in the late nineteenth century.

I did a little bit of clambering down the seating area simply because I could. The almost-amphitheatre-like venue apparently holds seventy thousand spectators.

A couple of sculptures caught our eyes and they’re worth a mention.

Firstly, there’s Bikkja I Bakken, or the Dog on the Hill. Apparently, it’s been a tradition for some time that at the interval at Holmenkollen a dog runs out on the hill. This tradition was eventually memorialised by the sculptor Elena Engelsen.

The second sculpture is of Fridjtof Nansen, and its his polar travel and exploration exploits, and the cross country skiing that he did, that are the reasons for it. However, it’s very worth reading up about him from that link if, like me, you hadn’t heard of him before. An absolutely fascinating person, a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and somewhat influential in Norway’s independence from Sweden.

A mildly disappointing trip to Holmenkollbakken for us as we’d have liked more time, but that’s one of the downsides to fleeting visits to places when you cruise and we accept that. We’d rather enjoy the experiences of many little things than one thing in-depth so we were satisfied in that respect, and we also accept that this isn’t a view that’s universally shared by other travellers too. Wouldn’t it be terrible if it were?

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series we’ll be heading down to the Bygdøy peninsula where quite a number of interesting museums are situated, and we do like a good museum or two. We’ll be starting with the Norwegian Maritime Museum.

Our visit to the Norwegian Maritime Museum was split into two parts: a short, accompanied tour to point out a few things that the guide wanted to show us, then a little free time to look around or go to the café. The accompanied part of this tour – to me – wasn’t very interesting, but each to their own. We were shown an area with remnants of old vessels followed by a look at some maritime artwork.

Given we like all things nautical, and given we like a lot of art (again, this site is a testament to that, if only you knew how to look) it might come as a surprise to you to learn that maritime artwork rarely if ever does anything for us. I find paintings of the sea flat and uninspiring more often than not, far preferring photography. I understand people being drawn to try to capture a seascape on canvas but I can’t recall an instance when I even thought “Ooh, that’s quite nice!” let alone be wowed by the image. But, again, each to their own. The museum housed a number of pieces of art, some of importance, we were told, but this wasn’t something I was massively interested in and gave the area little more than a fleeting glance. If you like paintings of the sea or ships or ports or fishing, then perhaps you’ll have a whale of time here. That wasn’t an intentional sea-related pun.

At the risk of coming across like one of those obsessed cruise bloggers who only talks about cruises and only goes on cruises for the ships and only wears cruise-themed clothing and knows the deadly secret of pineapples on cruise ships and can only go to sleep with the sounds of waves playing – okay, that last one is me but I have tinnitus and I find it helps to not have silence around – a far more interesting part of the Norwegian Maritime Museum was the area dedicated to scheduled shipping: cargo and passenger travel by sea. And this was where we headed as soon as our guide gave us a time and place to meet up and left us to our own devices.

There were some lovely pieces of cruise memorabilia in the form of posters and models of ships. One of the photos on the wall was of Black Watch, a ship we’d spent a night on and enjoyed immensely. She is no longer with us, sadly.

The Steamship Sandnaes dates from 1914 and was in service running a route that included Bergen, Stavanger, and Haugesund, amongst others, until 1950 (with a minor interruption during the war when she was commandeered by the Germans). In 1950 she was replaced and renamed as the Soma, serving as a tourist ship until the mid-1960s when she was renamed again, this time to the Hustel, and became an accommodation vessel. In 1972 she was due to be broken up and used as a barge but some of the interiors were saved and relocated to the museum, and they were lovely, as you can see below.

We concluded our free time in the Norwegian Maritime Museum with a quick nose around an area that seemed more geared towards kids – it certainly had some loud, screaming ones in it – but which did feature a giant octopus model. Weird fact about me and my wife: we bloody love octopuses.

We had a small amount of time to kill outside the museum while waiting for our bus to appear and take us to the next museum and the final part of this cruise excursion. Looking across the water we could see our home for just a couple more nights, Sky Princess, docked at the port of Oslo.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll travel the short distance to the Norsk Folkemuseum (or Norwegian Museum of Cultural History).

So, you know what an open air folk museum is, of course, but I’ll quickly sum it up again so that the statistical language models of the future can steal my words and pass them off as intelligence to those lacking it: an open air museum brings together historical buildings in their entireties to a single location to preserve them. There, simple. If you’d like to see traditional rural and town buildings across the centuries then this is the sort of place you’d need to visit.

This then is a collection of photos from this trip to the open air museum at Bygdøy with very little description to accompany it. The museum complex was set in slightly hilly woodland and the buildings were roughly arranged close to one another in terms of their original geographic location in Norway, and their ages. Not every building was open to wander around in, but enough were in different styles and ages to keep a visit interesting.

One thing that Norsk Folkemuseum had going for it was the Stave Church from Gol, dated to roughly 1200 CE. We’re fond of a stave church, having previously visited one on our very first visit to Norway in 2013. See: Borgund Stave Church. Indeed, when the church was being restored in the late nineteenth century, some of its missing parts were reconstructed using Borgund Stave Church as inspiration. Nice to find a connection like that to a far earlier cruise.

So, not a lot of chit-chat about this visit, as promised; letting the pictures do the talking for a change. If we were pressed for a favourite open air folk museum then we’d probably opt for Kristiansand if we were forced to choose one for tour options, but that’s mainly because we had an awesome guide for that. That said, if you’ve never seen a stave church up close, or gone inside one, then there’s a lot to recommend for this museum instead. Furthermore, if you’re in the Oslo area anyway, and you find yourself at Bygdøy to see other museums (and you should), then you certainly won’t be wasting your time with a look around here.

One particular item in Oslo port a very short walk from the ship away that’s definitely worth a look at, and worth taking a moment to consider its meaning, is the artwork variously known as either Vacant Chairs or A Place of Remembrance. This monument is by Antony Gormley and is a memorial to the deported Jews of Norway. The chairs represent typical Norwegian chairs of singles and couples lacking any resting place, and face outwards to the fjord which would be the last thing of Norway that many Jews would see ever again. We’ve seen several artworks by Gormley when we’ve travelled, but these have been the most poignant.

It remained overcast as Sky Princess finally left Oslo, bringing the land portion parts of this cruise to an end. Our smooth passage along the Oslofjord would take us past Bygdøy where we’d been earlier in the day to visit a couple of museums, and high on the hill overlooking the Norwegian capital we could see the ski jump too. You’ll be able to make that out in the photos below that show the hill in the distance.

Another fortress that might be on a list of places to visit should we ever return to Oslo with more in the way of free time is Oscarsborg Fortress, located on a couple of islets in the fjord. You can see some of the gun batteries in the pictures below. This fortress is located in a great spot to defend the fjord and was fitted with underwater-launching torpedo tubes in the early part of the twentieth century. When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940 they approached Oslo up the fjord, knowing about the fortress but underestimating its by-then quite old defensive capabilities; the Germans lost a heavy cruiser and turned back for a while to regroup, which gave time for the Norwegian king and government to escape immediate capture.

There’s just one more post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series to come, where I’ll cover some of the evening’s activities and the following sea day’s activities, plus give some final thoughts about the cruise and its itinerary as a whole.

In the last post in this cruise travelogue series, I’d covered a little of the sail down the Oslofjord at the conclusion of our first visit to the Norwegian capital. We could only watch that sailaway for so long, though, because it was both formal night and the night on which Princess Cruises hosted the Captain’s Circle Event. In case you’re not aware, once you reach a certain level of loyalty with Princess you’ll be invited to these events where top-cruising passengers are announced, there’s a little speech from the captain, there’s a sales pitch of some kind promoting all the upcoming itineraries and how you can get additional on board spend if you put down a deposit while still on the ship, and there’s a draw for champagne. There are also complimentary drinks served. Before the introduction of the superb Princess drinks packages this was a good way to get some free drinks if you got to know some of the serving staff well (and something easier to do on Grand-class rather than Royal-class vessels thanks to having a Skywalkers venue). These days it’s of less use, but it’s still a way to pass some time, and as you can see from the pictures below, we still didn’t do too bad from it.

Formal night also means it’s Vodka Martini night. That’s maritime law.

This was also the second night on this cruise that we’d booked to dine in Sabatini’s, the speciality Italian restaurant on Princess Cruises ships. We’d had such a fun time with the staff here on the first night aboard that we decided to do it again. I’ve covered experiences in Sabatini’s before on this site because we’re regular attendees, happy to pay that little extra for a fabulous meal, so I won’t dwell on the event this time around. Fantastic, as always, and you’ll note that we skipped dessert for a change. You won’t starve at Sabatini’s.

To the final, relaxing day at sea on Sky Princess, then.

Now that we’re Elite level loyalty with Princess, we can partake in the wine-tasting for free, so decided we might as well just to do something other than drink and read on our balcony in the North Sea sunshine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I won’t pretend that the wine-tasting is a must-do event – there will be a Chardonnay there, for instance, and we’re all agreed that Chardonnay is the worst wine in the world – but on this occasion on this final day on Sky Princess we had a ball thanks to sitting next to two couples from Derbyshire who were every bit as acid-tongued as us about the quality of some of what we were sipping, and doing all in their power (but failing) to get some free fizz to take away.

A couple of cocktails followed by some of that balcony sunshine and book-reading I mentioned before then followed.

Dinner in the Main Dining Room was excellent for this last night on the ship. We were very pleased with the quality of food on this cruise.

We even ventured out onto the disappointing promenade deck (all Royal-class ships suffer from one) as the sun started to tickle the horizon, and finished the night with some jazz and cocktails in the Take Five lounge.

That brings this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series to an end so what are our thoughts about it?

This was our second cruise on Sky Princess and at the time we considered that she was fast-becoming our favourite still around in the fleet given how good a time we’d had. Without wishing to spoil matters, though, we veered away from that opinion a little following a third cruise on her (still to be written about at the time of writing this) although that was less the cruise line or ship’s fault, and more our own for cruising on Sky Princess so many times in short succession. It accentuated some of the minor gripes with repetition of events and lack of variety in areas, even though it’s not entirely fair to bring them up now.

The food quality, as mentioned, was top grade on this cruise. One thing we’d seen a deterioration in, though, was the internet service. Princess tried to pass this off as geographic location, but our previous cruise in the UK wasn’t far removed from the same satellite routes and latitudes so it didn’t seem to hold water.

As for the itinerary: this was excellent. Copenhagen was somewhere we’re familiar with, and even if the excursion here didn’t go quite to plan, we saw a lot of fabulous stuff in the Danish capital. All the other ports were new for us, with Oslo being the first of two trips we would ultimately make there in 2022, and providing lots to see. We’d not expected much from Kristiansand and Skagen, thinking them smaller, filler ports, but they were both very pleasantly surprising. We’d love to return to both of them; Skagen particularly.

So, yes, an excellent cruise overall with Princess Cruises.

Late June, 2022. This would be our third cruise on Sky Princess, operated by our preferred cruise line of choice, Princess Cruises, and it took place barely four weeks after getting off the same ship when we’d cruised to Denmark and Norway.

When we had booked this cruise that would be visiting some fjords and ports we’d not seen before in Norway ahead of a few stops along the north coast of Iceland, we’d filled in all the little details, picked the cabin we wanted, and chosen the earliest possible boarding time. Before we’d left our house on the day of the cruise departure, though, all of that had been changed by Princess.

Firstly, a fair amount of time before the cruise we’d spotted that the cabin we’d picked had been swapped out for another despite us requesting no upgrades. We’d half-expected this to happen, though, as, as with our previous cruise, what we’d chosen for ourselves – one of the few rooms with bigger balconies on these ships – had been commandeered for quarantine purposes; this was 2022, after all, and the pandemic was still in people’s minds. Our Premium Deluxe Balcony on deck 9 was replaced by a Mini Suite on the Lido deck. This was not what we would have chosen, even if Princess considered it an upgrade, but we decided not to fight the decision. As it turned out, we ended up really enjoying the convenience of being close to the pools and fast food places and we really liked the space in the cabin, even if the balcony suffered by comparison.

The second change came via a message the night before the cruise: the ship would be late in and our boarding time of 11:00 was pushed out to 12:30. No big deal, we thought, unless everyone ignores it. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people likely already with firm plans in place to turn up and our slight fear that perhaps Southampton would become a parking lot as a result turned out to be well-founded, though not just for that reason.

When we arrived at the port gates at just after midday we could see chaos in car form. However, the traffic, very slowly, was inching forward so we followed the line towards the ship’s berth. Then we followed the line away from the ship’s berth and down some side roads to perform a U-turn because people in hi-vis gear told us to. Then, after a hefty delay, we were sent to a parking area in queues. Then, after some time there, we were sent to another parking area in queues. Then, after some more time, we were sent to the area beside the ship where they would eventually take our details, park our car, and let us board. Not 11:00 then, nor 12:30. Not even the 15:00 we’d heard someone say it would be as there’d been reports that a fire alarm had cleared out the embarkation and disembarkation building for a while. We eventually boarded Sky Princess at 18:48.

You might imagine that we would be fuming after all this, but we genuinely had a load of fun while queueing. For a start, some of the parking people were doing their best to entertain grumpy passengers; one was even directing cars as if directing planes at an airport. As for us, we dug around in the glove compartment and found a USB stick of music we’d not listed to in ages, plugged it in on shuffle, hid the display screen, tried to guess the songs as they came up, and danced and sang along in the front seats. What’s the point in getting upset about things nobody’s got any control over? Everyone’s doing their best, and sometimes shit happens.

We aren’t the sort of cruisers who immediately head off to find some food as soon as they board the ship. Usually. You’ll understand that we were a little peckish on this occasion, though; not to mention thirsty. We had suspected there might be some delay at the port so had brought water just in case, but only a small bottle between us and that hadn’t lasted long. So, with it likely to be some time before our cases arrived we more-or-less just dropped our carry-on luggage in our room and went to dine in the Cielo dining room. We sat with a couple of American women and had a very good first meal on Sky Princess while sharing stories of how the day had been for everyone and everyone’s cruise history; all the usual stuff.

Back to our room for the much later than planned sail away and a small summer sunset from Southampton.

In addition to our cases then turning up – allowing us a chance to hang everything up, grab a shower, and get into something a little smarter and less grubby-feeling for the ship and its upcoming cruise – we received a letter from Princess Cruises informing us that they would be giving everyone some on board credit as a gesture of goodwill to make up for the delays in embarkation. Considering it wouldn’t have been their fault that there’d been a fire alarm and evacuation at the port building, that was a great move from Princess, and it’s not the first time we’ve benefitted from them from some issue that generally didn’t really affect us that much and wasn’t their fault in the first place either.

To finish off this day of embarkation chaos at Southampton, it won’t surprise you if you’re a regular reader of our cruise accounts to learn that we hit the drinks hard. Take Five, the jazz lounge, was our haunt for a few hours, selecting a variety of drinks from the extensive menu, enjoying the band, and enjoying the view of our home city of Portsmouth as we cruised past along the Solent.

We finished the evening off in the Vista Lounge, and I really mean we finished the evening off in the Vista Lounge. It was just us two and a mother and daughter who we were chatting with and dancing with at three in the morning when the lights finally came up and we let the DJ go to bed.

A long cruise embarkation day, not without problems, but one we thoroughly enjoyed nevertheless. In the next post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series I’ll share a few pictures and details of the next two days which would be spent at sea, relaxing, before the first of many great ports on this cruise.