A very quick recap in case you can’t be bothered to read about the trip so far: when we booked this cruise with Princess (fairly close to cruise date) it was nearly five years after our first and only other cruise leaving us in the position of having to learn what it is to travel by cruise ship all over again. We’d decided very early on that we’d be booking excursions as much as possible because we’re generally nosey people with a keen interest in history and culture but for this very first port stop in the very first foreign country we’d visited since our honeymoon half a decade earlier nothing jumped out at us. Thus it was that our first visit of a few hours to Norway would be on foot and with no firm plan at all. In later years we would be far more disciplined in researching just what we might be able to do on our own if the need arose but with us being travelling noobs all over again we probably didn’t make the most of our day ashore. There will always be another time.

Princess provided free shuttle buses to allow those of us not on organised excursions to get from Crown Princess into the city. We were dropped off by the city’s octagonal lake, Lille Lungegårdsvannet, made a note of when the buses would be returning to the ship, tutted mildly at the still overcast and lightly spitting weather conditions, and mostly followed the direction of more seasoned travellers also departing the vehicle to do their own thing.

Heading roughly west we crossed over a road and passed through Julemarked Byparken, a small public park with a few sculptures and statues as well as a prominent pavilion. Just beyond that was a modern, pedestrianised area lined with various upmarket stores and punctuated by stone sculptures and water features. The main square of Bergen, Torgallmenningen, was just off this area and it was through this that we next walked.

At the northern end of Torgallmenningen was the Sailor’s Monument, a large sculpture honouring sailors from different eras of Norway’s past.

Continuing on a straight line past the monument to sailors we approached Bergen’s fish market area which is unsurprisingly right by the waterfront area. My wife loves the smell of fresh fish, she loves seafood; I like fish, I can’t stand seafood, and the smell of fresh fish turns my stomach. We were never going to really stop at the fish market area because it’s not like you can buy some fish and take it back aboard the cruise ship to keep for a week until you’re home. Instead, we wandered past it and hugged the road along where the boats were docked, including a small Viking vessel.

The area of Bergen just beyond the fish market and opposite the water was called Bryggen and it’s a UNESCO World Cultural Site. Bryggen was the area in which Bergen was first founded in the eleventh century before expansion but its look and feel date to the middle of the fourteenth century onwards when this part of the city became a trading post for the Hanseatic League. What are now generally shops and locations for local craftspeople to work in were formerly warehouses and merchant houses for the League. The colourful wooden buildings still bear the signs of their previous lives and the narrow alleys and open spaces within the buildings, either lined with wooden boardwalks or cobbles, made for a lovely little wander.

We’re the sort of people who like to spend money in the places we’re travelling, not just spend it getting to and from them, so we were pleased to find a local jewellery workshop in this part of Bergen and my wife bought a hefty, silver ring. My wife tried the ring on, said it was lovely, acknowledged that she understood the stone wasn’t a diamond (for the price we were paying: well, duh!), said she’d love it, and the man there smiled and said he’d polish the piece of jewellery for her. This triggered a loud and indignant “Well, you didn’t offer to polish mine!” from an American woman who’d just bought something too. I guess we just bring out the best in people.

Our no-plan-just-wander tour of Bergen saw us next heading eastwards in a loop to get back roughly to where we’d been dropped off. We weren’t short for time but we were definitely still in a finding-our-feet phase of travelling. These days we would plan things a lot more, have set ideas where we’d want to be, make sure to spend as much time in port as possible, but back then we wanted to be certain that we’d be safely aboard ship in plenty of time.

Our walking route took us past some fairly uninteresting buildings and streets until we came out on Vetrlidsallmeningen where we were greeted by the sight of a long queue of – we assume – passengers from our ship waiting to board the Fløibanen funicular train to the top of the hill overlooking Bergen. On a clear day I imagine the sight is something worth seeing but with the cloud still partially obscuring the hilltop (although the light rain had ceased by this time) we were very glad that we hadn’t paid to do this on our own or as an excursion offered by the cruise line.

We cut through the line of people waiting to board the funicular and found ourselves in another old part of the city of Bergen. Wooden buildings and cobbled streets dominated, although there was more of an overall whiteness to the buildings rather than the varied colours of the buildings that had belonged to the Hanseatic League. This was Lille Øvregaten in the district of Vågsbunnen and it was one of the oldest parts of Bergen. In medieval times this was where you could find inns, goldsmiths, tailors, and booksellers, and it was also the home of cobblers until they found their own street in the fourteenth century.

Korskirken (or the Holy Cross Church) caught our eyes, its stone structure most likely being designed to do precisely that amongst all the wooden buildings that surrounded it. Its name comes not from its shape (although it is cruciform) but because it once housed relics of the True Cross (the somewhat unlikely alleged remnants of the cross on which Jesus was crucified) although these were stolen by Denmark who’d skipped the bit about not doing that in the commandments. The church was damaged in fires in 1198, 1248, 1413, 1582, 1623, 1640, and 1702 so not the greatest of track records when all’s said and done.

We continued heading roughly east and southeast through various streets in Bergen on our walk back towards the lake near where we’d been first dropped. There was a little bit of street art to be seen but nothing terribly good with the majority of work falling firmly in that unthinking graffiti category instead. One interesting moment was stumbling upon a group being filmed for something; it involved holding up cards with words on them then everyone waving Danish flags. Your guess is as good as mine.

Not far from the lake we made a stop at a bar with outdoor seating (as the weather was quite pleasant now) just so we could say that we’d had a Norwegian beer in Norway. Well, we can say that we’ve done it but it wasn’t a particularly nice experience in Bergen because social smoking was a big thing there. In later years (travelling in Europe in particular) we’d run into this problem with smoking in public a lot. Is it asking too much for smokers to simply lower themselves into a Pit of Shame whenever they want to light up? Anyway, we drank up quickly and decided to have one last short wander around before making our way back to the shuttle bus.

We made a quick circuit of Lille Lungegårdsvannet. Interesting pieces of art in the vicinity included Dansk Pige (or Danish Girl) by Gerhard Henning, and the fabulous, abstract, steel sculpture by Knut Steen to memorialise King Olaf Kyrre.

We had a quick look at the modern shops along the pedestrianised area we’d walked through earlier in the day but there was nothing to grab our attention.

With the weather being a little more favourable I took a couple of minutes to grab some additional photos around Julemarked Byparken once more. As public parks go it’s a pretty small one. To the north of the centrally-located pavilion was a statue to Edvard Grieg which we’d noticed earlier but on this second pass through we spotted an abstract piece of work that was more interesting to look at. This was a sculpture to another Norwegian composer, albeit a far less familiar one I’ll warrant, Harald Sæverud.

We decided to call it a day in Bergen at this point so walked through the Festplassen, the open air area beside the lake which often hosts circuses, amusement parks, festivals, and a regular pre-Christmas candle party. Best not to think too much about what the average Norwegian does at a candle party.

That concluded our walk around Bergen. We didn’t have long to wait until the shuttle bus returned us to Crown Princess. We had successfully negotiated our first day ashore on a cruise in five years and had the luxury of knowing that everywhere else we’d stop in Norway would include an organised tour meaning the chances of us getting left behind in any port were practically none.

During the night Crown Princess had cruised northwards along the Norwegian coastline until it passed Holmengrå Lighthouse on its starboard side where it turned south into the Hjeltefjorden, the main shipping route from the sea to our destination of Bergen.

Despite late-night drinking (yes, we’ve been known to have the odd tipple) this cruise was our first experience of a balcony (and we’ve never looked back since; thanks for the huge upgrade, Princess) so the giddy joy that accompanied waking up in the morning meant we’d leap outside as soon as we were suitably dressed (not super warm on the North Sea and around Norway, after all) just to gawp at whatever we were passing. When you’re cruising along the Norwegian fjords you’re going to be passing rocks and hills for the most part and thus it was the case on this day. It was, unfortunately, raining, which meant grey skies, low clouds, and a damp chill to the air but that didn’t detract from the exhilaration of the experience.

At about quarter past seven in the morning the pilot came aboard although we couldn’t see this from our balcony. As we cruised past the small island of Sora Rotoyna Crown Princess turned to port and entered the south west arm of the Byfjorden for the final stretch towards the Norwegian city that we would be visiting.

Coming closer to some of the rocky islets in the fjords we could see that many were inhabited and in some cases the houses seemed astonishingly close to the water line. I can only assume we were either cruising during a high tide or that the water levels in fjord do not change by much. The houses along the fjord looked incredibly charming, would have had some spectacular views (and I can hardly imagine what the sight of a cruise ship passing by would look like), but I don’t think the isolated location requiring boat access is one I’d like. We love being near to the water but we’re still definitely city people at heart.

Before a ship can reach Bergen it needs to pass under the Askoybrua Bridge. I know this from the Log of the Cruise that Princess provide passengers with on the last day. I also know this from watching videos of people cruising in and out of Bergen online. I also know this from the photo below which clearly shows Crown Princess approaching the bridge.

So, do you remember passing under the bridge to approach Bergen?

We all stood up on the top deck, quite amazed at how close it all was, it was sunny, lots of people.

No, that was on Crown Princess, it’s true, but that was the Great Belt Bridge near Denmark in 2017.

Oh. Did we pass under it at night, then?

No, that was Diamond Princess leaving Yokohama in 2018.

Right. In that case, no, I don’t recall passing under the bridge near Bergen.

A conversation with my wife that confirms neither of us remember passing under the bridge. I’m going to blame this travelling lapse on our cruising naivety, this being for all intents and purposes a cruising virginity reboot for us and a time when we didn’t take anywhere near as many notes or invest anywhere near as much energy in researching trips. Despite my photo, I clearly had no idea we were about to cruise under the bridge near Bergen so we must have stepped back into the room or got breakfast and completely missed the experience. Bizarrely, since looking back at the photos since that point it turned out that we did watch the ship cruise under the bridge when we departed Bergen although I’d not bothered to document it originally on this site.

The rain had stopped so we made our way to the top deck of Crown Princess to see the final part of the cruise ship’s sail into Norway’s second-largest city, Bergen. The morning’s rain, the low cloud cover of the hills, and our high vantage point on the ship gave the place a compact and fairly drab appearance but that didn’t make a dent in our excitement levels and we looked forward to getting off and taking the free shuttle bus out of the port and into the city.

The next part of our Norwegian fjords travelogue series describes the sights of Bergen.

We spent a lot of time on our balcony on this cruise because it had been something we’d not expected to have. We’d only paid an inside price but had been upgraded substantially when we’d boarded at Southampton. The generally cool weather wouldn’t keep us from using the balcony every day and we’ve never booked anything less than balcony on any other Princess cruise since so it was a fabulous investment from the company. We still love balconies and we still use them every day, rain or shine; for us, with limited annual leave each year, there’s no point saving money for extra cruises we can’t take anyway so we may as well get the best we can afford.

While we waited for Crown Princess to depart Bergen we could look out not only across the water to parts of the city sprawling around the shoreline of the fjord but also straight down to where someone was most likely taking some tender boat driving lessons or refreshing his or her piloting skills.

Late in the afternoon Crown Princess let go her lines and slowly pulled away from the Norwegian city giving us a different view of the surrounding land than we’d had during the approach.

Crown Princess wasn’t the only cruise ship visiting Bergen on that day but while we’d been allowed to dock at the port the AIDA Sol had needed to anchor in the water and tender her passengers ashore. We’ve subsequently seen quite a few of these AIDA ships when we’ve been cruising and their hull designs are always a welcome sight.

We continued to make use of our balcony for the cruise departure from Bergen rather than heading up on deck. This limited our view to the starboard side only but, hey, it’s a balcony! That’s what it’s there for.

If you’ve read the account of our morning cruise into Bergen then you’ll know that cruising along the Byfjorden involves passing under the Askoybrua Bridge, a suspension bridge with a main span of over eight hundred metres and a clearance just over sixty. It was not something that made the biggest impression on us because neither of us could remember cruising under it on Crown Princess in either direction and it was only the act of taking a look back at the photos long after the event that we realised we had even watched it all from our balcony.

The lesson there is that it might be a more memorable event to see your cruise ship passing under a bridge from the top deck so if you’re going cruising for the first time or the first time in a stretch of water that requires you to transit beneath a bridge then get out of your room and see it from the highest point of the ship. The lesson might also be that there’s a good reason I take so many photos and write as much as I do and that’s because our memory is just utterly shocking.

As Askoybrua disappeared in our ship’s wake we spotted AIDA Sol chasing us along the fjord.

All that remained while the light was good enough was to watch the landscape pass by. Crown Princess followed the Byfjorden then turned to starboard and retraced its route of the morning up the Hjeltefjorden. Occasional boats and yachts and rocky islands caught our attention for a time but eventually the lure of showers, changing into evening wear, and some drinks became too much to bear.