However, unlike when we’d visited Hamburg and taken the shuttle bus out of convenience but not because we’d planned to, with this cruise port stop at Gothenburg the shuttle bus for some free time exploration was a necessity as the actual port for ships was nearly nine kilometres away from the city centre as the crow flies, and considerably more by road.

The morning view from our balcony in the morning was a cool, overcast, but dry one.

Our shuttle bus for this visit to Gothenburg dropped us off at Gustav Adolfs Torg, a town square distinguished by a statue to Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden between 1611 and 1632. Gustavus became highly respected for his military leadership during the Thirty Years War, allying Sweden with the Protestants trying to defend themselves from Catholic forces looking to expand the Holy Roman Empire into the Baltic. His use of deploying well-trained mobile and infantry units to complement one another helped win decisive victories and the tactics were soon copied by other armies. Gustavus is credited with turning Sweden into a major European power during this period and for centuries after.

We’d come to Gothenburg on Island Princess with a couple of places we’d decided might be worth walking to, so headed off in the direction of the first, eastwards. This took us over the main canal of the city, then through Brunnsparken, a small spot where trams passed by frequently, a fountain flowed, and people sat at the bars and cafés dotted around.

A brief introduction to Gothenburg, this. In the next post in this 2022 Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll be looking around a nineteenth century park, the Garden Society of Gothenburg and the Palm House in it.

One small word of warning or advice, though: Gothenburg has two notable gardens pandering to the likes of those with botanical leanings and the Garden Society is the smaller of the two and the closer to the city centre (and therefore more easily-walkable-to which is why we headed there). The Gothenburg Botanical Garden is significantly larger but a little further south in Gothenburg. If you’re super-keen about flowers and plants then you’ll likely want to visit both.

Our walk through and look around the Garden Society of Gothenburg wasn’t born from a love of flora but rather it was something that was clearly other than just streets roughly on the way to another destination in the city we had in mind to visit. My personal knowledge of plant-life is small enough to write on the petal of a daisy and wouldn’t extend to much more than “I think this is the petal of a daisy” but parks and gardens are pleasing to wander around no matter what.

If you visit the Garden Society of Gothenburg you’ll find it impossible to miss the Palm House. Dating from 1878 and inspired by London’s Crystal Palace but to a slightly less grand scale, it still remains a gorgeous sight and is clearly a product of the industrial revolution, utilising large frames of iron and thousands of panes of glass.

The interior of the Palm House is split into five sections, each with different climates, but tropical heat and humidity is what greets you first. And in addition to greeting you it greets your camera which has been outside in the cool air of the Swedish city, and so your camera lens keeps misting up. Which means you keep having to wipe the lens and take a photo and hope that you’ve wiped without smearing too much and not given the lens surface enough time to fog over again.

Obviously, yes, you could simply be patient and wait until your equipment warms to the same as the ambient temperature in the greenhouse. But who has time for that? Anyway, that’s why some of the photos look a little smudgy. In fact I had better pictures from my phone in here (although I used it less often) simply because the phone was already effectively warmed up by being in my pocket.

There were some nice, exotic flowers on display but other than recognising pitcher plants, I couldn’t tell you what anything was.

In the largest section of the Palm House it was possible to climb steps to an upper platform where some tables and chairs were set out and locals were sitting around with food and drinks, chatting, and generally appreciating being inside.

Back outside, we continued our walk through the Garden Society of Gothenburg towards its south western exit because it was roughly to the south that we wanted to head next.

There’s not a lot to do in the Garden Society of Gothenburg other than enjoy the gardens and plants and flowers, but if enjoying gardens and plants and flowers is something you like then with its close proximity to the main part of Gothenburg it’s a free activity that’s clearly going to be worth your while.

In the next post in this 2022 Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll visit the Universeum in Gothenburg because we’d seen it combined science, zoo, and aquarium all in one place, and we like all those things.

After our walk through the The Garden Society Of Gothenburg And The Palm House we continued in a roughly southerly direction. Architecture in Gothenburg was fairly mixed so elements stood out as a result. Immediately outside the park we spotted a nineteenth century theatre, then one road over something that could have had a history as a church or fire station but was now a table tennis facility.

As we approached the Universeum there was a lot of building work taking place; excavations, demolitions, and construction were in evidence in every direction. With plenty of boards up to protect the roads and passers-by from any debris or to prevent trespassing there were also a lot of canvasses on which street artists could work. Actually getting any photos of any of it was incredibly difficult, though, as the pedestrianised areas to walk along were very narrow, squeezed between the busy main roads and hoardings. We thought we might be able to find more advantageous photography positions after our visit to the museum but that would not prove to be possible.

The Universeum itself was a very impressive building with a multistorey jungle setting inside one side accessed along bridges and up and down steps, but also capable of being visited by elevators on each level. Airlock-style entrances prevented any of the wildlife from escaping because some of the birds were free-flying. It was a great environment but warm, busy, and with lots of ups and downs requiring a fair bit of exertion – and we’re no spring chickens – that we soon realised that our tactic of entering at the lowest level was a mistake.

We abandoned our look low down and took the elevator to the top with the intention to explore from there downwards instead. Happily, we also saw that it was possible to head out onto a balcony area so it gave us a chance to get some fresh air and see Gothenburg from high altitude. The metallic-looking towers we immediately saw belonged to a hotel. The nearby dinosaur sculpture looked like it might have emerged from the excavation work taking place in all directions.

While one side of the Universeum held the tropical zoo-like environment, on the other side on each of the floors there were other rooms and that gave us the chance to look around the aquarium. Clean, large tanks, lots of varieties of fish and coral and sea urchins, and we’re rarely if ever disappointed with just stopping for a moment or two to watch fish swim effortlessly around.

Back to the other animals then before we decided to leave, and that took us past numerous reptiles, and, like the fish, they’re creatures that just make me relax. A lovely variety of snakes and lizards to admire curled up in various desert or jungle settings, and exotic flowers to ooh and aah over as well.

We spent less time in the Universeum than we’d expected, despite its large size and arguably good attractions that should have suited us perfectly. In truth, this was more a place for families with kids, so if you’re visiting Gothenburg with children then there’s a lot to recommend here, especially given the large amusements area next to the Universeum that we weren’t interested in checking out.

We mostly enjoyed the building and things in the Universeum although we encountered some behaviour from locals – visitors and staff – that we wouldn’t quite describe as rude, but would definitely put down as just over the border there in Unfriendlyland. It affected the experience. You know the stereotype about Londoners on tube trains being sullen and unapproachable? This was like that, but colder. We’d interacted with a couple of people while walking around the Palm House before this, too, with similar results; holding a door open for someone and smiling but being met with an icy stare and not even a nod of acknowledgement; that sort of thing. Something about the people of Gothenburg did not endear us to their city.

And that’s part of the reason that we decided that we’d cut short our walk around the city at this point. There was another area we’d considered taking a look at on this day in Gothenburg: Haga, the old town. This would have meant the almost-circular route we’d planned before returning to the shuttle bus pick-up point, but the general downbeat feeling at this point coupled with light rain that had started helped us to decide to head back early instead. In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll do just that when we say goodbye to Gothenburg.

“You can’t really appreciate a country and its people and its culture until you’ve been begging for money to get the bus out of the isolated village where everyone pees in the street and the dogs won’t leave you alone,” is the sort of thing I imagine they might say. Or: “Two weeks on a cruise ship can’t possibly compare with really getting to know everything there is to know about this tree and the bush nearby I’ve been sleeping rough in.”

We like to see things differently. Cruising for us allows us to quickly get a feel for historical aspects and architectural aspects, and enjoy local food and drink, all admittedly within a reasonable distance of the coast of a country. That short visit that coincides with a hefty injection of money into the local economy (sly dig!) gives us a chance to decide if we do want to see more of the place. Call me cynical, but I suspect the only reason a lot of “real” travellers return to a place time after time isn’t to learn more about it and see new things but because it’s cheap and they’re seeking revenge on the guy who stole their wallet last time.

Hey, we’ve all got our prejudices against anyone who doesn’t travel in exactly the same way as us. It’s fun to denigrate an entire class of people.

“Mark, really appreciating you telling me this, really helping me get to know you more, but what does it actually have to do with Gothenburg?”

Good point, narrative device. I’ll get to that now.

A single day, I must admit, may not be quite enough time to know everything about a place but it’s enough time to form an opinion, and sometimes you just get a strong feeling for somewhere. And we didn’t enjoy this day in Gothenburg very much.

We concluded our time in Gothenburg by making our way as quickly as possible from the Universeum to where the shuttle bus could take us back to Island Princess docked a decidedly inconvenient nine kilometres away from the city.

We may not have visited Gothenburg on its best of days. We may have picked the wrong direction and wrong things to see. The weather wasn’t particularly pleasant so that didn’t help. But the people were the thing that put us off Gothenburg the most. Aren’t the people the “real” part of a country? We didn’t meet a single happy or polite person at all. I fully accept that the common element in all this was us, but we actually get on pretty well with most people even if we’re not the most forthcoming, and I only generate an air of menace when someone upsets me.

When we travel somewhere we almost always think “Yeah, lots more to see, we could definitely come back here and explore more, maybe stay and experience more.” But after just a few hours ashore, Gothenburg left us with more of a “Well, we’ve been here now, I suppose.” Perhaps it takes the “real” travellers two weeks to get that feeling about pee-ridden villages and the mystery of their missing passport, so whose form of travelling is truly the best?

Ours, obviously. Duh. We get cocktails at the end of every night.

We headed back towards the city centre, accompanied by light drizzle in the air and grey clouds in our heads. You want to know how unimpressed we were with it all? We didn’t even try to find a bar to see if it could persuade us the city had had any saving grace.

Gothenburg still has some nice if not exactly exceptional architecture, and with a few canals here and there it certainly felt like it could look considerably more appealing on a sunny day.

The statue of King Karl IX we passed by has an interesting history attached to it. The king himself only ruled for seven years and they were spent almost entirely at war partly due to siding with the Protestants during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation conflicts, but he was seen as forming an historical bridge between his own father and that of his more respected son, Gustavus Adolphus, whose statue we’d seen when we’d been dropped off at the town square in Gothenburg. The original statue was supposed to be of the king on foot but the instigator of the plan to erect a statue raised enough funding to put up the equestrian statue of Karl IX instead.

The statue was erected in 1904 but in 1935 it became necessary to move it out of the way of increasing traffic. This wasn’t without protest by the people and some council members but the move eventually took place, shifting the statue ten metres and turning it to face west.

The king’s sword was stolen in 1977 and a new one was commissioned to replace it. In 1998 the original sword was found in someone’s house and can now be seen on display in the Museum of Gothenburg.

Continuing with our theme of grumpy Swedes, as we approached a fountain we’d passed earlier in the day we saw some people demonstrating for or against something. They were being filmed. They had a loudspeaker. Some were holding up photos of women in lingerie. Absolutely no idea what was going on, but I do know that as soon as they saw me with my camera we had their attention and whatever it was that they were declaring loudly (and in an unfriendly tone, naturally, since, you know, when in Gothenburg and all that) was directed at me now. Accusations or general statements or questions, we didn’t know. We were able to play the roles of Tourists Who Don’t Know What The Hell You’re Saying So We’re Going To Ignore You And Hope This Doesn’t Escalate so well it’s a wonder we didn’t get nominated at the Oscars.

The centre of the granite fountain near where the loud locals were congregated hosted a bronze statue of a woman, the first statue of a woman to be erected in Gothenburg. Dating from 1883 and officially known as The Sowing Woman, it’s more colloquially known as Johanna in Brunnsparken for one of two competing theories: either that was the name of the ballet dancer model who posed for the sculpture, or the statue’s opening day coincided with Johanna’s name day in Sweden.

That concluded our somewhat disappointing time in the city of Gothenburg as we made it to the square at the perfect time to board a shuttle bus and take us back to Island Princess docked at the not-so-nearby port.

Back on the ship we grabbed a snack and a drink, headed to our room, and did all the usual things such as showering, charging batteries, and backing up photos ahead of the sail away from Sweden.

Gothenburg’s port has a number of little islands dotted around and, probably like the city itself, could look very nice on a day with better weather. It was a little flat and grey for our cruise away but I still enjoyed the views of low-lying rocky land with small lighthouses, though, and as you can see, I took plenty of photographs of the departure on the ship.

Of course we’d like to go back to Gothenburg at some point, despite everything I’ve said, and give it a second chance. We are people who are prepared to change our minds in the face of new evidence or the introduction of some happy drug in the city’s water supply just before we arrive. But for this cruise, that was Sweden completed.

The evening aboard Island Princess was more of an “Ah, that’s better” time. That’s the joy of cruising, after all; no matter what happens ashore you can always get back and have a nice meal with drinks before, during, and afterwards. And that’s exactly what we did.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be visiting Copenhagen for the second time in a year and our third visit overall. Spoiler: we like Copenhagen a lot. Not so much of a spoiler: we like Copenhagen more than Gothenburg.

We had anticipated having to pay for the shuttle bus from the cruise port to the city centre. If you’ve read our experiences in Copenhagen from earlier in the year when we’d cruised to Denmark on Sky Princess then you might know that we got caught out by an odd shuttle bus arrangement that meant we were not allowed to use it one way because we’d taken a tour so ended up walking a considerable distance to get back to the ship at its conclusion (see: Copenhagen Walking Tour, Part Three: Street Art Between Skaal And The Cruise Terminal). This time we decided we’d pay for the tickets both way. Only this time the shuttle bus was free. No idea why it was different a few months apart on cruises operated by the same company. Still, at least it’s nice to know that there’s no consistent answer for whether or not you can get a complimentary ride to Copenhagen from a cruise ship or not, so that’s something.

In 2022 I can state that the location where the shuttle buses dropped cruise passengers off was right beside St Peter’s Church, but there’s no guarantee that this fact of the time holds true now.

St Peter’s is not just the oldest church but the oldest building in the main area of Copenhagen. Old buildings in nations with their fair share of warlike people or warlike neighbours or clumsy oafs have a tendency to burn down and it’s no surprise that the original church has done just that and been rebuilt more than once, but the history of the church goes as far back as the eleventh century. Most of the architecture that the church currently displays, though, can be traced back to the fifteenth century.

Across the road from where we were dropped off was another church: the Church of Our Lady. The present building dates from the middle of the nineteenth century as its predecessor was destroyed in the Second Battle of Copenhagen by British forces. The previous medieval design was given a neoclassical makeover complete with six-columned portico but lacked a tower originally (because towers didn’t fit the architectural style) until locals demanded one be added. A simplistic square form tower is the result. To the left and right of the main entrance to the church were statues of David By Jens Adolf Jerichau and Moses by Herman Wilhelm Bissen.

About a minute’s walk brought us to Gammeltorv, the oldest public square in Copenhagen, which housed the Caritas Fountain (or Caritas Well), the oldest fountain. That’s a lot of oldest things all in very close proximity. The fountain was built in 1608. On the monarch’s birthday (that’s changed since we visited) and a few other occasions each year copper balls covered in gold to symbolise apples are placed in the water of the fountain to jump under the streams; a tradition dating back to the eighteenth century. It was before television was invented and people were starved of entertainment. Don’t judge.

We headed through the streets of Copenhagen towards the City Hall Square.

We spent a few minutes admiring the architecture of the area around the City Hall and some of its odd sculptures, but didn’t go in the building itself. It apparently houses an impressive World Clock that with the benefit of hindsight might have been nice to look at, but we didn’t actually know that at the time. The main building is very early twentieth century, taking over the functions of a smaller building elsewhere in the city that been used prior to that.

If you like red brick buildings with tall towers then this is the square to come and see them, although it’s interesting to note the somewhat subtle differences in the architectural styles employed. The nearby Scandic Palace Hotel, for instance, built only a few years after the City Hall, has a few more curved surfaces and ornate ironwork than its neighbour, borrowing from the Art Nouveau movement.

We liked the bizarre bronze statues in the square that were apparently supposed to be dragons. Often when you see a painting or sculpture of an animal that looks nothing like it you can say with some authority “Ah, clearly made by someone who’s never seen one before” but when it comes to dragons you’ve got to give the artist a bit of leeway. Anyway, dragons with snouts that can blow water and extinguish the flames of dragons that breathe fire makes a sort of sense if you think about it.

Our short walk in Copenhagen took us along a little bit of Hans Christian Andersen’s Boulevard where, in addition to seeing one of the two statues of the author in the city (the other one is in the King’s Garden and we’d seen that earlier in the year on our walking tour of Copenhagen) we got good views of the entrance to Tivoli. Despite this being our third visit to Copenhagen we’ve still not visited its famous amusement park and gardens, mostly because we don’t think that the short trips to Denmark’s capital city so far would have done justice to the amount of time we’d like to spend inside this place. It’s in the back of our minds to take a city break to Copenhagen one weekend and perhaps give this location a proper look around then, but for now we simply walked on past. Also, it was closed at the time.

A very short walk from here brought us to a location around which there were three museums close to one another: a fine art museum, the national museum of Denmark, and the one we chose to visit on this occasion, the smallest of the three, the Museum of Copenhagen. This was a museum dedicated to the city with a look at its history and geography as you’d expect, but also hitting everyday life elements such as manhole covers or, my favourite, equipment and pictures by the street photographers who used to take and process photos of tourists on film with chemicals within their all-in-one camera and lab equipment. This was truly engrossing for me, although I suspect it’s niche enough that it won’t appeal to everyone. But we like different. Different is good.

We had an enjoyable time at the museum but had now reached the point for us to do the only thing we’d actually planned on doing during our free time in Copenhagen. This took us back to the City Hall Square, heading down a street just before we reached the Lur Blowers statue, a gift to the city from the Carlsberg Foundation.

The place we wanted to spend some time in was the Taphouse and if you know us and our love of craft ales, and if you know that Taphouse has 61 beer taps behind the bar then you’ll understand why we wanted to pay a visit to this place. Friendly staff and a great range of beers – but also spirits, wine, soft drinks, snacks, and free Wi-Fi if you’re looking for a good place to watch the world go by in Copenhagen – but the thing we liked most was the lights flashing red whenever a new ale was on tap. What can I say? We’re simple people who like simple things.

Taphouse catered for a lot of beer tastes, but we are fond of dark ales so we gave their flights a try, and if you’re interested in seeing the range of alcohol percentages and countries of origin then we’ve been awfully nice and shared print-outs of those too.

We spent a lovely couple of hours sipping drinks but then started on the walk back to where the shuttle bus would be. We don’t like to leave it until the last shuttle bus or tender boat when we’re ashore just in case there are queues, and it would have been all too easy to grab some more drinks and lose track of the time altogether.

On the walk we spotted a couple either posing for photos after marrying or posing for photos for a wedding or bridal photographer. We’ve seen quite a few wedding shoots over the years when we’ve travelled to places.

The last thing I paused to take photos of in Copenhagen was the Reformation Memorial, an obelisk commemorating four hundred years of the switch from Catholicism to the Lutheran faith, unveiled in 1943. On each face of its base were bronze reliefs depicting events of 1536 and 1537 when King Christian III confirmed the Reformation of Denmark.

A hundred metres further along the road was the shuttle bus waiting to take us back to the ship.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll be posting photos of Sweden from Island Princess as we left Denmark and cruised between both countries on the way to the next port of Oslo, Norway.

We’d just had a lovely half day in the Danish capital and by the time we got back to the ship following our morning and afternoon of walking, exploring, and drinking in Copenhagen we were a smidge tipsy. Those beers may have been small but they packed a punch. Our immediate thoughts were that it made sense to have something to absorb some of the alcohol without filling us up too much, and since it was pleasant right at that point – it had been changeable all day in Denmark – we headed to the top deck of Island Princess for something from the lido grill.

From here on it was all about just relaxing in our room for a few hours, getting some drinks delivered (you don’t stop drinking once you start in the afternoon or you get a headache; that’s a scientific fact!), having a bit of a read, and waiting for, then stepping outside occasionally for, the sail away from Denmark northwards along the coast of Sweden towards our next port of call on this cruise.

I do like a nice wind farm, but who doesn’t? Gits who put profits before the planet’s future, that’s who. And people whose parents were abducted by wind farms when they were children, instilling a deep fear of the thrum of turbines ever since and a longing that won’t go away. I can excuse the latter group.

That changeable weather was on show with clouds bubbling up and hiding the sun on occasion, sometimes showering us for a minute or so, then passing quickly. Our balcony was on the starboard side of the ship which meant the sun was on the other side of the vessel, so when it started to rain in Sweden we saw evidence of it from our cabin in the form of a rainbow over the distant land. Thanks, physics!

As we cruised further north, so the sun sank in the west, and that brought a range of fantastic colours in the sky and clouds, even casting everything in shades of light purple at points. Light reflected from water at different wavelengths to produce rainbows, then light refracted through more of the atmosphere to change its wavelength all in the space of half an hour! What a treat! It was fantastic to watch Sweden passing by with completely different light from minute to minute.

To some people they’re eyesores but I do love the look of industrialisation. All those chimneys and warehouses, the silos and conveyor belts, the steam, the cranes. That’s what growing up on a steady diet of post-apocalyptic movies in the 1980s will do for you. Somewhere over there, I thought, there’s a gang of survivors barricaded while a biker gang looks to break in and commit horrible acts of violence on them, and maybe I’m the hero who arrives on a shiny, white ship to lead everyone to safety.

Again, we’d been drinking.

The narrowest point of the waterway between Denmark and Sweden was at the northernmost end so this is where we got closest to land. This was Helsingborg in Sweden, and if we’d been inclined to head up onto the top deck and gaze across in the other direction we’d have seen Helsingør in Denmark, and, more specifically, Castle Kronborg, that we’d visited on our first visit to Denmark a few years earlier. Clearly, as the photos will show, we weren’t so inclined.

For the rest of the evening it was the usual fare for us in the form of showers, changing, a little bit more drinking and entertainment, then dinner.

In the next travelogue in this Island Princess series of posts we’ll be making our second visit to Norway’s capital city in four months when we visit Oslo. We’ll also be taking the only excursion we booked at all on this cruise, which starts with a glass blowing demonstration that isn’t what we expected at all.

I’ve mentioned before that we like spotting other cruise ships from the cruise ships we travel on so it was nice to spot Viking Venus visiting Oslo on this day too.

Before we’d visited Oslo for the first time we’d had two cruises booked that would be visiting Norway’s capital city, both with the same cruise line, so we checked out the excursions that Princess Cruises offered and identified two that interested us, both full day options. With us having a little more time in port for the second of the visits – this visit on Island Princess – we’d booked an Oslo highlights tour for the first cruise, but for this one we’d be travelling about forty kilometres north of the city so the extra time would allow for a bit of travelling to and from the destination.

That cruise excursion destination was Jevnaker, a municipality, itself part of the greater, traditional Hadeland region. The name Hadeland derives from the old Norse for “the land of the warriors” but we wouldn’t be engaging in any activities that related to war on this day’s tour. We’d instead be discovering that Hadeland could more accurately be described as the land of the artists.

The first element of this cruise tour was a visit to Hadeland Glassverk. This had been described as a glass blowing demonstration in the excursion blurb and it’s a subject that appeals to my wife who’s got a fascination for glassware (as our many filled shelves will attest to), and was the entire reason for booking this trip.

But let’s get this bit out of the way ahead of time: in this respect, this part of the tour was a massive disappointment. Now, that’s no reflection on what we were about to see in Hadeland, which was absolutely fine, very impressive even, but what we’d anticipated and what we actually saw were two very different things.

Anyway, we arrived at Hadeland Glassverk under glorious blue skies and nice, warm conditions, and the first stop was a wander to get a coffee and cake, included as part of the tour. We wouldn’t normally bother with this sort of thing, especially not so soon after breakfast, but when you’re touring with lots of older Americans it’s something they seem to love, and it gave them all a chance to use the toilets nice and early into this day’s activities.

It didn’t take long to get the snack and drink down us and gather outside with our guide.

Hadeland Glassverk is a collection of buildings working with glass, selling them in outlet stores, and showcasing them for sales. Production of items such as jars and bottles for chemists and medical purposes as well as household items began in 1765, but in the middle of the nineteenth century the focus was changed for more decorative pieces, initially copying popular European designs before finding its own forms to sell. With production continuing to this day, this allows Hadeland Glassverk to claim to be the oldest industrial business in Norway in continuous operation.

We were given a short amount of time to wander around the buildings in the fresh Norwegian air and we had a lovely day to enjoy the old buildings of red brick and white boards against the blue sky. All the colours of Norway’s flag.

What we’d actually come to see, however, was the glass blowing demonstration, and here’s where the tour deviated sharply from what we’d been expecting.

We were led into the main factory space where glass blowing was taking place and we were led to rows of raised seating looking across to different workspace areas where glass blowers were blowing and shaping glass. It was interesting to see the process but that’s all that occurred. There was no demonstration of the art; there was no explanation of how colours were added or anything to explain the different methods of producing glassware; no mention of how glass blowing had changed over the centuries. We were tolerated viewers in a factory, and that’s it.

It was as if we’d booked an excursion promising a look at how roads are built, then given some fold out seats next to roadworks beside a motorway and told “Enjoy, and when you’re bored feel free to wander off on your own.”

Okay, we weren’t bored, as such; the glass blowing, even as industrial and uninformative as it was, was still interesting enough to look at for a while. Eventually, though, we did get up and have a nose about. There were examples of Hadeland Glassverk glassware throughout the rest of the warehouse space and we initially had a thought that if we found something small, artistic, unique, and not stupidly expensive then we’d pick up a souvenir. That wasn’t the case, though. Everything was produced to set designs, larger than we liked, and with that size came a price tag we weren’t prepared to spend. There was no doubt, though, that there were some very nice pieces of work here and it was lovely to see them in household display settings.

We used what remained of our time at Hadeland Glassverk with a little more of a stroll outside, taking advantage of the great weather. Hadeland is located at the southern tip of Randsfjorden, Norway’s fourth largest lake, which meant that even though we were inland on this excursion we still got to see water, and water is what makes us happiest.

We liked this visit to Hadeland once you factor out the expectation versus reality aspect of it. A fault that can be shared between Princess Cruises and ourselves in equal measures for not explaining more accurately and not researching fully respectively. In our defence, we hadn’t known the name of the location we were visiting which did make research more troublesome. In that respect, I hope that this explanation about what to expect on a glass blowing tour when visiting Oslo on a cruise ship helps someone out in the future.

In the second part of this cruise excursion we’ll have a completely different experience when a “public modern art sculpture park” visit turns out to be vastly more impressive than we’d expected and an absolute gem of a place in Norway.

Kistefos is a former wood pulp mill and hydroelectric power plant, making use of the waterfall on the river Randelva to generate power and to facilitate turning wood chips into pulp boards that could be transported and later processed further in paper mills. Within the area that constitutes Kistefos there are historical elements related to this former role which fulfil the museum aspect of the site, but for our tour to Kistefos we were concentrating on the modern art sculpture park and the world famous art gallery that can also be found there.

We had a great day weather-wise for our visit to Kistefos and we were immediately greeted by one of the pieces of art on display in the form of one of what would turn out to be a pair of male figures leaning in towards a structure. As much as possible, I’ve made a note of the name of the artwork and the sculptors responsible on the images themselves in this post so click on them if you need more information about any particular piece.

After a short walk through part of the large wooded area of Kistefos we came to its likely most famous artwork.

The Twist is an art gallery and a bridge and a work of art all in one. Opened in 2019 it has been nominated for awards numerous times and won the Leading Culture Destinations award for Architecture in 2020. The design of the building allows it to be supported by the banks of the river despite them being of different heights and incorporates different height spaces within its length to act as different gallery areas. Its entrance, admittedly, didn’t look like much.

We had to wait around outside the entrance to the Twist for a few minutes because we were visiting out of season. While the rest of Kistefos is open throughout the year – although some artworks are wrapped up to protect them from the elements when this happens – the Twist, because it houses art in the gallery, is open only when the main museum is open. As it also serves as a bridge this means that outside normal opening times there’s a slightly longer route around the park to take as another bridge is needed to cross the river further downstream.

Eventually, though, an employee came along to open up the Twist for us to look inside. A benefit of booking this trip to Kistefos on this cruise tour rather than trying to make it here ourselves was that the number of booked visitors could get us this special treatment.

Inside, the twist that gave the Twist its name became far more evident than it had been from the entrance we’d approached from. We’d get an even better view of the entire structure from the other side, and you can see that further down this post. We were guided through a number of installations inside the gallery space and had the artworks pointed out to us and described.

Let’s be clear here: if you don’t like modern art, whether the sort you hang on walls or the sort that’s sculpted, then Kistefos may not be for you. For us, we loved this. We won’t pretend to like everything or understand a tenth of what we often see but when it comes to art we simply hold to the old truth that we know what we like.

Even if you don’t like the art, the architecture of the Twist is absolutely fascinating.

We were told that there were toilets in the downstairs section of the Twist and we were encouraged to visit them. We didn’t need to use the toilets but we went anyway because we were also told that there were more artworks in that area. The projected facial parts over the urinals in the cubicles were delightfully eerie, and peering in from the river bank through the glass area on the lower part of the building was the second male figure artwork to go with the piece we’d seen at the park’s entrance.

At this point we should have left the Twist and headed back outside but this is when the site’s security system kicked in and suddenly our tour group, our guide, and the employee who’d opened it up for us found ourselves all trapped in an automatically locked-down art gallery. There are worse places to be trapped.

A call on the walkie-talkie and about fifteen minutes of waiting around was thankfully all that was needed for another employee to arrive and open up from the outside once more. We like to travel for the experiences and this certainly counts as one.

Back in the fresh air of Kistefos once more we started to walk around the water’s edge on the opposite bank to the one we’d entered the Twist from. Looking back we could see the proper shape of the building and its unique design, while ahead of us on the river we could see the old pulp mill ahead and some of the larger art sculptures on show.

One of the more visually-arresting sculptures on our walk around Kistefos was Path Of Silence by Jeppe Hein. Comprising four hundred and sixty stainless steel, triangular, mirrored steles arranged in a circular labyrinth and shaped with the contours of the land in mind to take the visitor through three quiet spaces: an inward-seeking space reflecting the views in and encouraging looking up; a natural space with a tree to connect the internal and external structures; a water space with a walls of water fountains making for ever-changing reflected views and the white noise cancelling out everything around.

Had we been visiting on our own then I’d have had to keep a close eye on my wife who has history when it comes to getting confused by mirrors in places. Luckily, with us being part of a tour group she could easily keep track of where she needed to walk, never once walked straight into her own reflection, and made it through the artwork and up to the higher level.

We’re both fond of cephalopods – we like smart creatures; even some humans – so Octopus by Bjarne Melgaard made us smile until I remarked that it looked like the terrifying Kinder Egg Humpty Dumpty character we used to see on TV had mated with Cthulhu. That’s an image that won’t leave the mind.

Energy-Matter-Space-Time by Petroc Sesti was a swirling vortex of mineral oil in a transparent container. It’s very clever in how it seemingly produces the vortex with no visible moving parts but I had to confess to being a little concerned that strong enough sunlight focussed through the artwork had the potential to set the surrounding area alight. Possibly an unfounded fear given the thickness of the construction material and liquid and focal length. Hopefully.

At this point we had almost completed a circle of what we had been taken to Kistefos to see on this tour and we were granted some lovely views back along the river towards the Twist once more.

The final sculpture we passed as we headed back to the bus was All of Nature Flows Through Us by Marc Quinn. This artwork is clearly based on an eye – not a doughnut – and the title more-or-less explains the meaning behind it with part of the river in the landscape cascading through the centre of it. It’s not just the light of our surroundings that comes in through the eye, but every part of what makes that up. We love being by the water in any form, and hearing it pour out and onto the river in this tranquil setting was just beautiful.

That brings the day’s excursion to an end in this part of Norway. There was plenty more in Kistefos to see that we didn’t get a chance to experience – the museum itself, more sculptures, more walking paths – but cruise tours are naturally limited in time. It’s certainly a place we’d not hesitate in returning to because it featured a lot of things we simply like to look at and visit when we travel.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover some time on the top deck of Island Princess ahead of our cruise away from Oslo and a nice surprise in the evening.

On top of that, my wife’s knee was aching from the sculpture park stroll so the one thing we’d told ourselves we definitely had time to do when we got back – look around Akershus Fortress right by the port – we eliminated, too.

“We’re bound to come back to Oslo again,” I said. “Next time we’ll definitely explore the city on our own and we’ll definitely explore the fortress.” And maybe we will. For this particular day in Norway, however, we decided we’d just get back on the ship and enjoy a few hours in the sunshine before departing.

We’d normally head to our balcony in a situation like this; order a drink, sit out and read, etc. But the weather was so nice in Oslo that we decided to hit the top deck instead. It would put us closer to a bar and give me lots of opportunities to see the views from all around the ship rather than a fixed view as the evening’s light touched and changed the scenery of this capital city and the fjord on which it was situated.

A number of local tour companies offer opportunities to see Oslo from the water aboard various types of vessels. I particularly liked seeing some of the older ships taking tourists for an early evening sail on the Oslofjord.

We had spotted Viking Venus when we’d arrived in Oslo in the morning, had driven past her as our tour bus left the city, and we could still her over trees in the distance from Island Princess.

Oslo City Hall is a building that interests me a lot because the architecture straddles that boundary between Art Deco and Modernism. It’s got just a small hint of the former with a lot of the latter represented by the functional form in its material choice and overall design. It’s also the host location for the annual Nobel Peace Price ceremony.

We were out on the top deck of Island Princess long enough for the Viking cruise ship to leave the port and for the sun to creep towards the horizon for sunset before it got cool enough for us to consider returning to our room to change and get ready for the night.

After we’d showered and changed we enjoyed another very good dinner on the ship, settled down for a drink, and planned to have a few more of those while hunting down entertainment around the ship before calling it a night.

As Island Princess finally left Oslo and started to cruise down the Oslofjord we then had an announcement from the cruise director that it might be possible to see the Northern Lights from the ship’s aft as the conditions were right for it. We hurried back to the room, grabbed warmer clothing, and made our way to the back of the ship where it was already quite crowded.

We’ve seen the Aurora Borealis a few times now, but it’s not like it’s something you can tire of seeing. Subsequently, we knew what to expect, which was a lot more than other people who’d come out for glimpses of the phenomenon. We heard disappointed grumbling from more than a few people who thought they’d be seeing vibrant green shimmering sheets of light in the sky. We knew that we’d see incredibly faint, dull patches of barely green at best. In fact we didn’t even see that. Part of it was because we were pretty far south as far as displays of aurorae go so it was naturally very weak and part of it was because there was a lot of light pollution from the city of Oslo itself. What we did find was that playing around with longer exposures on our phones and on the camera could bring out some of the greens that were invisible to the naked eye. Naturally, being handheld on a moving vessel this also meant blurry photos of the city lights and water in the ship’s wake, and a fair bit of illumination of the smoke coming from Island Princess’s funnels.

No brilliant photos of the Northern Lights from Oslo, but we can say that we have now seen them in Norway as well as several (better) occasions in Iceland and that’s no bad thing.

In the next post in this Island Princess European cruise travelogue series I’ll share some photos of the Captain’s Circle Event on Island Princess from a sea day ahead of our penultimate port stop in the Netherlands.

For us, attending is something we do if there’s nothing else going on of interest – and they tend to schedule them so that there isn’t anything of interest occurring – and if we’re on a Grand-class ship then we like to see how many drinks we can get delivered to our table from the staff from Skywalkers who we generally know pretty well by this point in the cruise. Like the newer ships, though, Island Princess lacked that great nightclub so ingratiating ourselves with the staff was harder and our drinks collection while waiting for the speeches to commence was poor for us.

The Captain’s Circle event took place on a sea day after leaving Norway and before reaching the Netherlands, and here’s how it all looked on Island Princess.

In the next post in this Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll be visiting a new port for us in the form of Rotterdam.