Like many industrial ports that cruise ships use Zeebrugge was… not particularly exciting to look at, although some naval vessels did provide a slight distraction from the typical cranes and containers you come to expect.

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.

Grey skies blended with grey seas but the humidity and general strangeness of a reasonably quiet cruise past rocky islands and the man-made harbour area, coupled with the ghostly feeling accompanying the near-complete lack of seeing anyone else around made for a wonderful experience nonetheless.

You know you’re not far from the port when the pilot boat comes alongside the cruise ship to allow the local expert to guide the huge vessel to its dock.

Keelung is typical of the industrial ports that cruise ships tend to dock at because of their size. Cranes, containers, towers, warehouse buildings, and other ships and boats made up most of the view from the ship as it passed from the open sea into close proximity to the city. I don’t actually mind these views because there are lots of patterns and repetitive shapes that help to form decent imagery for photographs and I have a fondness for the raw power in brutalist design anyway which you tend to see in some form or another around the world in docks.

I liked the attempt to brighten up some of the industrial elements of the port with imagery, even if it didn’t quite bring the splash of colour that perhaps was intended with the decidedly grey conditions of the day on which we approached Keelung.

Coming in closer to the city of Keelung it was interesting to see the the modern buildings, dirty-looking from the dampness in the air and the grime from the industrial location, contrasted with the clean, bright yellows of the taxis and buses waiting for tourists, as well as the ancient temple structures on the hillsides around.

I don’t know whether we arrived a day early or left a day late but on the day we turned up we were docked in the commercial dock area of the city – at Kwai Chung Container Terminal III by my reckoning of landmarks – which meant our first view of Hong Kong was somewhat industrial. Cranes and containers surrounded us and only the more distant sights were of the skyscrapers we’d been expecting to see. Still, the weather was gorgeous and there’s a type of beauty even in these commercial ports, especially when you’re on the other side of the world and experiencing them for the first time. I suspect that’s a minority view but it suits my contrarian nature.

The video below was shot from the top deck of Diamond Princess looking first eastwards then crossing over and looking westwards to show the views from this part of Hong Kong. What’s of slight interest (very slight; like so slight you might not even spot there’s any interest at all; we’re talking a sliver of slightness that practically disappears if you look at it edge on) is that you’ll be able to see that the Stonecutters Bridge wasn’t quite complete when we visited; there’s a gap in the centre of the award-winning bridge’s span over the Rambler Channel.

We’d booked a Hong Kong Island highlights excursion for our day in the city so it was just a case of waiting until we were due to head off – that usual gathering in the theatre with your tickets and assigned tour group number while watching people try to sit at the ends of the rows, causing chaos, or leaving before their row is due, out of some utter desperation to get on the bus first and mark them out to their fellow passengers as selfish tits – then trundling off the ship and to our designated means of transportation.

Victoria Peak

Our bus took us from the Hong Kong mainland onto the island and dropped us off at the station ready for a funicular train ride to the viewing platforms on Victoria Peak. It was incredibly crowded and quite chaotic waiting to board and I’m not convinced that everyone in our tour group managed to get onto the same train going up, but I’m sure we all made it eventually because there was no panicked stare in the ship’s representative’s eyes when taking head-counts during the remainder of the excursion’s activities.

A sculpture of local legend Jackie Chan caught our eye and it wouldn’t be the only time he would appear in some form on our two days in Hong Kong, with our tour guide pointing out his house as we drove past it later in the day, and with us seeing his star on the walk of fame the day after.

 The view from Victoria Peak was the classic one that everyone knows from looking for pictures of Hong Kong online, even if the haze from heat or pollution made the skyline photography a lot less than ideal. Some skyscraper landmarks we had pointed out to us included the Bank of China Tower (designed by renowned architect I.M. Pei) and Central Plaza, but you can also see in the photos and video from Victoria Peak below that there was a building under construction across the water, on the mainland, and that was the International Commerce Centre, the tallest building in Hong Kong.

Stanley Market

The next stop on our Hong Kong excursion was to the southern side of the island and a shopping trip at Stanley Market. We were assured that this was a great place to get good quality, cheap souvenirs and clothing, and that actually turned out to be true. We’re not shoppers when we travel but we did have some local currency on us – we like to spend when we’re ashore, helping the local economy in some small way, and we’ll judge you if you don’t do the same – so ducked into a side alley and were encouraged into a shop selling silk shirts by the owner there. He looked me up and down then reached back into a pile of shirts and pulled out a short-sleeved, dark blue, silk number, threw it into a bag, and asked for a very reasonable sum of money. We took a chance on not being handed something polyester, nine sizes too small, and I’m glad we did. It fit me like a glove, it felt divine, and I still have it now, even if it’s a little snugger around the waist these days.

Aberdeen

Our penultimate stop on this guided tour was Aberdeen, named for the 4th Earl of Aberdeen and former mid-nineteenth century Prime Minister, George Hamilton-Gordon. The original name of Aberdeen was actually Hong Kong but foreigners mistook it for the whole island and by the time this was realised the misunderstanding had stuck. The locals now call Aberdeen Hong Kong Tsai which can be translated as Son of Hong Kong.

Aberdeen is famous for its floating village and restaurants and it was to a famous one of the latter that we had a quick bite for lunch. The floating village houses many boats and is home to the Tanka people, historically associated with fishing in Hong Kong harbour and with prostitution, though that is partly ethnic stereotyping of people seen as low caste across much of Asia.

Once our short stop for food was complete we then boarded boats for a ride around the Aberdeen waterfront.

The final stop was to see some artistic workmanship in a jeweller’s workshop. As always with these kinds of stops on these cruise ship-organised excursions there’s a push to buy merchandise too, and while we didn’t there were some in our tour group who did, which was good to see. It always helps when you’ve got plenty of wealthy Americans in your group.

Even though Diamond Princess would be in Hong Kong for another day, everyone had to be back on board by early evening as the cruise ship needed to move to an anchoring spot in Junk Bay. The timing of the ship’s repositioning to its new location in Hong Kong Harbour would mean we’d get to watch the famous Hong Kong Harbour Light Show from the water.

In Buenos Aires airport we were met by representatives of Princess Cruises (and I was offered a job because I helped out some other passengers having trouble understanding the process) and were taken on a slow drive through the Argentine capital city’s traffic to the port area to board the ship.

As with many places that cruise ships dock the port area of Buenos Aires was a commercial zone with not a huge amount of interest to look at if you’re not fond of shipping containers and cranes but the weather was gorgeous, we were in a foreign country, I had my camera to hand, there were some lovely pieces of brutalist architecture on show too, and photographs were quick to follow.

In addition to taking pictures from our mini suite balcony when we first arrived in Buenos Aires we took a walk up onto the top deck of the cruise ship and I snapped some photos of the commercial port and the Río de la Plata from there too.

From going back and looking at the photos taken of the brutalist buildings along the port area one of the things I missed at the time was the lovely, socialist design work in the concrete of one of the structures. Worth looking at these images in full size.

The spectacle of concrete style couldn’t go on forever and, much as I like it, there was the matter of a two week cruise around South America to deal with which did have more than its fair share of appeal too. We left brutalist Buenos Aires behind and passed the remainder of the commercial port area.

The port was soon behind us as we turned out onto the river that would take us to our next stop, Montevideo. The dipping sun had just enough light left to provide a few nice shots through some of the buildings along the waterfront area of Buenos Aires and we got to see some distant high rise structures that hadn’t been evident when we’d been in the main part of the city. We also noticed a pier with a narrow-gauge railway leading along it.

We left our room to get some breakfast while the ship came alongside in Montevideo and completed its usual checks whenever any vessels arrive in a new port. After we’d eaten we returned to our room to get ready for the day’s planned excursion (which would turn out to be incredible and possibly the best one we’ve ever experienced so far) but because we still had some time before meeting with our group I trained my camera on some more sights of Montevideo, or the little bit we could see from our fairly low vantage point.

Ushuaia is breathtakingly beautiful, ticking all the boxes in what I want from a place: by the water, views of incredible mountains (the Martial Mountains and not the southern tip of the Andes as we initially thought), cool climate. It was almost literally breathtaking as I stepped out from the state room onto the balcony because of the cold snap in the air. I knew we were going to need to wear layers on our upcoming excursion that day but I was stunned with open-mouthed awe just looking at the dark, imposing skyline before the sun had even had a chance to rise, and shivered while taking a few photos of the light industrial port where our ship and a few other hardy explorer vessels were docked.

It was interesting to see the difference in sky colour and increase in brightness in just the half an hour either side of going to grab some breakfast and I took advantage of the conditions to get some clearer photos of the city’s surrounding mountain range. But I didn’t have much time as we had to leave to meet our excursion group on the ship. The wind was mostly coming from the port side of the ship and as we were on the starboard side we had some protection from the worst of it and the light rain it was carrying along but I was a little bit concerned as I knew the trip we had planned would take us down the Beagle Channel and there would be no shield from the weather there.

We’d arranged parking with CPS and this was pretty painless. Friendly staff, a half hour wait to move our car into position for someone to take the keys off us, then we walked into the terminal, were handed a fast track ticket as we were almost bang on our due slot, and were through the check in process and on board about ten minutes later.

Southampton’s not the most attractive place in the world and it doesn’t even have the benefit of any real impressive dock architecture so pictures are few and far between. We were in the Ocean Cruise Terminal (the first time for us) and with the ship facing inland and our state room (B327) on the starboard side (which is our preferred side for reasons of trying to stay consistent and not confusing my wife’s poor sense of direction) we had a view from our balcony to the east and southeast which included the only building of interest, the brutalist design of the grain terminal behind the Queen Elizabeth II cruise terminal.

We, and many others on the balconies, did spend quite a bit of time looking at some container stacking taking place on the dock beside the ship; it was actually quite fascinating but for some reason I didn’t take any photos.

With it being late in the year after we’d had our muster (held in the Glass House for us and which was thankfully not quite as excruciatingly long as on our previous cruise with P&O) and the ship had finally started to depart Southampton we were afforded views of a setting sun and I did remember to take some pictures this time.

I decided not to take many photos on board Azura for this trip as it had only been seven months since our last visit on her and very little had changed. For pictures of the public areas of the cruise ship taken on our first trip please click here: P&O Azura. For the pictures we took on this second trip please click here: On Azura.

Usually.

There are two big problems with the promenade deck on board the P&O cruise ship Azura:

• It’s not a full promenade deck. Unlike promenade decks on Grand-class ships operated by Princess the front of the promenade walk is closed off for some reason. We weren’t the only people to step out, walk along, then suddenly stop dead and look puzzled at the white, metal barrier in our way.
• Smoking is permitted along the promenade deck. At least, it was along the starboard side; I’m not sure if it’s permitted all the way around. Regardless, what this does is transform what is a pleasant place to stroll and get fresh air on other ships into something truly awful. Not helped by the high, cold wind, I’m sure, the sight of thirty of so people in multiple layers, huddling close to doorways, puffing on their cigarettes resembled how I imagine the outside of dole centres looked in the 1970s and 1980s. If this is the classy image that P&O are going for then well done for a resounding success but personally it looks dreadful to me and ducking and coughing my way through the crowd of nicotine addicts was not particularly enjoyable at all.

But back to IJmuiden…

On the port side of the ship there was no sign of any smokers, thankfully, and we got to watch the pilot board Azura before getting a decent look at IJmuiden approaching and other vessels departing its canal locks.

As you can tell from the pictures there was quite a bit of swell to accompany the gusting wind making for some lovely, rocking conditions on the approach to the Dutch port. I was particularly keen to get some pictures of the waves breaking over the bow of a container vessel that passed by.

IJmuiden probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but for me the place had a fabulous look and feel to it; there were elements of Blade Runner or numerous other near-future, dystopic movies in its industrial beauty. The heavy grey skies worked well to add to the mood of the brutal, functional monsters on the coastline as we neared the Netherlands and I was struck by the contrast between the dirty-feeling, belching steam and fire from the main buildings in the background against the modern, clean wind turbines dotted here and there.

IJmuiden was a nice surprise for me from a photographic perspective and I hadn’t expected that I would see it again as we were due to make the return transit through the North Sea Canal in the early hours of the morning a few days later. Fate had other plans, though, and it turned out that I would get another chance to photograph this imposing view, to appear in a later update.