When we’d arrived at Ålesund we’d had two things we absolutely wanted to do – visit the Jugendstil Museum and try some local craft ales in the brewery by the dock – and we’d achieved both of those plus “treated” our legs to a walk up to the Storhaugen viewpoint too. All that remained for the remainder of the day was to get back aboard Ambassador Ambience and enjoy some views of the Norwegian landscape as we sailed away ahead of the evening’s dining plans.
I took some photos of some of the other vessels in the port and that’s not because I have any keen interest in fishing boats or scientific exploration ships or anything like that, not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. Instead, my social media life mainly resides on Mastodon because all the other platforms are right-wing, algorithm-driven, tracking cesspits that will sell you and your family down the river. Amongst other great things that take place on Mastodon there are regular photo themes and ships do feature in one. It’s why I also take a lot of pictures of windows and doors as well.
If you’ve read the write-up about our walk up to Storhaugen then the photo below gives you some idea of the slope of the road leading to part of it with the very distinctive church and the primary school in custard yellow easily identified.
We stayed out on our balcony as Ambience departed, enjoying the island landscapes and more distant mountain ranges, more vessels along the shorelines, and the houses built to take advantage of all the scenery.
Eventually we lost some of the shelter that the islands had provided and the chilly wind drove us back inside for warming showers and the chance to get dressed for the evening.
Tonight was one of the speciality dining evenings we’d booked, this being for Sea & Grass, a seven course tasting menu. A tasting menu can be problematic as not every course suits everyone – I’m not a fan of cheese or mushrooms, for instance – but the courses are usually small enough that this isn’t that big an issue. We had no complaints about the venue or the meal, both of us eating everything we were given or chose, and finding it all prepared well, warm, and tasty. As a speciality dining meal it was very nice and worth the additional charge, but neither of us thought it was something that we’d do again. In this respect it felt a little like the dining options on a Virgin cruise in that there’s no issue with the meal quality, but also not enough variety or chance to switch it around, or no single outstanding element, that encourages return visits.
If the Sea & Grass menu choices and photos of the meal below look even vaguely interesting to you then this is certainly something worth trying on an Ambassador cruise.
Five macarons rounded off the meal and they were some of the nicest macarons we’ve ever had – my wife has a thing for macarons – but the number confused us. Why would you serve an odd number of these to an even number of people? Is there a macaron tradition of seeing if a fight can develop or making the most mess out of trying to split the odd one evenly?
In the next post in this 2025 Ambassador Ambience series we push further north into Norway than we’ve ever done before and arrive at our first new Norwegian port of the cruise, Trondheim.