Another sea day to cover for the site. A chance to show off the daily programme of events that could be undertaken by someone cruising with Ambassador Cruise Line, some views from the ship of the sea and the distant shoreline, and pictures of food because we all know that cruise people like to eat. I could almost simply copy and paste the previous sea day aboard Ambience four days earlier because who’d be able to tell? But I’d know, and the knowing would gnaw away at me and then I’d become bitter and my writing might occasionally veer into the realms of snark. Okay, that’s probably not such a big risk to take after all but I’m still going to post new photos and text here.
We were on the Norwegian Sea and heading south! Did you even know there was a Norwegian Sea? No, us neither, but there is, and it’s apparently a “marginal sea”, which is something that geographers have invented so they can re-classify existing world features to justify retaining employment now that everything has been mapped.
Here’s a look at the sorts of things you could get up to on a sea day aboard an Ambassador ship.
Food preparation demonstration, sales pitches masquerading as talks, bingo, dance classes: these are just some of the things we weren’t interested in, but that’s because we’re not representative of everyone and some people will actually want to do these activities. Maybe not the sales pitches. Earlier in the day there were lots of craft-based events (something Ambassador seems to do very well) which is something we keep saying we should join in with, then never do, while later events coalesced around music and game show or trivia entertainment. That’s more our thing. Mornings for us tend to be for relaxation and reading and recovering from hangovers until our brains and livers feel rejuvenated enough for a session of punishment and reward again.
We typically bounce around the ship’s venues during the morning on sea days, sometimes to avoid busier spots, sometimes to track down some trivia taking place, but always to give our room steward time to clean our room. In the afternoon we like to hit our room for a while if we’ve got a balcony as it’s our quiet space, and watching the sea roll past and thinking about how small we are on it is part of the utter joy that is cruising. The distant Norwegian landscape was still as wonderfully icy and enchantingly beautiful as it had been on the northbound cruise along this part of the world.
Not photographed, but mentioned here because it’s a thing that happened and this is an account of things that happened, is that we saw an orca surfacing very close to us. To date, it’s the only orca we’ve ever seen – we’ve become a bit blasé about whales and dolphins now, don’t you know? – and it was a fabulous experience. They have such distinctive fins. The size of it suggested it was a male.
We took part in Ambassador’s “Nice & Easy Trivia” once again, and once again unsuccessfully. It’s definitely trivia, it’s definitely nice. Easy, it ain’t. However, spoiler alert: we’d do a lot better tomorrow. This quiz on Ambience takes places in the Purple Turtle bar, and, like the easy quiz that isn’t, it’s a misleading name as there’s next to no purple to be seen. And don’t get me started on the lack of turtles. It did have cocktails, though.
After our lovely speciality dining experience the evening before in Saffron it was back to the main dining room tonight. Ambassador have fixed dining and shared tables, in line with many other smaller and older cruise lines, and our dining companions were actually present on this evening. We probably only saw each other on a quarter of the evenings for meals as one or both of us booked other things. We got on perfectly well with them, though.
It won’t be a surprise to learn that after dinner we spent time in Raffles, the absolutely gorgeous piano lounge on Ambience. It was a night when there was no scheduled entertainment taking place in there so it was quieter than normal and we’d become attached to the comfy wingback chairs around the edges of the venue so thought it would be nice to sit and relax for a bit. We’d only intended to stay for one or two drinks but because it was so empty in there we ended up speaking for ages with one of the members of staff who had nothing else to really do, hearing about her life back home and what it was like working for Ambassador, then with a solo cruiser from Essex who told us tales about the single men she’d met aboard. Oh, there was good gossip.
After the late-night tray of snacks had made their rounds we popped up to the Observatory for music and drinking into the early hours, as normal. Because we’d seen the Northern Lights the evening before and there was a chance to see them again we took our hoodies with us in case there was any extended time out on the deck oohing and aahing, and my wife ended up leaving her Nightmare Before Christmas-branded one in the club at the end of the night. We only realised this in the morning but, fortunately, it had been handed in at reception.
In the next post we reach what should have been the penultimate Norwegian port of call on this Ambience cruise into the Arctic Circle but the weather would have something to say about those plans. We still get off the ship and have some time ashore in the Lofoten Islands, though.