We’d had a long day the day before in Alta, with a trip out to the fabulous Igloo Hotel then a Northern Lights-themed remainder of the day with a visit to the Northern Lights Cathedral followed by a late-night excursion to hunt for aurorae. It’s at this point that people desperate for clicks would say something like “check that link out to see whether we found any!” but those people also tend to be reliant on advertising and, as you can see here, that’s not the case. So, no, no we didn’t see any Northern Lights on that excursion, but it was a great experience anyway and it’s not like we hadn’t seen the fabulous phenomena before. And indeed, if you scroll to the bottom of this post then you’ll see that we made up for that on this evening.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, we’d had a long day, so with us only remaining in Alta for the morning we decided that we’d stay aboard rather than have a little walk ashore which had been our original intention. There was light cloud when we opened our curtains but this day would prove to have some gloriously clear skies later, something that would have been useful the evening before, but then again, we’d been snowed on when we’d been walking around Alta and that’s almost a rarer event for us than seeing the Northern Lights so we were perfectly happy with how this all worked out.
As we started to depart from Alta our balcony allowed us to view the small airport. It was fun to see one of the airport’s trucks race down the cleared runway to flash its lights and sound its horn as we headed away, although Ambience didn’t return its own horn as a salute. It’s likely that the reason for that is either one of restricted noise pollution laws that happen in some locations or simply reducing the risk of triggering avalanches.
I took a lot of photos of the sail out from Alta aboard Ambience and the reason for that should be obvious: it’s because I have no self-control. And also, Alta’s snowy landscapes were stunning. What follows in this post is a very small fraction of the hundreds of pictures taken.
I’d been keeping a track on my phone of other ship movements and knew that P&O’s Aurora was heading in as we were heading out. I soon realised that our exit lane out of the fjord would mean we wouldn’t be able to see her passing us on the port side of the ship from our balcony, but as our cabin was only a few metres from the forward viewing deck I’d be able to nip out and see her from there. Even though Ambience was cruising very slowly along the frigid waters away from Alta, the difference between our sheltered balcony – a bit chilly – and the forward viewing point – brass monkeys time – was immense, so I kept heading out, then back to warm up, then out again. It was worth it, though.
The rest of the afternoon was mostly spent just taking photos from our balcony after Aurora headed past us. More photos of stunning Norwegian landscapes coming your way.
Instead of heading straight out to the open sea, Ambience changed course to pass by Nordfugløya, an uninhabited island and nature reserve, although the reason for this wasn’t for viewing purposes. This was to facilitate getting the pilot home who’d helped guide our ship out from Alta. A boat came out from one of the islands further south in this arm of the fjords to pick the pilot up. A nice gesture, saving sending the boat all the way to Alta and back.
I don’t think anyone can argue that Norway’s coastline and landscapes are utterly beautiful.
A typical evening on a cruise ship would involve some drinking, some trivia, and some food, before more drinking and some late-night dancing, and that’s largely what happened next, although we did something a little special by taking ourselves to Saffron, Ambassador’s speciality Asian restaurant aboard Ambience.
We are not fans of Asian food, we don’t hit Indian restaurants at home, we never order a curry for a takeaway. However, when we cruise there’s a reasonable chance that we’ll occasionally try the Asian offerings at speciality restaurants, partly because it’s not as if we can’t get any other food aboard if it turns out to be awful, and partly because we’ve discovered that cruise lines ease up on the chillis when cooking, which is the main problem we’ve got with that cuisine.
So, Saffron, then. The positive element and main plus point to this experience was that overall, the food in Saffron was the best Asian speciality dining we’ve ever had on any cruise ship. Please remember that your tastes are different to ours and you may disagree, but we found the food to be generally more tasty than painful, and that’s the sort of thing we look for in things we’re putting in our mouths. There were two negative bits of this dining experience, though. We weren’t massively keen on the location, being a curtained-off part of the buffet, although there are other speciality dining venues on other cruise lines that effectively do the same thing, so that’s not really a big deal. The biggest gripe was the service, and this you can disregard as just one of those things that happens, but I’ll still mention it. Everywhere else on Ambience we’d had great service, attentive staff, the works. Not the case in Saffron, and the reason for that was clear to us. Several bridge officers came in to dine at the same time as us. The staff then prioritised the officers and we were mostly ignored until they’d had their starters, drinks, and main courses served. It wasn’t a good look from Ambassador, but it was the only real blot on the cruise. Again, the food was lovely.
And to round off this day sailing away from Alta past stunning landscapes and dining on absolutely lovely Asian food in one of the ship’s speciality dining venues, we then spotted the aurora (natural phenomenon, not the ship this time), and got some better phone photos than from a couple of days earlier. This was one of those occasions where you could actually see the aurora quite clearly with the naked eye. Often, there’s a smudge in the sky that only a camera can pick it up but we could see greens in the sky fairly easily, unaided.
The next post in this Ambassador Ambience Norway cruise travelogue series will be considerably shorter as it’s another relaxing sea day to suffer through.