The chances are high that this is your first visit to this site and you aren’t aware of how we enjoy cruises or the way that I write about our trips. Addressing the second point first, I write travelogue accounts, typically daily diaries more-or-less, with plenty of photos thrown in. What I don’t do is provide tips or lists of best (according to whom?) things to do or prices or any of that sort of thing. Partly because that’s what everyone else does and the web is saturated with that content. Partly because those sorts of things are subject to change. Getting onto how we enjoy cruises: well, in ports we like to see new things with a strong preference for history and architecture, and we like to check out local drinks if they’re available; at sea, though, we like to play trivia, read, and partake in very few organised activities at all. It’s that blend of being active in port and thoroughly inactive on the water that makes a good cruise for us.
What was the purpose of that preamble? Was it just to pad the content out on what’s going to be a post devoid of very much information at all? That definitely factored into it, yes, because I am a verbose bugger even when I’ve got nothing to say, but it’s also to point out that just because we did absolutely stuff-all on this first day at sea aboard Ambassador Ambience, that’s just what we like to do. Everyone’s different. For the sort of activities you could get up if you were cruising on this ship, here’s the programme of events for the day.
On another day we might have attended the guest lecture or the other talks aboard, or we might have set ourselves up somewhere so we could at least watch one of the games taking place, knowing that we’d have needed to be absolutely hammered to even consider joining in (we’re shy, you see). However, on this particular day we grabbed our books, found quiet spots, and contented ourselves with some reading and trivia, just as I explained at the start of this write-up. Naturally, there was some sea-gazing too because a guaranteed sight on any sea day is the actual sea, and we really like the sea. This was the North Sea and we were on our way to Norway having left Tilbury on Ambience the evening before.
One of those quiet spots for reading was the Botanical Lounge, a place I’d somehow not managed to photograph on embarkation day. This was a bright and airy space, bringing the feel of a stately home’s orangery onto the ship. During the cruise it would be where some trivia games were held, the book club met up, and some acting vignettes took place, and in the evening it often hosted the piano and violin duo who were certainly a pair of characters. We weren’t entirely sure that they weren’t international assassins stationed at sea.
There are people who cruise who really like formal night. It’s a chance to dress up and embrace the rigid class structure aboard ocean-going liners of high society of the early-to-mid twentieth century. We’re not huge fans, but we don’t mind making an effort occasionally just to be part of the crowd. I don’t have the sort of body that looks good in a tuxedo and bow tie but I suffer through it because when all is said and done, it’s just for a few hours. We’re not the sort of people who think that just because they’re paying for a cruise (just like everyone else) they should get to do whatever they like. That’s a very selfish and immature attitude and it immediately means you’ve got no grounds to ever complain about anything anyone else ever does in any situation. Trying to enjoy a special occasion in a restaurant with your spouse but there’s a naked man on the next table watching TV on his phone and shouting at the top of his voice while coating his body in spaghetti? Well, he is paying for the meal so…
I went off on a tangent there. You could probably tell.
Formal nights on cruise ships tend to coincide with sea days and so we duly donned our poshest of clobber as the afternoon sailing northwards drifted into evening. We hit the Purple Turtle pub ahead of dinner in order to take part in the “Nice & Easy Trivia.” The name is a deliberate lie as the trivia on Ambience was anything but easy, but that made it that much better. We like a challenge. And I also like to have a Vodka Martini when I’m dressed up for the occasion. If I’m going to look like James Bond – well, if you squint, and you’re far away, and you haven’t actually seen James Bond to compare – then why not act a little like it? Nobody makes a Vodka Martini as well as I do (if I say so myself) but the ships do a passable job most of the time and this was perfectly adequate on Ambience.
Onto the dinner then. If you’ve read the first part of this cruise series then you’ll know that our dinner companions for our fixed dining hadn’t made an appearance on the initial evening aboard, but they were present this night and we got on perfectly well with them.
The food was of good quality, with nothing standing out but also nothing disappointing.
After one drink in the Botanical Lounge we ended up spending most of the evening in Raffles with the very talented Alex Dennis on piano.
The first full day aboard Ambassador Ambience then concluded for us up in the absolutely gorgeous Observatory (as it would do most nights). We arrived at the end of a Silent Disco taking place. We’re not fans of these things – they’re rarely silent, and they’re horribly awkward things if you’re not sporting a pair of headphones yourself – but a lot of people do enjoy them and that’s all that really matters. Entertainment for us came in the form of someone dancing on the floor with whom we’d been chatting the previous evening. He spotted us walking into the quiet venue of shuffling bodies, squeaking shoes, and a small chorus of tone-deaf singing of multiple songs at the same time by different people, only to loudly shout “You’re late!” across the dance floor to us. Bar staff and others in the club who weren’t wearing headphones all turned to stare at us and wonder who we were and what we were late for.
The next day would see us stop at the port of Haugesund. Unless the wind had other ideas and the captain decided to take us on an unplanned scenic cruise through the Hardangerfjord instead. Yeah, that.