We didn’t have quite the same sort of lovely weather in Ålesund for our 2025 Ambassador Ambience cruise that we’d had in the day’s previous port of Bergen, and neither did it match the gorgeous weather when we’d visited this Norwegian city a few years earlier while cruising on Sky Princess. Admittedly, very different times of the year. On that first occasion visiting Ålesund we’d spent the morning on a short excursion and had the afternoon free to explore a little, admiring the architecture and grabbing a drink. No excursions jumped out at us this time around so we made some plans for more extensive walking, architectural admiration, and drinking instead. We know what we like to do when we travel.
Before looking at the city, here’s the view from the top deck of Ambience looking southwards on this cool, ever-so-slightly damp day in Norway. The distant, snowy mountain range is known as the Sunnmøre Alps.
We had two things we actually wanted to do during this day in Ålesund: visit a particular museum; and have some local ales in a microbrewery near the port. Neither of those things could be done immediately as both locations opened later in the day, with the museum opening mid-morning and the brewery mid-afternoon. So this meant we needed to kill a little bit of time first and we’d already identified an early possibility.
Let’s talk about the geography of Ålesund. It’s considered to be mainly spread over three close-connected islands, these being, from west to east, Hessa, Aspøya, and Nørvøya. As a cruise ship visitor you’re more likely to only really see the latter two of these as the city centre is grouped around the narrow stretch of water and marina area that separates them. The largest island, Nørvøya, can be seen in the photo below, and it’s the one with the hilly Aksla viewpoint, a popular destination for people wanting the grandest views over the city. Cruise ships dock at Nørvøya, very close to the vehicle and pedestrian bridges that cross over the narrow strait to the smallest island, Aspøya. Aspøya has its own hilly viewpoint, albeit a far smaller one, and that’s where we would be heading instead. If you’ve read about our time in Bergen then you’ll know that my wife had an old injury flare up while walking up a road there so any further form of strenuous walking wasn’t really advisable, but it doesn’t feel like we’re truly been on a cruise unless she’s grimacing in pain and telling me to shut the fuck up when I ask her if she’s coping okay at some point. Even if we’d both been in great physical shape – for us – then Aksla on foot would not have been an option. We’re not natural climbers.
We headed ashore for a morning that would be accompanied by that faintest of drizzles you can only really feel on your skin as a cold, prickly mist, not see.
We almost immediately came upon a grand example of Jugendstil architecture, the Germanic form of Art Nouveau that dominates the city thanks to its history. If you’ve read our previous visit to Ålesund, or if you wait to read the next post in this series when we visit the museum dedicated to the architectural movement, then you’ll know that a city-wide fire in the early years of the twentieth century is the reason for this look. The building is the Arbeideren Kulturhus, a cultural centre and theatre.
As we came to Hellebroa, the short road bridge connecting the islands of Nørvøya and Aspøya, we passed by a World War I mine – presumably defused – that had been set up in the city in 1920 as a spot to collect money for relatives of lost seamen.
No matter the weather, Norway’s mountainous landscapes are just stunning.
The viewpoint we were heading for on Aspøya was Storhaugen, and while it was up, as viewpoints tend to be, it wasn’t too up with easy-to-ascend roads and pavements. I wouldn’t necessarily want to do this sort of thing in icy conditions, but on this day, with it also not being too hot, it wasn’t exactly pleasant (for us), but it wasn’t a troubling bit of walking either.
We passed a few buildings of note on the slow trek up the hill. Ålesund Church, you won’t be surprised to hear if you know anything about the state of religion in the Nordic countries, is Lutheran. It didn’t appear to be open as we passed by on the way up and the way down but if it had been then we’d have popped inside for a look at its likely fairly utilitarian innards, just because that’s the sort of thing that nosey people like us do. The bright yellow building is a primary school, built about a decade after most of the rest of the city and therefore shifting architecturally from the more common Jugendstil to Neo-Baroque. For a time during World War II it was used as a warehouse and accommodation for occupying German forces.
You know you’re at a place of some interest if you see a sign with the distances and directions to various destinations around the world. Storhaugen is just a tad under seventeen thousand kilometres from the south pole. You never know when that information will come in handy.
The views over Ålesund and the surrounding area from Storhaugen may not have been as wide-ranging as those from Aksla – we don’t know; we’ve never been – but they were still lovely and provided a full 360 degrees of distant landscapes and waterways to admire.
We could see Ambassador Ambience back in port – and we could even see our balcony cabin; one of the square balconies a couple of decks straight up from the A of Ambassador – and cruising law required us to take a photo, post it on our Instagram page, and tag the company, so that’s what we did.
There was a cylindrical stone pillar at the top of Storhaugen but we never did discover if there was any special significance to it, or if it was decorative, or marked the highest elevation, or was functional in some way. Still, who doesn’t like a mysterious pillar?
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll head down but stay on the island of Aspøya as we visit the Jugendstil Museum to learn some more about the history of the rebuild of Ålesund and see some examples of items produced in the art movement.