It was a bit of a gloomy day.
But the mountains and fjords make up for it!
Well, we did not deem this donut to be wonderful. You could tell it was not fresh
Yeah, that looks like one you'd find in any grocery store. Sorry it was a disappointment.
It was the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. Yes, the same one who foolishly started the First World War just 10 years later. He used his personal wealth to send 4 ships with goods to help and which could shelter the towns people who had lost their houses. The city was rebuilt with a lot of financial help from around the world, but especially Germany. To make the city safer, it was ordered that there were no more wooden houses to be built. And the city was rebuilt in the current fashion of that time: Art Nouveau – or to be more precise, in the German version of it: Jugendstil. It is quite exceptional in that regard as it is not only a few buildings, but since the whole city was rebuilt in the span of a few years, it is all very concentrated.
That's a fascinating history. Thanks for sharing the story!
We also had the possibility to ask someone we used to travel a lot with and who had been to Ålesund recently, whether he thinks it would be okay to not see Ålesund – our Dad. And if I remember correctly he said it was a nice enough town, but as we have lots of Jugendstil buildings where we live or travel often, he would go for the excursion. That helped me with the decision as well.
Sounds like your Dad is a wise man!
So, we finally got started and soon left Ålesund behind. I had looked up the route for the excursion on a map before our cruise and figured out that the right hand side of the bus ought to be the one with the better views as this was the side that would have water next to it, while the left hand side of the bus would have the mountain next to it. And I was right. So, anyone considering this excursion, make sure to sit on the right hand side of your bus.
I was very happy with my personal trip planner, not only on this occasion!
Obsessive trip planning always pays off!
This is a wooden church that is know for its interior with rosemåling (Norwegian for rose painting), which is a Norwegian floral decorative style. All the flowery decorations and even Elsa’s ice in Frozen are heavily inspired by this.
Wow, it's an amazing amount of detail!
It was in a beautiful valley with a waterfall and lovely views.
I could pretty much quote every photo and comment on how gorgeous the scenery is. So I'll try not to repeat myself and just say I love all of the mountains, fjords, and waterfalls. Just a beautiful area!
Unfortunately our guide turned out to not be the best guide. He often was very superficial with his explanations, there was no real depth to them. For example he only told us that we would stop at a church now, he did not mention what made the church so interesting and what the significance of the decorations were. Often he would not be able to answer questions. He was spouting out random facts on Norway sometimes without any rhyme or reason as to why he was talking about this. Somehow he gave of the impression that he was bored himself and not really interested in the topics he was talking about.
That's disappointing. If you're going to spend all day with someone, you would hope he would be interesting!
Norway has plenty of tunnels, including the longest road tunnel in the world which is over 15 miles long.
Wow, that must have cost a fortune to build!
Normally I am not a fan of people who think that a breakfast buffet is also where they can get a free packed lunch. But with the cruise I think it is different. Getting lunch on the ship would actually be included in the price of the cruise fare. So, it is not as if I would get an additional meal that I have not paid for from them.
I can see that. The food is already paid for...
The higher we got, the colder it looked outside. There was definitely still quite a bit of snow around. The road is only open during the summer, most years it opens in mid May for the season. You could tell that it had not been open that long when we were there.
This reminds me of driving through Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
What a view!
And here you can see the Trollstigen:
I bet that's a fun drive. Was it scary in a bus?
He told us that we were going to enter Geiranger Fjord at 5:45 am the next morning and that he expected everyone to be “up and about by 5:30 am” to enjoy the amazing views of this fjord. The whole speech was delivered in Commodore Tom’s usual tone: absolutely devoid of any emotion. He might be great at steering ships, but he truly cannot deliver the tiniest amount of cheerfulness and enthusiasm that is so Disney. Katharina and I nearly fell over laughing about his suggestion to be up on deck at 5:45 am! We were on vacation! Who wants to get up that early????
I mean, if you only get one chance to see amazing scenery, you have to put in the work, right?
We felt that we were happy with what we had seen, but that there had definitely been a lot of things that did not go as well as we would expect from a DCL port adventure. And we felt that we ought to write those down, so that we would remember them and then let DCL know about them.
I'm sorry it didn't work out as well as you'd hoped. Hopefully the suggestions you made have improved it for the future!
I think watching the landscape there made us think if indeed we should not do as the Commodore told us and be up at 5:30am…
You're coming around to my point of view...
We had a wonderful stateroom attendant on this cruise. We often chatted with her a bit and she was really lovely. Unfortunately at some point during the cruise, she injured her foot and when we got to Bergen she told us that they had arranged for her to go to the hospital and then we never saw her again. We were very sorry that her injury was so bad that she had to stop working.
That's a shame.
The views up on deck were really very pretty:
It looks like no one else was up there! I would have loved to spend the evening hanging out on the deck and enjoying the scenery.
Looking at the mountains around us, we also decided that there was no question anymore about getting up at 5:30 am. We definitely wanted to be up on deck for the whole fjord!! So, we went to bed early and set the alarm for 5:30am!
Hooray! I hope it was the right decision!