This trip is essentially a repeat of last month’s Norway fjords cruise.
07.08.2019 Hamburg-Altona;
We took a taxi and train from Berlin to Hamburg then had dinner sailing down the Elbe.
09.08.2019 Bergen;
A warm sunny day. We walked to the Fisketorget and had some fish and beer for lunch.
10.08.2019 Hellesylt/Geiranger;
H booked us all on a bus trip to Dalsnibba and Adlerkehren. It sounded tame but it turned out to be a very dramatic ride along hairpin-bends, massive drop-offs, glaciers and spectacular views of Geiranger Fjord.
11.08.2019 Molde/Andalsnes;
A sunny Sunday morning in Molde. A sleepy town even mid-week, it becomes very quiet on Sundays. That is apart from the church bells and a colorful gathering of families of an African persuasion outside the town hall. They were more than likely refugees from somewhere enjoying the culture shock.
A short sail up the Romsdalfjorden had us docking in Andalsnes in the afternoon. There was some threatening patchy rain and cloud. even so we got a bus tour taking us from Andalsnes up the Rauma river valley passing the very big Romsdalhorn (1,550m) and the Trollveggen (Troll Wall) with it’s 1,000m vertical drop. The wall and the whole ridge of the Trolltindene (Troll Peaks) calls out to be jumped off with a parachute but this has been banned since the 1980’s since a number of people reached the bottom in a less controlled way than intended. The bus journey ended at the railway station of Bjori where we caught the Raumabanen train for a spectacular ride back to Andalsnes.
12.08.2019 Trondheim;
It was a rainy day so we just had a wet walk through the old town.
13.08.2019 Alesund;
An even rainier day and a bit cold. I walked for an hour or two through the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) architecture of the town centre. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany is very popular here as he sent some assistance after an accidental fire burnt the entire town down in 1904 and the Kaiser’s picture is on display in one or two antique shop windows. The rapid rebuilding during 1905-06 is why most of the buildings are in the same style. Of course, the rest of the world knows the Kaiser for non-accidentally setting fire to the rest of Europe ten years later and sending no assistance at all.
14.08.2019 Eidfjord;
Roland’s 85th birthday so we had a fancy breakfast and a scenic seaplane flight over the fjords. Low cloud prevented us from overflying a glacier but we were told that recent rains had made the many waterfalls more impressive than usual. As a birthday treat we were invited onto the bridge and Roland got to have a go with the ship’s horn on departure.
15.08.2019 Stavanger;
We had our usual Stavanger fish soup and beer for lunch in the Skagen restaurant. The AIDAperla, a fleet big sister, was also in port. The combined instantaneous invasion of over 6,500 German passengers and 1,500 crew could normally be expected to stress any small city’s fish-soup resources but fortunately the bulk of passengers hit the destination-port streets mainly to purchase fridge-magnets and hand-knitted socks before scuttling back to the ships for more familiar food. We did the same that evening, but at sea, in the excellent on board Buffalo Steak House.
The day was also India Independence Day and H was invited to the Indian crew celebrations in the Crew Bar to make a speech and cut the cake. I made a mistake with selecting the sari for H and chose one which we have discovered leaks blue-green dye on bare skin. It turned her into a Smurf again.
17.08.2019 Return to Hamburg-Altona.
Train back to Berlin.
