“I’ve been impressed with your sea legs” . . .

. . . Not my actual legs🤦🏻‍♀️

By the time you read this we will be back on UK soil and the washing machine will be strutting its stuff. Connectivity is non-existent on the ship as whilst the Wi-Fi is expensive the more pertinent issue is that its painfully slow. It took nearly 6 hours to upload 25 photos for the first post. Thankfully when in port we had our phones and the mobile networks are extensive even in the remotest areas of Norway – that’s how everything got posted/uploaded. Even the electric car charger network is fabulous in the remote areas of Norway – rows of them, and they all seem to work. UK take note.

Now we can say we are expert(ish) on Norse mythology and more importantly “we have cruised” I suppose its time to give our final thoughts. And yes this is “our” thoughts.

As I started by voicing my personal concerns about travelling by water, I should start by saying that I’m very proud of how I’ve coped. When it got a bit rocky, others were drugged or relying on witch doctor remedies I took nothing and survived (well my way of coping was eating and lying flat). Steven was impressed too and yes he really did say “I’ve been impressed with your sea legs” as we were walking around the ship on Saturday morning.

To start, checking in and out of a cruise terminal is a wonderful experience by comparison to an airport. Queues were minimal and no hanging around in a terminal for ever or to get luggage on or off. And no luggage weight police!

The ship was in superb condition and we like the decor and ambience it creates. A particular favourite is the library with its spiral staircases, and the jigsaws. There are three or four jigsaws out in the public area and you just sit down and do as much or as little as your feel like and then walk away. I’ve met fellow dissectologists in abundance so family take note, I’m not as weird as you think I am. The food is more than plentiful, the quality is excellent and we have never eaten the same meal twice. I thought you could only eat yourself stupid once, but I was wrong.

Steven enjoyed the talks and the shows he went to and I enjoyed brushing up on bridge as the last time I played was in 1979 at the back of my English literature O-level class. I managed to read a whole book despite faffing with my photos and my blog. We have really loved the music performers – both the formal concerts and the string quartets and pianists playing in various public areas whilst you are sitting relaxing in the bars in the evening. Surprisingly, we have enjoyed the more formal feel of this cruise.

As for the cabins, whilst they are smaller than the hotel rooms we are used to staying in they seem to use the space so much better. We seem to have more hanging space and definitely more hangers. The shower is phenomenal – so powerful and endless really hot water. Whilst in a hotel we will always choose a room with a balcony if available, here we chose not to have a balcony just a window. It was the right choice. We had plenty of light and space and we enjoyed the open areas of the ship. I was never going to stay in my cabin for a prolonged period of time. Admittedly the weather wasn’t good enough to have used the balcony on three of the six days, but I doubt we’d have stayed in our room enough to warrant the extra cost.

So have we enjoyed it – yes. I enjoyed it far more than I expected and we are certainly very glad that we did the trip.

Would we do another cruise – yes, but there is a “but”. We would only do a cruise where being on the water adds to the destination. The fjords are one of those places. Sailing on a ship is a perfect way to see the fjords and the majesty of those mountains with their shimmering silver tendrils of water cascading down them, and their random little dots of coloured homes. Alaska is another destination that is probably best seen from the water. We go abroad to experience other countries, people and culture. To us that means staying in local hotels, going to local restaurants and eating local cuisine, wandering the place day and night and free to do so when we want to. Here you are released for 8 hours max and then are always watching the clock to ensure you don’t miss the ship.

Yes I feel like a typical tourist with my camera when I holiday, but that is nothing by comparison to the personal feeling of intrusion when you are one of literally thousands of people bussed in at the same time for a stop, snap, and go visit that is 4 hours of that on repeat. The eating experience has been more or less the same for 7 days no matter which restaurant we were in. The restaurants, even the more formal ones are huge seating 450 on two floors, they are not intimate. Whilst each specific meal was different, really the food is all the same – cuisine and dishes we could get or would make ourselves in the UK. As wonderful as this ship was, to us the ship should not be the destination. We enjoyed what we did on the ship but we had no choice but to go there as there was nowhere else to go, and all of these experiences we could do in the UK.

Our views were not coloured by the turbulent water on the first couple of days as I coped much better than I anticipated, or by the weather. It was just our bad luck that Norway experienced its worst storm (Storm Hans) in 25 years but the “liquid sunshine” did enrich the waterfalls and keep everything very green, so that was a silver lining. However I do think cruise holidays are more susceptible to being adversely affected by bad weather and your options are more limited if your day on land is cancelled as you don’t dock and you have an extra sea day like we did. Our holiday went from being two sea days and four days on land, to three of each. On land if the weather is bad and something is cancelled it’s easier to find an alternative, and you can still go out and experience something different and unique to that country.

Cruising is a fabulous way to holiday. But now that we’ve tried it we can say it’s just not for us except in specific circumstances.