B511 Britannia review - Norwegian Fjords

[kikki21]

As a special treat, we decided to book ourselves into Sindhu for our first night as both of us enjoy Indian food - I like mine mild to medium and the Mr likes his medium to hot ish!

 

 

This was the menu we had for tonight!

 

 

And the main:

 

 

Desserts:

 

 

The Mr has the lamb cake starter and although it was nice, it was a bit bland in flavour.

 

[kikki21]

 

I had the scallop starter and it was lovely although I have to say the scallops were just cooked!

 

 

I had the lobster main and I was quite disappointed by this dish - thinking about now, I should have sent it back, the lobster seemed well over cooked and was rubbery and the sauce barely had any flavour to it, got hints of flavour but it wasn't great :(

 

 

The Mr had the Signature Plate main and although it was good, again it was a bit bland.

 

 

The accompaniments were all actually good and tasted flavoursome.

[kikki21]

 

The Mr had the Rhubarb souffle for dessert which he enjoyed!

 

 

I had the warm chocolate pudding which was also very good!

 

Our Sindhu verdict was 8/10 for starters and desserts and 7/10 for main courses and as I said before I was quite shocked that even though we had paid extra to eat there, you could only have 1 of each course! I distinctly paying extra to eat on other cruise lines and being offered a few of everything!

 

After a stroll round the decks again and a spin in the casino on the slots, it was time to snooze!

 

[kikki21]

It was good to have a lie in and then of course we were rushing round to meet the other B511'ers from our Cruise Critic roll call - we had a fair number turn out and it was great to put faces to names and real names haha!

 

It was also good to Grab and Go our breakfast roll although we didn't want to eat much since we were booked for Eric's Afternoon Tea!

 

 

 

Oh my it was good stuff!

 

 

I think the cake pop and orange cake were our favourites!

 

 

This was our menu (there are 2)

 

 

This was also good!

 

[kikki21]

 

We were in need of a walk round after all that food and no we didn't finish it lol! Couple of scones left!

 

It was then time to get ready for the 1st Formal night on board, I should have really got my tiara ;)

 

[kikki21]

It was all very swanky and there was a whole load of ladies and gents dressed up!

 

I like to dress up and it is quite handy owning a wedding gift, accessories & jewellery business as I can supply jewellery and clutch bags for the ladies and cufflinks, lapel pins, bow ties, ties, cumberbands, pocket squares and braces for the gents!

 

We really enjoyed the dinner tonight and ordered the Lobster dish from the Marco Pierre White side's of the menu - it was totally lush! This is what lobster should taste like - soft, tender, meaty, delicious!

 

In fact all the dishes that we had in the MDR were all pretty good standard and that was the best one of the week!

[kikki21]

Hubby all smart in his tux!

 

 

Marco's Menu

 

 

The other menu - it all looked yummy!

 

 

The lobster dish

 

 

The dessert was pretty good too!

 

[kikki21]

We were pretty excited to reach our first port of call, Bergen and all week leading up to the day, the weather kept on changing, rain then sun, rain then sun and then this greeted us!

 

 

We could see that Bergen looked pretty but that meant we actually needed to SEE it!

 

 

Our plans for Bergen were DIY and the first plan had been to go up the cable car to Mount Ulriken but since we couldn't even see anything we decided to revert to plan B and go up the funicular later!

 

 

As Britannia docks in a commercial dock area, you are not allowed to walk around the dock so a complimentary shuttle bus was provided which dropped us off by the pretty inner lake.

 

 

We decided to walk around and get the tickets to the funicular at the rather excellent Tourist Office, loads of info there and very friendly staff! We also walked around the Fish Market!

 

 

We then headed to the Bryggen area which looked really small!

 

 

We passed this building which is now several cafes, my favourite building in Bryggen.

[kikki21]

So we continued walking and by now it was trying to rain!

 

 

The shops were all quite samey in that area and as the cloud looked as though it might just break, we took a gamble to go up the funicular and there was no queue at all!

 

 

As we were half way up, the clouds suddenly parted and we got this view!

 

 

After about half an hour and the world's most expensive lunch in the cafe up Mt Floien, we could see everything pretty clearly and the crowds started coming up!

 

 

 

Even though it wasn't the cable car view, we were happy enough to see all this in front of us!

 

[Presto2]

We're on Britannia in just a few days and are loving this thread. Thank you sooooo much :)

[jaceyar]

Lovely review so far, thank you - good for people to see the menus too. Sounds like the Sindhu meal was a bit disappointing. We were on in May and did the Limelight Club on the first night as it was hubby's birthday - we loved it. Didn't try Sindhu but did the Beach House twice as it was lovely seeing the Fjords gliding by.

[kikki21]

Thank you for all the nice comments - it's good to have working internet again and working Photobucket - makes reviewing a LOT easier!

 

Now I am always one for taking pics of super yachts and I happened to notice this one sailing out of Bergen!

 

 

Do we know who she belongs to?!

[kikki21]

 

I couldn't believe my eyes that this was ONE of the swankiest super yachts in the world - it's the Eclipse and she's owned by Roman Abramovich - Chelsea FC's owner!

 

It was time to head back into Bergen itself, now you could actually see Mt Floien and the tracks clearly!

 

 

Bergen's town centre seemed quite pleasant - we found a few shopping centres and stopped for a drink at a cafe.

 

 

 

By this time even though it was still murky, at least it was clear!

 

 

We could even see the cable car station at Mount Ulriken - we will have to save that one for next time!

[kikki21]

We headed back to the ship after our shopping purchases - don't forget to go to get some traditional Norwegian buns from Baker Brun on the Bryggen waterfront area - we got one after smelling the delicious wafts of warm cinnamon through the air and wish we had got another one to go!

 

 

There were not too many cruise ships in Bergen just smaller ones like the Aida Cara who left before we did.

 

 

We were able to take some great pictures from Britannia now that the clouds had lifted!

[kikki21]

 

Sailaway was indeed very pretty!

 

 

The building in the middle of the photo is the Darmsgard Country Museum.

 

 

This building is considered to be perhaps Europe's best preserved wooden Rococco building and is preserved with the original interiors.Built in the 18th century.

 

 

Perfectly placed seagull shot!

 

 

Leaving the harbour behind - it didn't look like a June day but it was still warm!

 

 

Here's the bridge that we could barely see this morning!

[kikki21]

It's a full on job trying to take the best photos with a digital camera, iPhone, binos and seeing what's ahead on the webcam!

 

 

How cute are these houses on the island!

 

 

Still waters as we headed into open seas before turning into the Nordfjord to Olden

 

 

We had dinner in the MDR tonight and it was strange as it was a bit like everything had been thrown together in an odd way - the waiter whipped away the menus very quickly as well as never got a chance to take a photo of the menu! We struggled to actually make a choice but I ended up with more prawns for a starter and the Mr had soup!

 

 

I had a very weird garlicky cheese souffle main, it tasted ok but it came with strange accompaniments!

 

 

The Mr had steak and chips from the always available menu and they were really good although I teased him for being boring!

 

Hard to believe that this was 10.40pm!

 

[kikki21]

We had a turn at the slots again in the casino with my favourite cocktail of the week - the Raspberry Creme Brulee - there's no calories at sea eh?!

 

 

So with that - it was time to go to bed and try to get up a bit earlier for our sail into Olden - however the ship was sailing in early so our planned early getting up consisted of about 20 minutes sail in before we actually docked! Oh well - but the scenery we saw in that 20 minutes was well worth it and gave us something to savour as we prepared for our excursion today - the Nordfjord Panorama - I am going to have to go and get some work done today before I can share some more pictures with you so I will be back later :)

[Pink-belle]

Really enjoying your review, thank you for sharing your experiences.

[Elviex]

Yes, great review and photos. Thanks so much for sharing. Can't wait for September 5th. We love Sindhu on Azura where we have eaten many times and not been disappointed.

[kevinyork]

A great review so far, thank you. We left Southampton on the Eclipse you photographed on your departure. In fact we were at the Sunset Bar, top deck, aft in your pic but its hard to make out. Looking forward to following the rest of your review.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[kikki21]

Thank you again for all the lovely comments! :)

 

@Elviex - I hope we will get to try Sindhu again and see what happens - it could be that the blend of spices just didn't suit my tum!

 

@kevinyork - we very nearly joined you on the Eclipse cruise as we were debating between the 2 but Britannia won as she was a new cruise ship and we decided to go for a 7 night cruise and the price was good on Britannia!

 

And so as I am suffering from a bout of insomnia, I may as well carry on with my review so let's get to Olden!

 

We were getting up early as we had booked an excursion but even so we were early getting into Olden, so my first view of the scenery was this!

 

 

It was a definite wow moment and just what I thought I would see on a Fjords cruise.

 

 

I am a complete waterfall freak, I love them so seeing so many was my idea of heaven!

 

The still fjord waters, so calm and peaceful.

 

 

The views were like a postcard or a painting - I do have a feature on my camera which can turn a photo into a painting hence this picture!

 

[kikki21]

We're the type of cruisers who like to do their own thing - occasionally we will do a shore excursion and we did have a bit of a think over what to do in Olden - I would say that we did the right thing as we enjoyed our Nordfjord Panorama coach tour - yes the weather could have been better but the clouds kind of added to the whole drama of the Fjord scenery.

 

We did have quite a few photo stops which was the best thing about the tour but the lady conducting the tour had quite a strange vocabulary in describing things ( as in bear was pronounced beer!) and I think her accent didn't help her stories either which were a little on the boring side (sorry just my opinion!)

 

Anyway after a room service continental breakfast, we started our tour at 9am - this is another reason hubby likes us to do our own thing - so we get up at our leisure!

 

 

This shot of Britannia docked in Olden looks like she's appearing out of the clouds!

 

We drove for about 1.5hrs to a village called Eid where we had a coffee and cake stop at a hotel.Along the way, we had some photo stops.

 

 

I think the mist just added to the photos :)

 

[kikki21]

 

We would meet the little ferry again as we sailed out of Olden and Britannia and the little ferry had a very interesting horn exchange!

 

Some photos were taken in the moving coach so may not be best in terms of clarity!

 

 

We passed by some Norwegian Fjord horses - apparently you can go trekking with them here.

 

 

The sun broke through and it was a pleasant journey in that part of the Fjords!

 

 

Some Fjords have small islands on them - not the greatest for cruise ships!

 

 

Our last photo stop left us with a perfect opportunity to take a photo with Britannia docked in Olden with spectacular scenery all around her!

[kikki21]

 

And another one for good measure, it was great to see the mountains behind Olden start to come into view from the cloud!

 

We had had a coffee and cake stop - the cakes were assorted with the carrot cake the clear winner but it was just after 1pm and we were hungry so we decided to chase the Lobster Sandwich in the Glass House!

 

The reason being I think the Lobster Sandwich was only offered once during the cruise and the rest of the time, the menu showed the Alaskan Crab sandwich! (I suppose i could have asked but didn't!) Argh - anyway - there was plenty on the menu we could have and I would say this was well worth doing and well worth the extra charge!

All cooked fresh to order!

 

 

The Mr had the scotch eggs, the watermelon and feta salad and the chorizo, pork and bean stew - all very good!

 

I had the mini slider burger trio - all different! And all yummy!

 

 

 

Good chips and cucumber salsa too!

 

We declined dessert as we were stuffed although a couple near us had one to share and it was HUGE!

We decided to walk into the centre of Olden - it's not very big but when you get there, there are more shops than you think!

 

 

[kikki21]

 

It's not a very big cruise dock at all!

 

 

The church in Olden village - well worth a look inside! On that side of the road, there was also a boutique store which also contained a cafe where we purchased an ice cream so we did have a pudding after all!

 

On the way back to the ship - we saw the only cat we saw in Norway and he was perched on a window sill and his name was Michelangelo - seems he quite likes to watch the cruise ship passengers go by!

 

All too soon, it was time to sailaway again!

 

 

 

Such gorgeous scenery!

 

 

So as we sailed away, we saw the ferry boat again!