Tickledblue does a Trip Report - Norwegian Fjords on Serenade

[TickledBlue]

 

Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock) from below:

 

 

It was hard to see them, but there are crazy people dangling their feet over the cliff (1,982 feet above where we were). This was the reason why I wasn't too miffed at MDW for not making the trek up there, I'm not afraid of heights, I'm afraid of falling. Blowing up the picture, you can see them a little better:

 

OK, maybe a little juvenile, but this tickled my fancy a little (but not enough to take a better focused picture). According to Google Translate, it means "Slow Speed" but I didn't know it at the time.

 

Petroleum museum - this was plan C -- only if the fog persisted and we couldn't see anything outside.

[TickledBlue]

After the fjord cruise, we went back to the ship for lunch. Ok, ok, I know what some of you are thinking. Didn't you want to get a taste of the local food?!! Well first, we are way too practical to spend $$ on local food when the ship was very conveniently located in port a short walk away. That, in fact, was pre-paid local (to us) food. Second, I read on the internet that Norwegian food wasn't particularly great but at least it was expensive -- with reviews like that, no thanks. Now if you want to try the local flavors, feel free, it's your money.

After lunch, we walked around Stavenger - it was a very nice town.

 

 

 

 

 

[IrishLassie]

Loving your review & your pictures are great! Also, loved the "filing cabinet" picture! LOL

 

Looking forward to more of your review. This cruise is on my bucket list! :D

[Shelley61]

Don't worry. You are not alone in taking "immature" pictures on a boat trip in Stavanger... [emoji23][emoji23]

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[TickledBlue]

Loving your review & your pictures are great! Also, loved the "filing cabinet" picture! LOL

 

Looking forward to more of your review. This cruise is on my bucket list! :D

 

Thanks for the compliment -- I enjoyed playing with the new camera, this was the trip I bought it for.

 

One of the first world problems, like sorting out the junk mail from the important stuff. While walking through the hallways, I saw that the stateroom attendants were tasked with putting those ads within the Cruise Compass in the afternoon. This made me think of how satisfying it must be for them to see them end up in the trash the very next morning.

[TickledBlue]

Thanks for the report.

 

My pleasure (sort of). I'm a big fan of reading trip reports/reviews, not a fan of writing them. These boards have helped me with planning a lot so I feel a bit obligated to give back a little.

[TickledBlue]

That evening we ate in the MDR (pre-paid food) as we did for the entire cruise. No specialty restaurants for us; however, I have been tempted by the BOGO and First Night deals to just try them. The MDR food ranged from OK to excellent and as stated before, a notch better than some more recent RCI cruises. I hope that this wasn't just on this ship for Northern Europe itineraries, but we'll find out on our Anthem cruise to Northeastern Canada.

We aren't the types to return to the ship at the very last minute and the all-aboard time was 5:30. Our standing reservation was at 5:30 and we had plenty of time to clean up and get to the dining room. At that time, the dining room was pretty empty but filled up fairly quickly.

 

 

Our view of Stavenger from our table -- one reason we loved the table was for the view...

 

Some more pictures of the Centrum taken that evening:

 

We went to the show that night, it was with Brett Sherwood who was a pretty talented magician. MDW usually dislikes magician acts but she thought he was 'ok' in her words which is pretty high praise. I enjoyed the show, it was funny and original.

Got back to the cabin and had a towel animal...we had lots of towel animals this cruise and some cruises hardly any. As with the food improvement, I'm not sure if it was this ship, the itinerary, or across the board improvements (if towel animal appearances could be considered an improvement).

 

Another trivial detail -- on some other cruises that we've had, the towel animals came from your allotment of towels for the cabin. This was sort of a pain because when you needed the towel, you had to go from bathroom to cabin to get it. On this cruise, the towel animals were made from additional towels.

[Roofire]

Enjoying your review. This is a very under reported itinerary. Thank you.

[suesnake2002]

following

[fortmilles]

This is great. A few weeks ago I put a refundable deposit down to see the fjords on the MSC Preziosa next June. I have two kids (9, 6) so my motivation was getting their fare for free. I normally sail RCL (got off the oasis this past Sunday). I'm getting a little concerned these northern cruises/itineraries aren't as kid friendly as I thought. I'm curious to hear your perspective. Especially while I can still back out.

[TickledBlue]

Enjoying your review. This is a very under reported itinerary. Thank you.

 

Your welcome. There certainly was not a lot of material on this itinerary when I was looking.

[TickledBlue]

following

 

Hopefully, we aren't lemmings heading towards a cliff. I probably would have felt like that if we hiked up Pulpit Rock.

[TickledBlue]

This is great. A few weeks ago I put a refundable deposit down to see the fjords on the MSC Preziosa next June. I have two kids (9, 6) so my motivation was getting their fare for free. I normally sail RCL (got off the oasis this past Sunday). I'm getting a little concerned these northern cruises/itineraries aren't as kid friendly as I thought. I'm curious to hear your perspective. Especially while I can still back out.

 

I'm all for a cruise deal -- that is why we did 3 Caribbean cruises with MSC in the past. They were great.

 

Obviously, don't expect any beach time, this isn't the itinerary for that. Kids, just as adults, love natural beauty and there's a lot of that so I think it is a great idea to take kids on that cruise. As a kid, my parents took us on road trips to the Rocky Mountains and it was fun to hike and play with snow in summer -- that was eons ago and I still remember it.

 

It would be a bit warmer in June and hopefully you wouldn't run into the fog to/from Norway as we did. Serenade has a Solarium with covered pool that is normally Adults only. However because of the cooler weather and the outdoor main and kid's pools being closed nearly all of the time, they allowed supervised children during certain times in the Solarium.

 

I see that the MSC Preziosa has a large covered pool which I would hope that they'd allow children to use in cooler climates. The ship itself, looks beautiful. I suggest to hit the MSC boards big time and see what fellow CC'ers say about it. You should also look into the available kids programs. I don't know if you have any C&A status, but I know that MSC will "match" it, look into that too.

 

We never cruised with our son who is autistic, our cruises were a way to recharge. He could tolerate only short vacations away from his usual routine. Now that he is a young adult, we are going to take him on his first cruise - a 6 day on Freedom of the Seas in Jan.

[abbflex]

As a norwegian and has been to most of those places before on land holidays I would probably never do this cruise, but really enjoy your review of it and what you guys are saying about Norway.

[papaflamingo]

Tickledblue... loving your review. We are headed in 3 weeks for Fjord cruise on HAL. Not quite the same itinerary, but a couple of same port stops (Alesund for example). But It is great seeing pictures and hearing that you are enjoying the scenery. I was excited for the upcoming cruise, now I'm really excited.

One comment. You said you feel food is better than some past cruises. We were on Oasis in Jan. and I felt the same way. I thought he food had noticeably improved. After our Fjord Cruise we are on Vision for the Baltics (leaves the day we get in so effectively a B2B). I hope the food quality continues. Seems to me that RCCL might have taken notice and put some of those increased cruise fare into upgraded food.

Have a great trip. Really enjoying your comments and photos.

[TickledBlue]

Day 4 - Bergen

 

Coincidentally, there was an article about Bergen in the Swiss airline magazine which I read on the flight over. It said that despite the average of 230 rainy/snowy days out of the year, Bergen had the happiest people in the world.

Unfortunately, we didn't arrive on one of the 35 non-rainy days. I didn't mention that for Stavenger, the line in the stairwells to get off the ship formed 45 minutes before the expected time that we'd be allowed to leave. This wasn't the case for Bergen, we showed up immediately after the clearance time and walked immediately off the ship.

For this port, plan A was on-our-own sightseeing starting with the Fløibanen (a small train on steep tracks) up Mount Fløyen to the overlook. Well, it didn't exactly work out that way. We were off the ship and half way to the Fløibanen station when I realized that I forgot to bring my wallet. My wallet contained both of our IDs, US cash, and most importantly, credit cards. So there we were, about a 15 minute walk from the ship without any money. Since we didn't hike up Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock), we had the energy to do the hike up Mount Fløyen and didn't turn back.

Here is the Fløibanen station. As we past it, I was mentally kicking myself and MDW seemed to have already forgave and forgot. Maybe she was mentally kicking me too.

OK that was the station, but where was the train and tracks? We were a bit surprised that we did not see them entire walk up the mountain including the part where we walked up the hill directly past the station. The path up the mountain was easily found -- just walk straight up the mountain and you run into it -- at that point, was a sign that said the viewpoint was 2.5 km away. It was great that they put this in kilometers because I stopped mentally kicking myself to compute that this was going to be about a 1.5 mile hike. The view at that point...

 

The path up was well marked, in fact it was like walking on a narrow road with very fine gravel. It would have been a very easy hike if it was wasn't for the steep climb, but we took frequent rests and enjoyed the views. A picture of it looking back down, it was like this for the entire hike, both up and down.

 

I don't remember how long it took for us to get to the top, but by the time we got there, there were quite a few people there.

 

Most of the people were packed in the gift shop because of the rain and the restaurant wasn't open since it was still something like 10:30.

Speaking of the rain...during our hike up the mountain, it varied from no rain, to a drizzle, to a light rain -- never a down pour. We had waterproof raincoats on (a must) as well as the layers that I showed in post 74. With the exertion, I was getting wetter from perspiration than the rain, so I shed the Columbia long sleeve top shirt half way up.

Pictures from the viewpoint:

 

[TickledBlue]

Finally, we saw the train tracks, just surprised how hidden they were.

 

This may seem a little weird, but here were my thoughts at the time. While it wasn't urgent, I was thinking that I would need to use facilities at some point within an hour or so. This was Northern Europe and water closets (as they called them) weren't usually free and we had no money. We also had a 2.5 km walk back down the mountain. Imagine my relief to find nice facilities that were free to use (per the sign, it was for customers only but no one was around to enforce it).

 

Behind the restaurant opposite of the viewpoint, they had a really nice park with playground equipment, shelter houses, picnic tables, and lots of trolls. Norwegians have a fascination with trolls (we seen pictures of trolls elsewhere as well).

[TickledBlue]

Hello? Is this mike on?

 

I think I lost 'em...

 

How is a lion in the desert like Christmas?

[TickledBlue]

Because he has sandy claws. :D

 

Ok, that's pretty bad...I heard at work from a colleague that has small children.

 

More trip report soon...

[Scrap Addict]

Joe,

Loving the review. And the joke!

 

Here's mine.... What did the Zero say to the Eight?

 

scroll down for the answer....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice BELT!

[TickledBlue]

Joe,

Loving the review. And the joke!

 

Here's mine.... What did the Zero say to the Eight?

 

scroll down for the answer....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice BELT!

 

:) Appropriate for a cruise forum -- I started to look more like a zero as the cruise went on and felt like an eight on formal nights with the belt on.

[TickledBlue]

So after the water closet visit and it stopped raining with a 2.5 km trip down the mountain to the city center, we had a nice stroll back to the ship for lunch. We went down a different way. It was 11'ish and it would take a while to get there. Sights on the way back.

 

A Fløibanen station at the midway point -- I guess this is for those who though it was going to be an easier hike than it was.

 

Once we got down to town, saw a Tesla charging along the street. Another detail that struck my fancy -- I thought about how street electric car chargers were unusual and that Teslas are available globally. I may have a picture of a Norwegian gas station later showing that gas was indeed very expensive by US standards.

 

Once at street level, we needed to find our back to the ship and since we took the alternate route down the mountain, we needed to cut through the residential streets that were higher up on the mountain. They were quaint in their own right and pleasant to walk along. No wonder Bergen have such happy people -- this isn't a tourist area, but it was as pretty as one.

 

[TickledBlue]

We finally came upon Bergenhus Fortress which was one of the sites that I have planned to see. It was part of Rick Steves walking tour. We didn't see it when headed out in the morning because the gates across the street from the port were closed (didn't open till 11, I think). We came upon the fortress from the opposite side and it was handy to cut through it back to the ship.

 

There was an entrance to see the inside but as I said in post 91, I have forgotten my wallet and didn't have any money. In reality, we weren't too heart-broken because it wasn't very high on our list to see.

From here, the ship was very close and we hoped that they didn't check IDs (like Stavenger). They didn't so we had on problem. Once back on the ship, we had lunch in the Windjammer and took a break. I don't remember if MDW took a nap or just relaxed, but I jumped (figuratively) into the hot tub. I started in one of the outside hot tubs but needed to switch to the Solarium one because it started to rain heavily and the winds kicked up.

[TickledBlue]

Before I go on, I'll share a few more photos at Bergenhus Fortress:

 

 

 

[TickledBlue]

After our ship break, we headed out (with wallet in pocket) to follow Rick Steves walking tour. The tour hit the highlights of this beautiful city (despite the rainy weather). Fortunately the rain had stopped briefly but then picked up a little bit by the time we were downtown, temperature in the low-to-mid 50's. If I hadn't already said it, a good lightweight rain coat is a must on this itinerary.

MDW actually noticed the manhole covers were fancier than normal -- I interpreted that to take a picture...

 

The fish market was a bustling place...

 

Caviar -- I don't like it, I know because I tried it back when cruise ships gave you some at loyalty events. Maybe specialty restaurants provide some these days but alas, I'll probably never know first-hand.