You know who deserves to find out how stupidly active this site’s author has been over the past week? You! That’s who!
Yes, it’s time once more to see what’s new since the last of these summary blog posts (or newsletters, if you subscribe to them). And there’s a bit of future cruise planning news too in case you’re the stalking kind, plus a couple of other travel-related musings that have popped into my head. All the usual stuff.
There have been six new posts from our 2022 Sky Princess Norway and Iceland Cruise added to the site, and the most recent four of those were all put up in the last five days! Has someone been dropping amphetamines in my tea? It’s highly likely!
First up is the conclusion of our port stop in Skjolden and photos of the sail away down the Lustrafjorden. You want beautiful Norwegian fjords landscapes, then you’ve got beautiful Norwegian fjords landscapes.
Surprisingly for us, we didn’t actually go on an excursion or visit anything of historical or cultural interest in the next port in Norway, Olden. Three posts still managed to find their way magically onto this site, though, thanks to a wave of my powerful wand (don’t!) and the ancient incantation of Paditout Maximus!
The first post contains views of Olden from Sky Princess before we got off her. You want beautiful Norwegian fjords landscapes, then you’ve got beautiful Norwegian fjords landscapes.
In Olden, Norway: A Walk In The Sunshine we either enjoy a walk in the sunshine around Olden in Norway, or we trigger a landslide in the fjords during a fight with Italian bridge crew from the MSC Preziosa during an inter-ship skirmish at the Olden pier. There’s literally no way to tell which happens unless you click the link. But it’s all very pretty, and it goes without saying, but you want beautiful Norwegian fjords landscapes, then you’ve got beautiful Norwegian fjords landscapes.
Norway doesn’t like cruise ships just staying in ports, and we didn’t pay for that experience either, so the end of our day in Olden saw Sky Princess leave and gave us another long, light evening of lovely sights along the gorgeous Nordfjord. You want beautiful Norwegian fjords landscapes, then, well, I’m sure you get the picture by now.
The final Norwegian port on this Sky Princess cruise was a new one for us: Ålesund. We wanted to check out the town but also wanted to see if there was anything else interesting to see in the vicinity so combined the two by opting for a short excursion that would leave us plenty of time at our leisure afterwards. The first part of that excursion took us through underwater tunnels to the island of Godøya to see the Alnes Lighthouse. We do like a nice lighthouse.
Our excursion finished with a visit to the only marble church in Norway, dating from the twelfth century, and located on the adjacent island of Giske.
The Norwegian portion of this particular cruise will conclude with our wandering around Ålesund then the sail away, and then it’ll be onto the Iceland stops. And then the five other cruises I haven’t written anything about. Oh God. This is going to take forever.
In the last blog post I gave a quick summary of our last cruise, that being aboard Ruby Princess sailing through the Panama Canal. For the first few days of that cruise we were in the weird position of having nothing at all booked ahead for 2024, whether on a cruise ship, as part of a package holiday, or even just a UK weekend break somewhere. This was partly because nothing new or interesting or well-priced had inspired us enough, and partly because we wondered whether looking for late bargains might be a good idea to freshen up our cruising and travel experiences. Our intention was that we’d keep an eye on the emails from cruise lines and travel agents and tour operators and look for cheap or just different destinations to try out.
Yeah, that’s not worked out so well.
The first problem was that we saw a deal on a ship we’ve not cruised on before but really wanted to – Caribbean Princess – visiting ports we’ve not hit before – Sardinia, Malaga, Casablanca, and Madeira – doing something we’ve not done before – a transatlantic crossing – for less than £120 per person per night on a large balcony with drinks, Wi-Fi, and gratuities included. We do have to sort out flights to Rome and back from Fort Lauderdale, but even still, that was too good to pass up.
Booking that cruise and seeing the cabins that were available – or, more accurately, how many weren’t – made us reconsider our intended late-booking policy. We had been talking about seeing what an inside cabin is like on a ship again, or maybe just trying something with a window, even if obstructed, on one of the older ships where balconies are at an unjustifiable premium, knowing that these would be likely outcomes of trying to get a late deal on a cruise. But then we realised we didn’t like that idea. We like to know where we’re going to be on a ship. We often pick based on what the ship might see from the port or starboard side depending on the itinerary. We never opt for upgrades.
The second cruise we booked for 2024 will be the first one we take (as things stand), with it being a long weekender to Rotterdam. We visited Rotterdam last year on Island Princess, and when I finally finish writing up about Sky Princess that will be the next cruise travelogue series I start on. But, spoiler, we liked Rotterdam a lot. I like architecture, and it’s got loads, and we like museums, and it’s got loads, and we barely scratched the surface. An overnight in Rotterdam, therefore, and on an older P&O ship we’ve not cruised on – Aurora – mysteriously found itself booked.
And then, last night, we decided to book another cruise, this one on a ship we have briefly sailed on before just as cruising was returning post-pandemic – Regal Princess – but on an itinerary we’ve been putting off for a long time while we could still travel further afield easily enough; around the UK. Eight port stops with only one, Belfast, being one we’ve done before, so plenty of new things to look forward to in Cork, Dublin, Glasgow, Orkney Islands, Invergordon, Edinburgh, and Le Havre. While we’ve visited Scotland before, neither of us have cruised there, and for Marie it will be a first time in Ireland altogether.
Three cruises booked, two new ships for us, and eleven new ports. Can’t complain about that.
But we’ve got a large five month period over the summer – June through October – where we still have nothing planned. We don’t often travel in the summer because that’s when families travel too, and when the price rockets up, but I’ve still got seven days of annual leave to play with right now and there’s a bank holiday at the end of August I can try to take advantage of as well. The possibility of something via TUI or Easyjet or some other package holiday provider isn’t completely out of the question.
Finally, a few other travel bits and bobs.
Socially, surprisingly, Threads has ever-so-slightly improved with regards to interactions with strangers on topics of interest. That’s helped by the search being partly useful now, but it still suffers from the algorithmic weighting that promotes big accounts over small ones, leading to the big getting bigger and the small getting smaller. When the hashtag support kicks in (rolling out in Australia now but due to expand) there may be further small improvements, but the lack of a most-recent-first view of results is going to still render the whole thing mostly pointless. You can’t post along in real time with live events if the results are effectively random.
Instagram, on the other hand, has taken a massive nose-dive in terms of interactions. I saw this moaned about on Threads by photographers and decided to test it out with more frequent posts and comments and likes to see if it was true, and it certainly seems to be the case. This can be seen through Instagram’s efforts to supplant TikTok by pushing reels into everyone’s feeds, seeing that reels are viewed more now (because nobody’s got a choice to avoid them), and reducing algorithmic weight for photographs. It’s a self-fulfilling activity mechanism designed to please advertisers, but stuff the creators who made the platform what it was from the start. What else is new?
The annual Wave Awards were held recently, and in a surprising-to-nobody move, almost every single person or company who paid to attend won an award. Best cruise line with ships between 240 and 242 metres in length who’ve stopped in Crete once award for you! Most amount of blue in a logo trophy for you! Attendance medal for you! Nobody’s called you dicks in Tripadvisor reviews certificate for you! Seriously, though, congratulations to those for whom this was important mentally or for their business they’re trying to grow. We live in trying times and I won’t begrudge you this moment just so long as you don’t try to make it out to be more than it really is.
I think that’s left things on a suitably cynical note.