To celebrate the conclusion of the write-ups for our 2022 cruise to Norway and Denmark aboard Sky Princess I thought I’d gather not just the last posts from the travelogue series but all of them together in one update that critics are already calling “a tour de force of filling up space on his website by Mark” (The Guardian) and “as transparent a means of linking content together while providing no benefit to the reader as you’re likely to see” (Horse & Hound).
I could waffle more but I sense you’re already simmering with rage at reading this far.
The cruise aboard Sky Princess began at Southampton with Sky Princess Cruise To Norway And Denmark. There’s the pile of rubbish in Southampton to marvel at. There’s the moan about the balcony on Sky Princess to nod your head along to. There’s some dining at Sabatini’s to lick your lips to.
The first port of call was Kristiansand in Norway. We took a short tour here just because we didn’t feel that Kristiansand itself would have enough to keep us occupied for the duration of the day in port. That excursion included:
- Høllen Fishing Village And Beach. We had some moody skies to make for some atmospheric photos here.
- Kristiansand Open Air Museum. A nice collection of buildings preserved for visitors, some of the best of which dated back to the 1600s. This visit was made better by the local guide who was self-deprecating and very amusing.
The two remaining posts about Kristiansand cover the free time in the city and the departure from it.
- A Walk Around Kristiansand. A colourful fish market, a park with some water features, a fortress, and a cathedral might all hold some appeal for a visitor to this city. Failing that, it’s easy to get a beer.
- Sky Princess Leaving Kristiansand. Photos of the cruise away from the port, which is pretty but not spectacular, and a visit to the Crown Grill because we like to treat ourselves.
There was probably a little more in Kristiansand than we’d originally given it credit for, although it’s still a port I’d probably want to book a tour for to eat up some time if there was something half-interesting to do.
The second port was Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, a city we’d technically visited before but had done an excursion well away from the capital that day so hadn’t really seen much of it. We decided to rectify that with an organised walking tour that did a good job of pointing out some highlights.
- Copenhagen Walking Tour, Part One: Kastellet, Gefion Fountain, Amalienborg. A bus ride from the port – which is some distance from the city (as we soon found out) – to the Little Mermaid statue (I don’t think it’s possible to book a tour that doesn’t take you to it) followed by the attractive fortress and fountain.
- Copenhagen Walking Tour, Part Two: Nyhavn, Christiansborg Palace, Rosenborg Castle. The colourful waterfront townhouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Nyhavn are big tourist draws, but there are lots of architectural and historical elements in this part of the walk to admire too.
- Copenhagen Walking Tour, Part Three: Street Art Between Skaal And The Cruise Terminal. The unplanned part of the tour because Princess Cruises gave us some terrible information that saw us walking all the way back to the ship. However, dragging a positive ember from the flames of the furious disaster that we thought of it at the time, we saw some great street art sculptures that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
Despite issues there, Copenhagen is one of our favourite European cities. We would visit it again later in the year on a subsequent cruise.
The third port on this Sky Princess cruise was further up the coast in Denmark; in fact, Skagen is Denmark’s northernmost town.
We took another tour here, for similar reasons to Kristiansand: the port town itself didn’t feel like it would be a place you could spend a full day in. And again, similarly to Kristiansand, we left ourselves with plenty of time to explore on our own afterwards. Skagen would turn out to be an absolute gem; we loved our time here.
- Bangsbo Coastal Museum, Denmark. The first part of our war-themed tour took us to a museum dedicated to the Danish resistance in World War II. There are some good bits in it about the help from the British.
- Bangsbo Fort, Atlantic Wall Bunkers, Denmark. Our main point of interest on this tour was to see the German defences built along this area as part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall defences against allied invasion. If you like concrete bunkers half as much as I like concrete bunkers then you’ll like this fort.
We finished up with that little walk around to see what was in Skagen – Sky Princess Cruise: Skagen Church And Brewery, Denmark – and discovered a very colourful church, more pizza places than you can shake an Italian chef at, and a wonderful brewery with – it claims – Denmark’s largest beer garden. It was certainly pleasant to sit in the sunshine and try some of their locally brewed concoctions and we even took a bottle of the gin they distil there too away with us. Great place to spend some time. Yeah, we really liked Skagen.
The final port was Oslo, a first time visiting Norway’s capital for us, but not the last visit in 2022. On this occasion we booked a full day’s excursion in and around the city.
- Vigeland Park, Oslo, Norway. It’s impossible to do this place justice, and not even the photos I took or my write-up about it will. You just have to go there and you just have to feel some of the stone sculptures. That article will explain why, but this was the thing we really wanted to see in Oslo and it did not disappoint at all.
- Holmenkollbakken Ski Jump, Oslo, Norway. The 1952 Winter Olympics took place here, although the ski jump we saw was a later construction.
- Norwegian Maritime Museum, Bygdøy, Oslo was the first of two museums we visited in the Bygdøy peninsula on the outskirts of Oslo; it’s an attractive area with several museums there and worthy of more of a visit. Maritime museums can be a bit hit or miss, but for fans of cruising there were loads of cruise ship models and posters, and even some of the first class cabins from a steamship you can walk through, so we’d count this as one of the best of its kind.
- Folk Museum, Bygdøy, Oslo was the second museum on the peninsula and the last part of the last organised excursion of this cruise. It was also the second open air museum we’d visited on this cruise and differed from the first most significantly with the presence of a stave church. If you’ve not seen a stave church up close or stepped inside one then this is your chance.
Just two more posts finish off the Sky Princess cruise.
Cruising Away From Oslo On Sky Princess points out an important artwork by Antony Gormley right by where the ship docks that I think you should see, and carries on with some photos as the ship sailed down the Oslofjord towards sea.
The final post – Concluding Our Denmark And Norway Cruise On Sky Princess – takes a look at some of the food and drink of the final two nights and last day on the ship. There’s more speciality dining, there’s a wine-tasting, there are cocktails. Everything you’d expect from a Princess Cruises cruise.