During our day docked in the Norwegian capital of Oslo we’d headed off on an excursion that had seen us first observe some glass blowing at the Hadeland Glassworks, then wander around the fantastic sculpture park at Kistefos, both of which were about forty kilometres north of the city. The tour had been of that awkward length that was not enough to warrant including a meal but included enough travelling time to and from the hotspots either side of them that free time at the end was perhaps not quite enough to do justice to what was close enough to the ship we’d been dropped off beside.
On top of that, my wife’s knee was aching from the sculpture park stroll so the one thing we’d told ourselves we definitely had time to do when we got back – look around Akershus Fortress right by the port – we eliminated, too.
“We’re bound to come back to Oslo again,” I said. “Next time we’ll definitely explore the city on our own and we’ll definitely explore the fortress.” And maybe we will. For this particular day in Norway, however, we decided we’d just get back on the ship and enjoy a few hours in the sunshine before departing.
We’d normally head to our balcony in a situation like this; order a drink, sit out and read, etc. But the weather was so nice in Oslo that we decided to hit the top deck instead. It would put us closer to a bar and give me lots of opportunities to see the views from all around the ship rather than a fixed view as the evening’s light touched and changed the scenery of this capital city and the fjord on which it was situated.
A number of local tour companies offer opportunities to see Oslo from the water aboard various types of vessels. I particularly liked seeing some of the older ships taking tourists for an early evening sail on the Oslofjord.
We had spotted Viking Venus when we’d arrived in Oslo in the morning, had driven past her as our tour bus left the city, and we could still her over trees in the distance from Island Princess.
Oslo City Hall is a building that interests me a lot because the architecture straddles that boundary between Art Deco and Modernism. It’s got just a small hint of the former with a lot of the latter represented by the functional form in its material choice and overall design. It’s also the host location for the annual Nobel Peace Price ceremony.
We were out on the top deck of Island Princess long enough for the Viking cruise ship to leave the port and for the sun to creep towards the horizon for sunset before it got cool enough for us to consider returning to our room to change and get ready for the night.
After we’d showered and changed we enjoyed another very good dinner on the ship, settled down for a drink, and planned to have a few more of those while hunting down entertainment around the ship before calling it a night.
As Island Princess finally left Oslo and started to cruise down the Oslofjord we then had an announcement from the cruise director that it might be possible to see the Northern Lights from the ship’s aft as the conditions were right for it. We hurried back to the room, grabbed warmer clothing, and made our way to the back of the ship where it was already quite crowded.
We’ve seen the Aurora Borealis a few times now, but it’s not like it’s something you can tire of seeing. Subsequently, we knew what to expect, which was a lot more than other people who’d come out for glimpses of the phenomenon. We heard disappointed grumbling from more than a few people who thought they’d be seeing vibrant green shimmering sheets of light in the sky. We knew that we’d see incredibly faint, dull patches of barely green at best. In fact we didn’t even see that. Part of it was because we were pretty far south as far as displays of aurorae go so it was naturally very weak and part of it was because there was a lot of light pollution from the city of Oslo itself. What we did find was that playing around with longer exposures on our phones and on the camera could bring out some of the greens that were invisible to the naked eye. Naturally, being handheld on a moving vessel this also meant blurry photos of the city lights and water in the ship’s wake, and a fair bit of illumination of the smoke coming from Island Princess’s funnels.
No brilliant photos of the Northern Lights from Oslo, but we can say that we have now seen them in Norway as well as several (better) occasions in Iceland and that’s no bad thing.
In the next post in this Island Princess European cruise travelogue series I’ll share some photos of the Captain’s Circle Event on Island Princess from a sea day ahead of our penultimate port stop in the Netherlands.