The cruise excursion we’d taken while docked at Kristiansand, Norway had see us visiting the fishing village of Høllen and the Kristiansand open air folk museum but it was a fairly short excursion as excursions go, and, as the ship was docked very close to the city centre, it left us plenty of time to stretch our legs and go for a little wander to see what there was to see. We figured we’d take a circular route, roughly anti-clockwise from the port, allowing us to get some photos along what looked to be the most interesting areas and the chance of a drink before we’d need to return to Sky Princess.
Hopping off the bus right by the cruise ship, we immediately headed away from it. The cruise port area wasn’t particularly well-protected from casual visitors. We’ve been to ports that needed buses from the ship just to get outside the industrialised area, and to ports where IDs were checked thoroughly before being let through gates, but this was far more casual, likely relying on little layers of security to keep everyone safe rather than one big, obvious thing that could be circumvented. Passing through a makeshift gap in some decorated cargo containers effectively took us from the port to the city.
If you cruise to Norway and you’re walking around the cruise port at Kristiansand then you’ll be taking your phone out of your pocket or the camera out of its bag and photographing the Kilden Performing Arts Centre as you leave or arrive. You won’t be able to help yourself The reflection of your ship in the building will compel you to think “Yes, this will be an interesting shot” just like it has for countless other tourists here. Just like it was for me.
Close to the port was Fiskebrygga, the fish market. The colourful wooden fronts to buildings housing restaurants and wholesalers of local fish looked fabulous in the sunshine but we weren’t hungry and we didn’t think we’d be able to keep any fish in a decent condition on the ship given the lack of personal freezer space and somewhat lacklustre performance from the cabin’s refrigerator. It was a pretty popular spot, though, and a good mix of visitors from the ship and local Norwegians too.
The next point of interest on our short walk around Kristiansand brought us to Kristiansand Beach. Well, we’ve seen bigger beaches, it would be fair to say. What it did have going for it, though, was golden sand, and a swan. The former is always nice to have on a beach, and the latter was a pleasant surprise. Kristiansand does have a larger (but not much larger) sandy beach a little further along the shoreline had we walked that far so if the swan’s an issue for you then you have an alternative option.
Otterdalsparken was the name of the place we’d identified on a map as being somewhere we wanted to reach. Also known as Nupenparken, this small area called to us because of its water features. If you know anything about us at all, or if you are capable of supposition from the supporting evidence of this website, then you’ll understand that we like water. We like being on it. We like using it to travel to places around the globe. And we like water features. They look good, they sound good, they make us feel good.
Our walk along the water’s edge in Kristiansand took us as far as Christiansholm Fortress, but we didn’t look around it. Our time was limited and we weren’t sure if there was much to see there as it was small. One thing we did see on the approach to this landmark was a statue to Kristiansand-born Camilla Collett, a nineteenth century writer and widely regarded as the first Norwegian feminist.
We made our way up to the main square of the city, passing a few sculptures and statues as we did so. One of these was of King Haakon VII, king from 1905 until his death in 1957, and the first king of an independent Norway since the fourteenth century following the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden. He’s notable for his role in World War II where he opposed the German invasion and first stalled, then refused to appoint Quisling, who was a Nazi sympathiser, as prime minister. He spent the war in exile in Britain, recording speeches that were broadcast to the resistance movement back home.
The late nineteenth century, neo-Gothic cathedral – one of the largest in Norway – looked lovely in the sunshine but it wasn’t clearly open so we didn’t attempt to see if we could look inside. Besides, we had more important matters to attend to: the lure of beer was calling us. We are fond of having a drink, something locally-made, or nationally-made, and preferably craft over mass-produced if possible, but we’re ultimately not massively fussed with what we can get.
That concluded our short time in Kristiansand, so all that remained was to continue on the roughly circular route we’d chosen back to the ship. This took us past some street art of questionable quality, then through the fish market once more, and finally the entrance in the shipping containers that marked the entrance to the cruise ship port.
With a bit more time there would have been a few other things we might have wanted to visit in Kristiansand, but probably not a whole lot more. The weather in the afternoon helped present the city in a good light even if I’m not sure there’s enough there to spend long in it, but for a day – and certainly when combined with the things we saw nearby during the excursion in the morning – it was very pleasant indeed, and a nice port to stop in if you’re on a cruise that hits this part of Norway.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the time aboard the ship in the evening and the sail out after this visit to Kristiansand.