A day after leaving Skjolden, Norway we arrived at its rhyming port twin, Olden, a Norwegian stop we’d made once before when we’d visited this part of the world for the first time back in 2013 (see: Olden, Norway). There were a number of differences between the two visits: firstly, Sky Princess was not docked alongside this time, instead at anchor and requiring the use of tender boats (or water shuttles as they’re increasingly being called these days); secondly, the weather was a lot brighter and warmer for this second encounter with Olden; thirdly, we didn’t have any firm plans for activities.
Just because we didn’t have any firm plans, it didn’t mean that other people didn’t, because there were a load of excursion options for those who fancied the idea of letting Princess or one of the local businesses whisk them away to see other sights. Ordinarily, we’d have done the same but there was nothing that really grabbed our eyes from the offerings; we’d seen a glacier before, we had no desire to spend a few hours in a bus to a waterfall or church, and the popular skylift at nearby Loen might be something we do one day but we simply weren’t sold on it on this occasion. You’ve got to be in the right mood. We opted to simply have a bit of a stroll around, as much as we could, and that meant we could be sensible and let everyone with schedules get off the ship first and do their things. To eat up some time before the queue for the tender operations eased off a bit we took a gentle amble around the top deck of Sky Princess to get the 360 degree view and snap a few photos.
Olden is a stunningly beautiful port in Norway.
We weren’t the only ship in port on this day, with the MSC Preziosa also visiting and snatching the dockside area ahead of us for easier embarkation and debarkation of her passengers.
The bright sunny day and surroundings of steep, ice-topped mountains around the fjord valleys of Olden meant there were no shortage of incredible views and photographic opportunities to explore. As we completed a circuit of Sky Princess we could see other individuals and couples doing almost exactly the same thing.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be ashore and going for a walk around the port of Olden where, if you’re lucky, I might just have taken some pretty photos to share.