A true highlight and strong memory from the first time we’d visited the village of Flåm in Norway back in 2013 had been the discovery of the Ægir microbrewery bar nestled among the other buildings given over to hotel space and warehouse-style shops. Not only had the locally-produced beer been so, so good – and a massive improvement over the lager we’d had elsewhere in the country – but the wooden building itself was great, and the glassware and the chairs had factored into plans to steal them and smuggle them back aboard the cruise ship we’d been on at the time. We didn’t, of course. As far as you know.
We’d checked to make sure that the brewery still operated in Flåm before embarking on this 2023 cruise on Britannia, so after our hike to the Brekkefossen waterfall it was to the Ægir BrewPub we headed. The wooden interior with its design reminiscent of stave churches or Viking halls was as we remembered it, only busier and a bit brighter thanks to the lack of heavy cloud and rain that had made up the weather conditions on our first visit. The beer was superb too with a range to suit all tastes, and with prices of everything in the UK having risen so much under an intervening decade of Tory corruption even the cost of the ales didn’t come as quite the shock to the wallet it had originally.
We had plenty of time to enjoy several drinks each in a place that got increasingly busier as more tour groups returned from their trips to see the Norwegian sights and some passengers similarly-minded to us headed for the pub. It’s always nice to see cruise ship passengers doing this sort of thing rather than heading straight for the ship, especially when, and especially so in the case of Flåm, the ship is so close. We had time for chats with people from the ship who we knew and had met before from elsewhere (the world of social media cruise blogging), and we got chatting with some Americans who were touring the country and had booked into the nearby hotel for a couple of days to use the village as a base. A very pleasant couple of hours.
As I’ve already mentioned, cruise ships dock very close to the village of Flåm, and in under five minutes from leaving the pub we were back in our cabin on Britannia. We grabbed a quick snack from the top deck then waited for the sail away on our balcony with a cup of tea – we can be sensible sometimes – taking in some final views of this most picturesque of Norwegian fjords locations.
After the mooring lines had been cast off we got to see the local port operators waving Norwegian flags joyfully to the passengers aboard, something we’ve noticed they do a lot in Norway. For all the talk there is of limiting the access of cruise ships to this part of the world, the locals, generally, seem to be happy enough to see visitors, and local businesses probably do very well from their visits.
For us then, and for you now, some photos taken from our balcony on Britannia as we cruised along the Aurlandsfjord. Aurlandsfjord is an arm of the longer Sognefjord, which is Norway’s longest fjord. If you like geology then you’d absolutely love cruising along this fjord and admiring the deep clefts, the sheer cliffs, the waterfalls appearing from between gaps in tree covers, the distant glacial peaks, and the colourful striations on the rocky faces as you pass. If you don’t like geology then you’d still absolutely love cruising along this fjord and enjoying the views of all those things because, seriously, how could you not!?
It’s entirely possible – indeed, very likely – that nobody in their right mind is visiting this website to see pictures of the food from the main dining room aboard Britannia in May 2023, but it’s also entirely possible – indeed, very likely – that people not in their right mind make up a hefty portion of this travel-related website’s visitors, so here’s what we ate that evening after leaving Flåm and cruising down the Aurlandsfjord.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll get to experience a new port for us in Norway when Britannia docks at Haugesund and we head off for a look at the Haraldshaugen national monument.