Norway Cruise

Saturday

Boarding was pretty quick and the room was already ready. I had cheaped out for a lower level room that was oceanview and you could tell it was a bit dated. But it had bunks above which the kids enjoyed.

We went to lunch immediately and it was typical buffet food. After that we stood in line for the skypad but the skypad line was taking too long.  Luckily, right next to the skypad, the kids enjoyed the climbing structure while we waited. it was really windy and cold which was in start contrast to the heat of London. While Hannah was on the skypad, it actually became so windy that the pad flew up and hit her. I should have probably been more concerned esp when it turned out later that the skypad was actually super dangerous. We took part in more shipboard activities like minigolf and shuffleboard.

At dinner, we realized our assigned table had an ocean view which was amazing! It helped distract the kids but Christopher fell asleep during dinner. At bedtime, the kids were messing around too much and I got super angry so I took Christopher out and we went to go watch the ice skating show.

Onboard climbing structure

Sunday (At Sea)

This was a sea day and the kids slept in until 9:30 which was amazing! It was the skypad again in hte morning with pool later but it was a bit cold again. We threw them into the kids club in the afternoon while Charles and I watched The 15:17 to Paris. After dinner, I took Hannah to see the dance show.

Monday (Bergen)

Another day where the kids woke up around 9:30.  We made our own way to the Funicular which had a super long line. I really should have bought tickets beforehand. From there, we headed out on a hike around but I missed the loop I wanted to do but on the other hand, we ended up at the most amazing playground!

Fun playground

With a super fun zipline!

Tuesday (Geiranger)

The kids were up around 9 today. The previous day had rained quite a bit so we made sure to bring our rain jackets again. I had prebooked hop on/off bus tickets only to not realize that they needed to

Gorgeous views hiking down from the waterfall 

be exchanged in a long line so then I lost an hour in more lines trying to figure that out. Sigh. We headed straight up to the highest viewpoint which had nice views of the fjord. Then back we went on the bus to the Farm where I wanted to do the waterfall hike. It was unfortunately raining still but we managed to snag an inside table and eat some light lunch. The kids didn't really want to hike but we coerced them into going. Christopher kept whining but Hannah was fine heading up.




At the waterfall, we were able to hike behind it which was pretty cool and we saw some goats along the way. Luckily, the rain had stopped mostly at this point. Going down on the bus, I had us get off at the fjord center even though everyone was pretty tired but I had heard it was well worth the time. We ended up not going in but instead walked down the waterfalls and were able to see our cruise ship in the distance. Unfortunately, on the way back it started pouring rain on us.

Wednesday (Alesund)

Today was another hop on bus journey (These things were expensive!). Christopher
Christopher woke up at 7 today the earliest yet. We took the bus to Aksla viewpoint which was a pretty popular tourist attraction. We walked down the many steps from there and then tried to catch the bus again but missed it. The next stop I knew was at the tourist office so we waited there. We then took the bus to the aquarium which the kids enjoyed especially the water play area.

View from Aksla of our boat 

A common sight on our cruise - Christopher fell asleep many of the nights during dinner.

Thu (Sjkolden)

We had a tour for once so I set an alarm for 8 but the kids were already awake. We did our Rib boat excursion today which was a bit cold but not too bad. We had to put on a lot of gear.

After the tour, we walked into town and it was tiny. It really was just filled with cruise ship passengers - I felt kind of bad for the town. I hope the tourism helped them.

Fri (Stavanger)

So we had another tour today to do a boat cruise to Pulpit Rock. This was also where the latest Mission Impossible movie was filmed. Rain again so I was glad that we weren't doing any hiking or anything.

Christopher not understanding binoculars.

The cruise ended on Sunday and we had a super speedy departure again. In retrospect, I should have splurged in a nicer room not realizing that Charles just likes to sit around and rest and spend a lot of time in there. Also, I think a Disney cruise would have had more options for us to do though the shows weren't bad on this boat - just somewhat late and the kids did enjoy the shows though.