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| Alesund, Norway Copyright Andy Richards 2025 |
MONDAY AND Tuesday were a bit of a blur for me. A 90 minute ride to the port from our hotel. Check in and boarding was Celebrity's usual quick and efficient process except for the luggage dropoff. That area was a 3-ring circus. I don't remember it being that way back in 2021, but then we were at Princess Cruises terminal, and it was during Covid-19, so things were very regimented. Anyway, we were basically quickly boarded, obtained our room keys, and found our way to the Magic Carpet Bar. Let's get this show started! We were pretty familiar with the ship by now. This was my wife's and my 4th time on Apex, and Todd and Heather's second.
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| Alesund, Norway Copyright Andy Richards 2025 |
SOMEWHERE ALONG the way, I began to feel the effects of the cold that Heather had gotten on our last day in London. By dinner time, it was full on. I medicated, went to bed, and begged off of our first shore excursion. Sadly, because it was Bruges, which is a beautiful place. Fortunately, we had been there back in 2020, and it is small enough that we had really seen most of it. It was the only repeat for me, and was as good as any one to miss. The following day was an "at sea" day, giving me a pretty good period to just relax and recover.
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| The City of Alesund from our Cruise Ship deck Copyright Andy Richards 2025 |
ON THURSDAY, as we docked in Alesund, Norway, I was (mostly) back among the human race. There have been some cruises where I have taken hundreds of photos during our excursions. And then there have been some where I have taken very few. This cruise was one of the latter, for the most part, which will probably make this post seem relatively shorter. Much like my takeaway from Iceland, I would say that the primary draw of the fjords of Norway are the natural beauty of the environment. Except for Trondheim (our last stop and a very fun city), most of my images here were made from the ship, or from high vantage points at the ports.
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| Alesund, from Aksla (the highest point in the city) Copyright Andy Richards 2025 - All Rights Reserved |
BY NOW, we had seen a lot of the kind of scenery we saw on this cruise, beginning way back in 2010 along Alaska's Inside Passage, and then again in the fjords of Iceland. Each of these 3 spots had their differences. In Alaska, we never saw any evidence of human occupation on land except close to the towns we stopped in. In Iceland, it was almost the same, but not being as vast, there were the occasional fishing boats and cottages and villages from time to time. The Norwegian Fjiords showed more evidence of habitation. Still pretty desolate though. Norway and iceland were more "green" than Alaska, but that probably was a function of the time of year.
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| Another view from Aksla - Alesund, Norway Copyright Andy Richards 2025 |
NORWAY, SWEDEN and Finland are the countries that make up the Scandinavian Peninsula and together cover the vast majority of the north shore of the Baltic Sea. Except along the seacoasts, they are relatively sparsely populated. But they did seem to have a couple cities that were more populous than what we saw in either the Alaskan Inside Passage, or in Iceland. Alesund, for example, has a population of nearly 70,000; over double the population of Juneau (the most populous city on the Inside Passage by a magnitude). The metropolitan region in and around Reykjavik, Iceland, on the other hand, approaches 250,000. But that is where everyone lives in Iceland. You won't find anything close to that outside the Reykjavik area. Akureyri's population was about 20,000 and Isofordjur aobut 4,000. Trondheim, Norway was over 200,000. Tromso was nearly 80,000. However as we got further north, those populatiun numbers really dwindled. Honingsvag, our most northern port, was only around 2,000.
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| Alesund, Norway Copyright Andy Richards 2025 |
IN THE fjords and northern areas of Norway, it seems that the primary industry is fishing, with other types of agriculture being important, but lagging well behind fishing. Tourism, as seems to be true worldwide, has grown to be another significant economic piece for Norway.
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| Restaurant sign in Alesund, Norway Copyright Andy Richards 2025 - All Rights Reserved |
A FUNNY little anecdote: Just before we all left the U.S. for London, Todd confided to us that Fish & Chips, possibly the most popular meal in the British Isles, was something that just doesn't work for him. My first lunch in London at the Olde Thameside, was fish & chips and it was delicious. Of course, I had to send Todd a photo. 😋 I wanted to let him know we had found a great place for us to get fish & chips. Whenever we went anywhere and I saw evidence of them during the trip, I made sure to point them out. With that, some readers here know I like to collect images of "eclectic" signs. When I saw the sign above, I knew it was a must-have image. I love the passive-aggressive confidence the sign exudes! Probably. 😏