Today we are in Haugesund Norway (I have also seen spellings with two a’s and two s’, but I have taken this spelling of the Harbour masters office opposite our dock). It is a bit of a peculiar place as it is not that well known to the general outside world as it has always have been outside the focus point of most cruise ship company’s. That is now changing as the “Apartments of the Seas” are taken over all the prime berths in the well known cruise ports, so company’s with smaller ships have to look for new opportunities or just be lucky that a major port berth is free.
This was the view that greeted us this morning when we arrived at 0900 in the morning. Pouring down with rain and strong winds gusting. And it did not improve until 3 pm. in the afternoon, 90 minutes before sailing.
In the good old days, the company’s could simply book a berth in a port and that was it. But now with the so much larger ships, the amount of tourist tax that comes in, and the amount of ship’s tax (due to the size) that is coming in, has changed the whole picture. Harbour Masters are now much more focused on returning a profit for their local port, then was the case years ago. And they will bump a smaller cruise ship if a late booking for a big one comes in. So ports like Haugesund are now coming into prominence, even if there is less to do.
The grass at our apartment building since the hose-pipe-ban. Our garden director had marshalled “the troops” , all in their 80’s for watering the plants by hand, as that is still allowed under the hose pipe ban. We have invested about £ 10.000 in perennials and and we do not want to lose those. The two green spots are caused by the wind bowing over the fountain spray from the ponds. (Under a hose pipe ban, the ponds are also allowed to operate so the Fis-hies do not die)
And with good reason as the place has a lot to offer, but due to the horrible weather we decided to stay on board. All that rain here and all that drought in England, with hosepipe bans. I think it is time that Norway starts exporting water to the UK instead of gas. There is already a gas pipe running to the North of the UK from Norway so they only have to switch from gas to water. When we walked the ship later in the day, a lot of guests had made the same decision to stay on board and the lounges were packed. The ship must have made a killing with bar sales, as the British do not sit in a lounge without a drink in front of them.
This is what Haugesund looks like during a sunny day. The main town is located around a channel where in the old days the herring fishermen used to dock. Somewhere around there is the longest pedestrian / shopping street in Norway. (Photo courtesy, somebody on the internet)
Still there were a few hundred brave people, who packed in Anoraks and backpacks braved the weather and even sat on top of the open Hop-on-Hop-off bus. There is also a trolley service with pulled carriages which cost £75,– for 90 minutes and goes around the town with a few stops. The town also claims to have the longest pedestrian street in Norway, which no doubt would have been very exciting were it not that today is a Sunday so all the shops were closed.
Although the P&O shore excursions are very reasonable compared to some other company’s it is still expensive as Norway is a very expensive country. £ 6.50 for a standard ice cream cone ashore, is my idea of being expensive.
This is the big thing on the tours. Leaning against St. Olav’s church is St Mary’s sewing needle. It is an old dolmen (from before the church was founded) and it is only 7.5 cm away from the church wall. Legend has it, that if the needle would touch the church, then Norway would fall apart. So the Authorities are very alert as nobody wants to go back to Sweden. (Photo courtesy, Visit Norway.com)
Haugesund with a population of 47,000 people, is where Norway, or Viking Land, really started. The nearby church dates back to 1250 AD, dedicated to St. Olav’s, once a local king, who got promoted to Saint for spreading Christianity in this area. For the Norwegians this is an important area as here King Harald Fairhair is buried. He was the first local leader who united all the tribes and little kingdoms in the area of what is now modern Norway. There is a national monument nearby at Haraldshaugen, raised in 1872 commemorating the 872 battle of Hafrsfjord which brought this first unification. Then the Swedish invaded and it took the Norwegians until 1905 to become truly independent by fully separating from Sweden.
The “Playhouse” movie theatre, concert hall and congress center.
So we decided to give all this cultural excitement a miss and stayed on board. The Cruise Director seemed to have anticipated that and had laid on more activities, which were very well attended. Morning stretch, Guided meditation, Creative Waves (= arts and crafts and today was skyline silhouette making), Short tennis, Morning trivia, Shuffleboard, Interactive gaming, Archery. etc.etc. and this was only what was going on until noon time. Very Good.
The Playhouse auditorium now taken now with a photo taken from the stage.
As mentioned the ship has a very nice array of public lounges. The Curzon Main show Theatre (bow), The Playhouse (midships) for movies and intimate concerts and Carmen’ (stern) for band playing and dancing. Then there is another larger lounge with stage and bandstand called, Masquerade, which mainly acts as a Disco but is also used for daily activities. So enough public areas, outside the regular lounges and bars, to find a space for all 1800 guests to do something.
The stage of the “Masquerade Lounge”.
According to guests who consider them P&O experts, and we have already come across a lot of them, this lounge is also used by the Cast members giving solo- performances. so we will keep an eye out for that as they are often very talented but seldom get the chance to spread their wings.
So we worked our way up to Top Deck to see how the Lido Lunch would work in the Horizon Restaurant and we ended up first at the Crystal Pool. Every hotel, resort and cruise ship has the problem of people blocking sun loungers. They sit there and then go for a very long lunch or something else, but keep blocking the lounger for hours without returning. Germans and British are in general blamed for it but Italians and Spanish are very good at it as well. And no doubt the Dutch and the Belgians are not much better. So P&O has the stretcher police. But of course done in a very nice way.
The “Stretcher police”.
The way it works is as follows: The policy is called the “Lonely Lounger routine”. There are signs that advise that you are not allowed to reserve a sun lounger and if you do it will be cleared after 30 minutes. But because the “official duty” of the towel man is to provide hand towels and to replace them when needed, he is not considered a “nasty person” by the crowd present. So there is very little arguing when he does clear personal stuff away. Our towel man said then he had only come across issues during short Caribbean cruises when the public tended to be different. I think this is a wonderful policy and it seemed to work very smoothly as well. Compliments.
The Lido Grill, which was at least today, a complete let down. The glass cabinet holds desserts and then to the left is a ice cream parlour but you have to pay for the ice cream
By now it was lunch time and as there was no waiting line, we decided to visit the Hamburger Grill outside the (Lido) Horizon restaurant on Deck 12. This turned out not to be an unmitigated success. The service was very fast, less than 5 minutes between ordering and having the Cheese Burger on the table, but we had to look very carefully to see a small veil (yes, as in see- through veil) of cheese on the top of the patty. And it was not even hot; how it could cool down so fast from being freshly cooked will remain a mystery forever. Then we found out, the waiter could not be bothered to explain, that you had to get the condiments yourself from the counter. Those condiments were limited to chips (french fries for the Americans) a slice of tomato, a bit of lettuce and a 1/4 of a cucumber. We were aware that P&O is not the greatest on food but this beat it all.
Then you have to buy your ice cream. There is no free ice cream in the Lido or anywhere else on board, except in the dining rooms. This Lido ice cream comes from Jude’s which is a famous name in England; a company which produces very creamy ice creams. But 3 scoops / balls on a coronet sets you back £ 4.20 and that goes against all my principles. For the amount of money I paid for this cruise, investing in one of the top suites, ice cream should be complimentary.
By 13.00 hrs. it was still raining and Haugesund still did not look very exciting.
Fearful about putting on weight, we decided on a deck walk. The ship still has a wrap around deck, where 3.2 times around is a mile. It is quite tight at the bow and at the stern but in the middle, under the lifeboats is is really wide and spacious. Something that we now see less and less. This Deck 6 has cabins and public rooms but the designers kept the open deck space while the newer ships have either no space to walk around (except for a track around the funnel) or it is very tight. This as the designers have decided to “optimize pubic room space” for an increase of “revenue opportunities”. The Aurora is from 2000 and in those days, the designers where not yet immersed in “synchronising internal brand opportunities”, so the ship has very nice open decks.
The starboard deck 6 open deck space under the Lifeboats. A throwback to the days of the five star premium market ships built before 2010.
Back to the cabin and time to write yesterdays blog and to decide which lounge will get our custom tonight for cocktails. Also we had found out, that as repeat guests we get 5% discount on what we spend on board, but only after we have finished our On Board Credit. We were planning to buy some Gin before we went home, so instead of doing at the end of the cruise, we did it today, as that depletes our on board credit and then the rest of the cruise we get our 5% discount. Otherwise we might have used all our On Board Credit first and then paid with our own money for the Duty Free. Since the UK left Europe, the free import rules of how much booze you are allowed to bring in have increased dramatically. It is so far the only positive / benefit I have found about “Brexit” . The shops (operated by a Concessionaire called Hardings of the UK) had quite a few good things on offer. A high quality Gin (Gin Mare Capri retailing at home for £ 52,–) for £ 45,– a bottle but………… 4 for £ 100 which brought it down to £ 25,– So if a Dutchman sees a way to save a lot of money, in this case 50%, he will jump. So her Ladyship has now been set up with a full liquor cabinet until New Year. Strange thing was, that we have to go and collect the bottles ourselves on the last sea day, while with Sky Princess (4000 guests) they delivered. Maybe they cannot handle the volume of orders that have been placed, as they have assigned the whole Masquerade Club to line it all up, for when the Assembled Alcoholics come marching in, to pick it up on the last sea day.
The Anderson Lounge on Deck 7.
I fell in love with this lounge the moment I stepped on board. If I would have had a regular house, instead of an apartment, one reception room would have been changed in something like this, or an extension built, so that a poor and worn out gentleman can have a cocktail in proper surroundings at the end of long and dreary day. So this lounge is a great alternative. There is no direct music but outside is an area called “Charlies” where there is a piano player and the music “wafts” nicely into the lounge from there.
Dinner was good but not outstanding and the service was extremely fast again. I clocked 1 hrs. and 10 minutes from stepping into the Dining room until we had, had our coffee and tea and could leave again. The fact that we are sitting close to the bar and the galley entrance might have something to do with it but I am getting more amazed by the day. Maybe I should try to get a 10 minute pause between each course but that might not be good for the waiters mental health, and/or we might get cold food. Although the ship says it is booked to capacity we still have a lot of half empty tables around us and we do not know why. Partly it might be that guests prefer the Lido, partly maybe because First Sitting and Early Free dining (in the Medina dining room) seem to be very full.
The Ships Dance Company called “The Head Liners” with their Revue show called “Destination Dance”.
But it made us in time for the Show and in finding a good seat. Not so necessary this time as the Theatre was only half full. I think that a lot of the guests were worn out after a full day of rain and wind. (And tomorrow won’t be much better) This show was very good again, with song and dance routines from all over the world, a sort of world cruise in music, and I was amazed in how fast the Ladies managed to do their costume changes. For the boys it is not so difficult, another pair of pants and they are ready, but the Ladies have to get in and out of these difficult costumes with feathers, petticoats, change the colour of their underwear that goes with the new costume and that must take some time. But they flew off the stage in a cancan dress and flew back on the stage again in a country and western outfit. Very Good, as was the previous show.
We went from South America directly to Paris with a Can Can and then from there to prairie land with a song and dance routine from the musical Oklahoma. There were 4 Can Can dancers, but when I took this photo one just dived behind the screens to come out a few minutes later in a Cow Girl Costume. But she still threw her skirts in the air, so all was well in the world.
Tomorrow we are in Olden, a small town deep into the Norwegian Fjords. For those who have followed our escapades on the Sky Princess a month ago, (see under the right hand lable: My Cruises and Reviews) will remember that we went there as well. The highlight of the place is the souvenir shop across the dock, the large souvenir shop in Downtown and also the large supermarket in Downtown. Tomorrow is mainly for the tours.
How those tours will go, is anybodies guess, as the weather will be much the same as today. Rain and Wind and with low hanging clouds and could be a problem for the tours that go up the mountains. Temperatures around 13oC / 57oF with a bit of luck.
