I’ve been asked several times to write about my travels on this blog, so thought I would start with my recent trip to the beautiful Norwegian Fjords. I’ve split it into five parts, along with some photographs. I hope you enjoy reading it and get a flavour of life on board a cruise ship.
Norwegian Fjords Cruise 6.9.26 – 13.9.26 Part 1
DAY ONE – Boarding
Our cruise was departing from Southampton, so we stayed overnight at a hotel in the historic village of Netley, home to the Royal Victoria Country Park, and just a few miles from the cruise port.
Before dinner, we took a short stroll down to the water, where we saw the Queen Mary cruise ship in the distance. We got chatting to a local man, who said the ship was sailing to New York, which was a seven-day transatlantic crossing.
Across the road from the water, we discovered Sophie’s Pond, which is a man-made duck pond, built in the 1980s. The pond was named after a black swan that lived there a few years ago. We saw a white swan, with her three beautiful cygnets, along with lots of ducks, when we looked out across the pond. A couple arrived to feed them whilst we were there. They told us they feed them every day; a mixture of oats, sweetcorn and frozen mixed veg. The birds certainly seemed to enjoy their feast!
Back at our hotel, we got our holiday started with a few pre-dinner drinks in the bar. Looking around, I was amused to see some books strategically placed on a shelf above the bar – see photo below. It seemed a very strange place to keep them, but I never did get around to asking why they were kept out of reach.
After a hearty full English breakfast, we played a game of UNO before driving to the cruise terminal. Our boarding time was 1.30pm and we were getting excited at the prospect of spending the next seven nights on P & O cruise ship, Arvia. The ship has a passenger capacity of over 6,500 and it was full for our cruise.
The thing we love about sailing from Southampton is the ease of which you can drop your car off, cross over the road, drop off your luggage, then go through security and be on the ship in a relatively short space of time. We arrived at the terminal just after 1pm, and an hour later, we were in our balcony cabin number 11714, and our luggage was already outside the room waiting for us. We didn’t unpack anything, instead we had a quick freshen up and went to explore this enormous floating ‘city’.
There were five of us on this trip, and we’d made a pact to all have a pina colada to celebrate the start of our holiday. Everything was going well, the sun was shining and we were sat outside on deck 15. Then it happened. I struggled to get any of my drink because my paper straw had disintegrated. So, I decided to ‘down it in one’ – big mistake. I ended up wearing most of over my face and clothes! My friend, Anne and I went off to find the ladies so I could wash off the sticky, coconut and pineapple drink. It was one of those ‘posh’ toilets where you have to press a button to lock the door – we didn’t know this. So, after numerous interruptions and apologies from fellow passengers, we gave up, much to the amusements of the others.
We had time to change before the sail away party, then met up for a wonderful steak dinner, then onto one of the many entertainment venues on board, where we saw the resident live band, Pulse, we played a country set, which included a tribute to the late, great, Dolly Parton. We even had time to fit in an Adele tribute act.
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