Alesund — Jim Winslett

Today, we sailed way into a metric shit-ton of fjord and arrived at Ålesund (AW-leh-soond - kinda).
Anyway, it’s a fishing village because of course it is.

We weren’t the only ship in town today, ether. There was a big Havila ship that came in after us and there was a huge Aida ship here before us.

That thing was FUGLY. Who the hell approved this paint design on a $650 mil ship?

Reminder that you can click any image and see it fully on your screen without scrolling

Whatevs. The dock was mere steps away from the city centre, so yay. Ålesund has been called the prettiest city in Norway and it’s easy to see why. They kinda cheated, though… the whole town burned down in 1904 and got rebuilt all at once in a coordinated architectural style, so there wasn’t any mix-n-match architecture going on. It’s pretty easy to make the town look nice when the whole thing is planned as a unit.

Still… it *IS* pretty.

Occasionally, it’s not just pretty, but pretty steep!

And being a fishing village, there are of course places to put your boat.

There’s also a big rock on the edge of the city centre that affords a nice view if you’re willing to climb the 400 stairs (of various sizes) to get there. You can see them zig-zagging on the right side of the hill.

Here’s the view from there:

Back at sea level, the rain/clouds parted for a few short minutes and I had BLUE SKY for this pic.

And then poof. Gone. Back to grey.

One neat thing I noticed… on lots of the cobblestone streets, they don’t bother trying to pain crosswalks on the rough surface… they just pour alternate colours of concrete and make them permanent.

You can see it in the pic above, but here’s a closeup.

The architectural style is called “Art Nouveau”

There are a scant few buildings that survived the 1904 fire. Here are a couple of them - so you can see how different the Art Nouveau replacement buildings were compared to the original buildings.

Ålesund is comprised of multiple islands.

You can get from one to another by underground tunnel (no, really) or by fast-ferry.

There are lots of restaurants in town as well, but we didn’t sample those because we can eat for free on the ship and the prices here are similar to Iceland.

We did poke our heads into the liquor store, though - mostly out of curiosity, since the guide told us that booze in Norway is very expensive.

FYI: kr199.90 = $26.34 CAD - which doesn’t sound bad, except I found it online for $16.50 CAD outside Norway. (The wine itself is from Spain)

OK, one last shot from on top of the big rock, this time facing away from the city:

That’s looking back out the fjord toward the sea, which is where we are now, as I’m writing this. The scenery is spectacular, no matter when you look out the window.