Olden, Norway

We woke up this morning to an announcement: the tour company Viking uses in the next port informed them late last night that they wouldn’t have enough busses to accommodate the included shore excursions and so our included excursion would have to be changed.

(Collective eye roll all around the breakfast diners)

They didn’t say WHY there wouldn’t be enough busses, but when we pulled into port, we could imagine why:

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

The smaller ship is Regent Navigator - it holds 750 passengers.

The larger one is P&O Iona. It holds more than 6000 passengers.

I’m guessing all the busses were busy with that.

So: the included tour of riding a bus around a dinky little town of 500 people got scrapped.

What they did for us instead was give us tickets to the gondola, which was situated right at the dock where our tender boats offloaded.

Here’s the silly part: the cruise director was at the exit of the ship, APOLOGIZING for the change.
I told him I’ll take a scenic gondola ride over a bus trip
Every.
Single.
Day.

And after the gondola trip, we hopped a shuttle bus into town in the afternoon, I’m doubly glad we didn’t get the bus tour. There’s not much to see in town and it was absolutely overrun with tourists. Picture 7400+ tourists all invading a town of just 500 residents.

Plus, I saw exactly one house worth taking a picture of.

So - we’re not sad we missed the bus tour. Especially when the gondola ride was SPECTACULAR.

It’s one of the steepest in the world at 60 degrees and it goes up 1000m in just 5 minutes.

And the views were stunning, even though it was raining all day.

Right from the start, we could see where our ship was anchored.

A bit farther up, it get surreal.

Continuing up, another fjord branch comes into view, as well as some of the glacier

Even the giant P&O ship looks tiny in the dock in town.

In addition to being very steep, the gondola only has one support tower. There are the two stations on either end and the one tower right at the top to go from vertical to horizontal. Pretty impressive.

We were on the first car up this morning and even though we griped about having to wake up early (we skipped ahead two hours in time zones a couple days ago, and it’s killing us) I’m really glad we got up when we did, because after about a half hour on top of the mountain, the clouds closed in and you couldn’t see a thing from up there.

So yay.

Dinner was more Nordic Flavours, but while yesterday was all about fish, today was land-based. We both started with a wedge salad (OMG the blue cheese on this ship is gorgeous) and then had reindeer stew for the main course. It was absolutely delicious.

In case you’re wondering, reindeer tastes just like very lean beef but it’s very tender. There’s no ‘gamey’ flavour at all. The stew was made with carrots and onions and Norwegian goat cheese blended into the sauce. We both loved it.

I’ve had reindeer four ways now: medallions, steak, stew, and soup. The soup was still my favourite, but the stew is a close second.

I had the soup in Helsinki Finland back in 2018. It was cream-based with beet puree on top.

The other three reindeer dishes I’ve had were aboard ship this trip.

During dinner, we passed the Tvinnefossen (twin falls) and that was a sight to behold. They’re HUGE and pics won’t do it justice at all.

A bit farther and the scenery became farmlands and small villages. We even saw what looks like vineyards - I was 100% unaware that Norway produced wine. (update: turns out, those are apple orchards with really short trees)

Then the P&O ship passed us.

19 decks. 6000+ passengers. One entire deck for kid-friendly activities. 1700+ crew.

You couldn’t pay me to be on that thing.

After they passed by, I planned on sitting down to write the daily post, but every time I looked out the window, the scenery just kept getting better and I kept taking pictures.