Northern European Cruise: Norway

July 21, 2025 | From the Founder, Patrick Verst

Ålesund, Norway

After a full day at sea as we traveled through the Norwegian Sea, we arrived in the town of Alesund, Norway. I didn't get to explore the area surrounding the port in Alesund much at all because I had my second excursion planned for that day. Well rested and finally fully adapted to the European time zones, I was so excited for this Fjord Explorer's Dream excursion!

I was a bit nervous heading into this excursion because it was looking to be another very cool and rainy day. You would think that you would likely be on a boats while exploring fjords. However, for better or for worse, we were actually in a coach bus for most of the day driving around and taking ferry boats through various fjords in western Norway. Thanks to this, we were fortunately not sitting in the rain for the whole seven-hour excursion, but thankfully we were able to get out of the bus at various places to take photos.

There was a period during this excursion when I thought to myself unlike any other moment during this cruise, "Oh my gosh, I am such a tourist." I thought that to myself as we got out of our bus during our 15-30 minute ferry boat rides through the fjords. To the locals, the ferry boats are their living hell...having to time everything about their business day, taking the kids to school, doing their grocery shopping, etc. around making sure they catch the ferry boats at the right time. If you show up just a minute late, you might have to wait another hour or more for the next boat. And here you have us - all these tourists - getting out of the bus and standing in the rain to take pictures of the locals' morning commute. I am literally laughing out loud as I type this. It's just so funny to think about it from a Norwegian's perspective.

Anyhoo, during the excursion, we traversed and drove around Hjørundfjord and Geiranger, which is a fjord that UNESCO has declared a World Heritage site for its outstanding natural beauty. Spoiler alert: Beauty was indeed experienced!

Around noon, we had lunch at a local family's farm that the family has owned for many generations. It was a very delicious, fresh farm-to-table lunch, meaning everything was locally sourced from their farm or the surrounding village. The meal included apple cider, salmon salad, regular salad, a cheese and charcuterie platter, Norwegian rye bread (it's a lot sweeter than American rye bread, allegedly), a salmon entree and a slice of cake.

If there's one thing practically all of Northern Europe is famous for, it's the fact the sun either never sets or barely sets at all during the summer months. Because I was trying to catch up on sleep the first few days of the cruise, I could never bring myself to stay up for the massively celebrated midnight sun in Iceland. However, during our overnight commute from Ålesund to Flåm, I finally managed to stay up past midnight. At that specific latitude, the sun wasn't quite setting as late as it did in Northern Iceland, but I was happy to settle for an 11:08 p.m. sunset. The photo below, taken on a very cool, cloudy and drizzly night, was taken at 12:08 a.m. Even if I couldn't see the actual sun due to the cloud coverage, I can confirm that a midnight sun is a very real phenomenon and also a reality!

Flåm, Norway

Flåm, oh my goodness! While most people would opt for at least one of numerous different train rides while in Flåm or maybe choose to zip around in an E-Mobility Eco Car, I opted to make Flåm a self-guided excursion kind of day. With no plans made prior to my arrival that morning, I took things nice and slow, which naturally meant hiking up a mountain in the rain to get up close and personal with the Brekkefossen waterfall. Because I haven't historically had massive waterfalls in any place that I've ever called home over the years, I guess I never realized just how wet waterfalls can be, even when you're standing over 100 feet away from them. The amount of mist hammering me in the face as I approached the waterfall was insane! Talk about a bad day to wear prescription eyeglasses and use a fancy camera!

Once I got to the waterfall, I took a few pictures, caught my breath for about five minutes, and made my way back down the mountain. It was about a 700 foot elevation gain from the ship to the waterfall according to my Strava fitness tracking app on my phone. While 700 feet might seem like nothing if you live in a mountainous region of the world, 700 feet is a very significant elevation gain for Florida man!

Once I made it back to the village, I grabbed lunch at the pop-up market near the cruise port, where I enjoyed a loaded baked potato with salmon (instead of bacon), a coffee and an ice cream. I also stopped by a few shops and a free museum. The only souvenir I bought the entire cruise was purchased in Flåm, and it was a little teaspoon with the Norwegian flag to add to a my teaspoon collection. Those who know me know that I love a good quality coffee and a good quality tea! Even if I don't use my decorative teaspoons for anything because I always drink my coffee and tea black at home, I love my little teaspoon collection! I don't quite have a teaspoon for every country I've visited in Europe over the years, but I do proudly have teaspoons from six different European countries!

Time to get a bit more serious for a moment. There are many parts of Europe that are growing very weary of the effects of overtourism. Although the anti-tourism sentiment is most prevalent in the Mediterranean region of Europe, other countries such as Norway are also growing a bit exhausted of overtourism and the negative environmental impacts of cruise ships specifically. It's for this reason that I always tried to tread very lightly whenever I was in any town during this cruise, knowing many of the locals likely didn't want me there, I didn't speak their language, I didn't know much about their customs, etc. It's not something you necessarily want to think about when you're on a vacation of a lifetime, but it's important to be aware of that fact whenever you're entering someone's city in a foreign country during peak tourism season. Additionally, it was easy to be very cognizant of that reality given the fact that I myself live practically next-door to Tampa's cruise port.

Noting that Norway is cracking down on the size of ships and the energy usage of cruise ships over the next decade, getting to visit any port in Norway isn't a given, especially not in a town as small, quaint and historic as Flåm. That being said, if there are two things that I will forever cherish about Flåm, they are the Brekkefossen waterfall hike and this very kind farewell that the kind folks gave us in the video below. Knowing how grim the future of cruising looks to be in Norway at this time, I genuinely got a bit emotional seeing the local folks' heartfelt goodbye as we sailed out of town.

Bergen, Norway

Where to even begin with Bergen! I really don't know how to put this remarkable city into words. Have you ever fallen in love with a city? Have you ever visited four or more countries on one short vacation and have one particular city become your one and only hyperfixation for the next several weeks? I have never had those feelings until after I visited Bergen, Norway.

The only thing I knew about Bergen before I arrived was that, based on pictures, it looked to be the biggest city on our cruise itinerary up to this point. Noting that I am naturally a city guy at heart who sometimes needs a little weekend escape in nature, I was fairly excited to visit Bergen even though I knew practically nothing about the city before my arrival. Again, I booked this cruise for Iceland. If it wasn't Iceland, I really didn't care to research it much.

Similar to many of the other cruise ports up to this point, I began planning my day for my self-guided excursion through Bergen the morning we arrived in Bergen. I checked out a few lists online of the top things to do in Bergen and plugged them all into Google Maps to see what I could realistically walk to and experience in a day.

I started by walking through the historic downtown, which was lined with an abundance of shops and restaurants - both mom-and-pop shops and some fairly high-end stores that you might expect to see in a place such as Miami's Design District. I love that these places can co-exist in the same neighborhood and hopefully all thrive in the diversity of their co-existence.

Next, I made my way through Bryggen Hanseatic Wharf. I would have loved to spend more time to walk through some of the shops and try some of the food in this beautiful part of town, but sadly time did not allow me such a privilege if I were to see all that I wanted to see in Bergen.

Once I finished up at the Wharf, I embarked on a bold journey that I probably shouldn't have undertaken by myself with such little preparation if I'm being quite honest. I still don't entirely know what I ended up hiking. I know I put Stoltzekleiven in Google Maps. So I'm fairly confident I climbed the very narrow path with over 900 steps to the top of Stoltzekleiven. I think I was also on the trail to Fløyen for a little while, but I never officially made it to the peak of Fløyen. All I know is that I had one of the most epic panic attacks I've ever had when I got to the top of Stoltzekleiven and had no idea what to do.

You see, I have a fear of heights. The path to get up Stoltzekleiven was very narrow, along steep cliffs, and there were a couple of times I looked back just to see what I had climbed thus far and immediately said to myself, "Nope, I can't look back!" The fear of heights was getting to me every time I looked back. Even worse, the fear of not knowing how to get down from the mountain consumed me when I got to the top of the mountain. Bizarrely enough, on my way up the mountain, there were about 15 people of varying ages who passed me on their way up the mountain. I'm a slim, healthy (by American standards), 30-year-old male who does weight-lifting at the gym twice a week. I might not be super strong, and I might not have much mountain climbing experience, but I'm definitely not out of shape or overweight by any means. However, as stated earlier, Florida man doesn't handle elevation change well. When you partner a fear of heights with terrible lung capacity at a high elevation, you can begin to mentally spiral quite quickly.

There were people more than twice my age blowing past me on our way up the mountain. The one thing that gave me hope (in terms of how to get down from the mountain) was that I did not see a single person climbing down the mountain the same way we were going up. Therefore, I knew there must have been some alternative/preferred route down that was different from the way up. Whether the way down would be more friendly to those with a fear of heights was yet to be determined. Okay, now that I had some hope by time I reached the top of the mountain, let's crush that hope some with some more panic-inducing doom. When I got to the top of the mountain, there was nobody there! Where did they all go?! I walked around for almost an hour at the top of the mountain (yes, I even did some backtracking in a mentally-panicked state) trying to decide how to get down hoping I could ask someone, preferably someone who spoke English. Nobody...nobody was there! It's like they all made it to the top of the mountain and just dissolved in the clouds. Thankfully, I had a data signal on my phone at the top of the mountain, and I downloaded AllTrails on my phone to try to pull up the mountain's maps on my phone. I was successful, but also incredibly overwhelmed when I looked at the map for the path down.

The good news: There was an alternative path down.

The bad news: There looked to be a lot of switchbacks from hell that I assumed would be along some very steep cliffs. This would be absolutely horrific for my fear of heights.

So there I was, doing as the AllTrails' maps told me, making my way down the mountain. I walked past a stunningly beautiful lake/pond surrounded by pine trees laced in fog. I got my feet a bit wet in the outskirts of the lake/pond so that I could get an up-close, unobstructed picture. Unlike in Florida, I could do this in Norway because there aren't any alligators in Norway! Despite how psychologically unstable I still was, this turned out to be one of my favorite photos I've ever taken in my entire life.

I continued my way down the mountain and eventually made it to a camp site. At this point, I was fairly confident I was going the correct way, although I was still very much dreading the switchbacks from hell that awaited me. At this point, I was clearly walking on a dirt road...it wasn't even a nature trail. The road was for the campers to get to their campsite. Although it wasn't the most "authentic" hiking experience walking on a dirt road, I was grateful for something very low-key after how intense the hike up was. The dirt road eventually turned into a paved road. I reached numerous areas that would have had incredible views of the city down below had there not been so much rain, fog and overall cloud coverage. It turns out that the less-than-optimal hiking weather this day was nothing unique for Bergen, as Bergen is quite literally the rainiest city in all of Europe.

I kept making my way down the mountain, and I officially reached the switchbacks, which were...*drumroll*...still part of the paved road ha ha ha ha ha ha! All of that stressing for nothing! What I thought were going to be very narrow switchbacks along steep cliffs turned out to be very gradual, wide switchbacks along a paved road. I was so relieved when I finally realized what was happening and that I no longer had to face my fear of heights along a cliff.

Eventually, I turned off AllTrails and resorted back to Google Maps to make my way back in the direction of the ship to grab some lunch before getting on the ship. Once I got off the "mountain road," Google Maps had me going through all sorts of unique alleyways and very old, narrow sets of stairs between houses and practically in people's backyards. I don't think I was trespassing (I didn't open any gates or see any signs indicating "Private Property"), but it almost felt as though I could have been trespassing at times.

I eventually decided on Bryggeloftet Restaurant for lunch, where I enjoyed my first-ever reindeer leg, mashed potatoes and a pink apple cider of sorts that may or may not have had alcohol. I didn't want alcohol after all of that hiking, but I'm pretty sure it had alcohol...oops.

After lunch, I made my way back to the ship. All said and done, by the end of the day, Strava claimed that I had an elevation gain of nearly 1,700 feet. When you consider how exhausting the hike was the previous day in Flåm at an elevation gain of about 700 feet, this was a very very very exhausting yet rewarding day in Bergen.

Would I ever recommend someone "taking on Bergen" the way I did by hiking a mountain without doing any research before hiking it? Absolutely not. But noting that I made it safely back to my ship and fell madly in love with the city unlike any other city in my entire life despite having spent only a few hours there, I'd say this was a very successful trip in Bergen nevertheless.

There was one place in Bergen I wanted to go but didn't have time to visit, and that was the Fantoft Stave Church. Although I hope to revisit Bergen some day and visit the Fantoft Stave Church, I'm very happy I had my mountain-climbing experience instead.

Wow, this was such a fun, reflective and therapeutic blog post to write! If you made it this far into this very lengthy post, thank you!

Our eighth day of the cruise was another sea day as we traversed the North Sea from Norway to the Netherlands. I'll talk more about ship life in a later post, but if there was ever a "rough" time at sea during the entire cruise, it was the time we spent in the North Sea. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as the TikToks you see of cruise ships and freighters being tossed about in Drake's Passage, but it definitely wasn't optimal sleeping conditions...let's just say that.