Christmas Cruise Never been on a cruise at Christmas before. So we thought we'd try that.
Suite Saturday - We really must try to get out of this habit of booking a suite. This was our fifth cruise and our fourth suite. They're very nice, but (relatively) very expensive.
Theatre Having deposited our stuff in our suite, we went to re-familiarise ourselves with the layout of Arcadia. Here's Judith in the theatre.
Pool Out on deck, this was the view across Southampton from the back of Arcadia. It was impressive that they'd bothered to put any water in the pool as I couldn't see there being much opportunity for that sort of thing over the next week.
Other Pool There's another swimming pool under that large, retractable roof. Although there seemed little chance of the roof being retracted over the next week, it seemed likely that people would want to have a go in the pool.
Decorations The ship's Christmas decorations were excellent.
Sunset There was a lovely sunset just before we departed. Considering that we had been on two week cruises in the middle of summer and not managed to see the sun set, this was a good start considering that we didn't have high hopes for the weather around the North Sea at the end of December.
Sunset Lovely.
Departing Southampton Just as it was starting to get dark, we set sail. Here's a view of the Ocean Terminal from our balcony.
Solent Here's a lovely view of the Solent from our balcony. Our suite was on the back corner of the ship, so we had an awesome wrap-around balcony, which allowed us to see both down the side and across the back of Arcadia.
Channel A while later and we were out in the Channel. Two thing to note in this photo. First, the stars are blurry because it's not possible to take a photo containing non-blurry stars from a moving ship. Second, the orange glow on the horizon is from France.
Channel Looking in tte opposite direction, the orange glow on the horizon is now from England. And that was pretty much it for our first day back on Arcadia. Time for a lovely curry in their new Indian restaurant, East.
Zeebrugge Sunday - We awoke to find that Arcadia was already docked in Zeebrugge. As Zeebrugge is basically a massive container port and not really near anywhere that tourists might want to go, there were two options available to us. One, pay £34 to get a coach to Brugge. Two, pay nothing at all to get a free coach to the nearby town of Blankenberg.
Blankenberg Although Blankenberg is quite a pretty little town in its own right, it also has a train station from where one can get the train to Brugge in 14 minutes for the princely sum of £3 (return). So we did that. Lovely train too. Double decker, very spacious, even in standard class.
De Halve Man This was our fifth visit to Brugge in 2014 (!). And no visit to Brugge (of ours) is complete without popping in to the De Halve Man brewery for a lovely Zot (or two).
De Halve Man The other thing they have in the De Halve Man brewery is excellent food. Specifically the excellent beef stew.
Ferris Wheel After lunch we had a bit of a wander about. This ferris wheel had been erected near the concert hall. Given that we hadn't seen it on any of our previous visits, I assume that it had been put up just for the Christmas period. Which was a shame because the chilly and showery weather seemed to be putting people off actually having a go on it.
Departing Zeebrugge Later, back onboard Arcadia, this was the view from our balcony as we departed the port of Zeebrugge.
Pilot Outside the port, the weather had taken an impressive turn for the worst, with high winds and large waves. About an hour out of Zeebrugge, this pilot boat turned up to retrieve their pilot fellow. Lovely curry for tea in East again.
Sea Day Monday - The weather was still impressively miserable when we got up on Monday morning, but by about lunchtime we could at least see some blue sky. The dark clouds in the distance are what we had just sailed out of. It takes a day to cross the North Sea, so we would be at sea all day.
Blue Sky Although the sea was still rough, there was at least a pleasing amount of blue sky to be seen up ahead.
Ships As I said, the sea was still fairly rough. We didn't see many other ships during the day, although there were quite a lot of oil rigs about. The most I saw at any one time was eleven, although I think my PB is sixteen.
Cake Back in our cabin later in the day and this lovely Christmas cake had appeared, courtesy of P&O.
Pool View Just after sunset, I popped outside to take a few photos. This was the view looking back across the covered pool towards the East bar.
Balcony View A black and white photo taken from our balcony.
Balcony View Another black and white photo taken from our balcony.
Captain's Reception As it was the first black tie evening, the Captain was hosting a reception to introduce his senior staff. From the left, the Captain (with the microphone), the Head Chef (who got the biggest round of applause), the head of HR (she got a few boos), the head of "hotel services", the Chief Engineer and the Deputy Captain.
Tug Tuesday - We arrived in Copenhagen just before dawn and were followed into port by this tug. The big whirl of turbulent water is from Arcadia's azipods (they're what Arcadia uses instead of propellers and a rudder) as they started to turn the ship around.
Copenhagen As is often the case when a large cruise ship docks in a city, the ship is taller than most of the buildings. Which, as you can see, offers some excellent views.
Arcadia As Copenhagen is a walk-off port, i.e. you don't get whisked away from the ship on a coach), we got our first proper look at the re-engineered back of Arcadia. It used to have quite a slope on it, which meant that the cabins/suites on the back had enormous balconies (like on our first cruise). Now that it's much steeper, the balconies are somewhat smaller.
The Little Mermaid As far as I can tell, this statue of The Little Mermaid is the most famous sight in all of Copenhagen...
The Little Mermaid ...which made it very handy that our ship was parked just a short distance from it. You can just see the statue in the bottom right of this photo. There's also a crowd of people photographing it, when seems to be pretty much the default state of play.
Rescue We decided to walk into the centre of Copenhagen along the dockside. Along the way we were passed by this boat. We were fascinated to know what sort of rescue at the airport would necessitate the use of such a rescue boat.
Bridge Judith on a bridge in front of what I think is the St Albans Anglican Church. In Copenhagen. There's some famous statue or other back there too.
Frederik's Church We continued to walk along the dockside until we reached the impressive Frederik's Church.
Frederik's Church The church was just as impressive from the inside as it had been from the outside. Silence (not quiet) was required in the church, so I had to take this photo with my little Panasonic compact camera as it's the only one I have with a silent shutter.
Nyhavn In popular Scandinavian style, there are beautifully preserved and presented buildings along the waterside. We saw these at Nyhavn.
Nyhavn Another view of the colourful buildings at Nyhavn.
Tivoli Gardens Despite the popularity of The Little Mermaid, in my opinion Tivoli Gardens is probably the best thing to see/visit in Copenhagen. It covers 22 acres (I think) and contains lots of shops and restaurants and bars and fairground rides of varying and impressive ferocity. It also costs about a tenner (of British pounds) to get in. But it's good enough to be worth it.
Christmas Beer Judith having a Christmas beer in Tivoli Gardens
Christmas Beer Me having a Christmas beer in Tivoli Gardens
The Demon The Demon rollercoaster is one of the larger rides in Tivoli Market.
The Star Flyer The Star Flyer is fundamentally a spinning swing. But it's the fact that it's around 250 feet tall that literally elevates it to the level of major fairground attraction.
Selfie I don't have a selfie stick so I had to take this selfie using only my arm. And a camera obviously.
The Star Flyer Later, back on Arcadia, I'm still able to pick out the Star Flyer at Tivoli Gardens on the skyline. Awesome.
Leaving Copenhagen I took this photo using a cunning combination of a delayed shutter release, a brief dash from the camera to the balcony railing, a thirty second shutter and the ability to stand still for a bit.
Sweden View As we left Copenhagen, we could see the lights of Malmo across the bay (where Saga Noren comes from!). Unfortunately we were unable to see the Oresund Bridge, which is just South of Copenhagen.
Bye Bye Copenhagen The glow from Copenhagen gradually receeded behind us.
Star Trails Once we were out at sea, I thought I'd have a crack at doing a star trails photo. Turned out that they don't work very well from a moving ship. Not that surprising really when you think about it. No idea what that glow on the right side of the horizon was.
Opera House Wednesday - Christmas Eve and we were in Oslo, which was jolly cold. Although the thermometer only said -4C, it felt colder than that. Here's Judith standing on the roof of the Opera House.
Arcadia A view of Arcadia from the roof of the Opera House. Note that the harbour is frozen to within about fifty feet of the front of the ship.
Opera House Judith standing by the Opera House, with Arcadia in the background.
Arcadia Judith with Arcadia and the steel and glass iceberg sculpture.
Electric Cars It turned out that Oslo seemed to be the electric car capital of the world (or at least the bits of the world that I've visited recently). I can't think of anywhere else one would be able to photograph two Nissan Leafs and a BMW i3 all parked in the street together.
More Electric Cars A short distance away we saw this BMW i3, Tesla Model S and another Nissan Leaf. Considering that Olso was largely deserted, there were loads of Leafs and Teslas around.
The Royal Palace In the middle of a park in the centre of Oslo is the Royal Palace. It's the Norwegian equivalent of Buckingham Palace, except that you can pretty much walk right up to the front door. Not entirely surprisingly, there were quite a lot of soldiers with assault weapons around.
Judith Judith consulting her map outside the Royal Palace.
Midday Despite it only being shortly after midday, the sun had only managed to climb to just about level with the top of these trees. We were pretty much at the southern end of Norway and the sun was barely making it over the horizon in the middle of the day! It was so cold walking about that after around three hours we felt compelled to retreat to the relative warmth of Arcadia.
Leaving Oslo A tug moved into position to monitor Arcadia's departure from its dock.
Akershus Castle I took this photo of Akershus Castle as we were leaving the harbour. I was quite impressed with how clearly it's come out considering that the photo was taken from a moving ship in the dark.
Leaving Oslo The glow of Oslo disappearing into the distance.
Christmas Day Thursday - Christmas Day was spent at sea, which was very pleasant and relaxing.
Gym I even spent an hour in the gym in the afternoon to try to offset some of the masses of food I'd been eating. Arcadia has a very well equipped gym. Given that the average age of the passengers was probably mid- to late-60s, the gym was pretty much deserted every time I went in there.
Running Machine View This was the view from my running machine in the gym. Very inspiring.
Christmas Dinner We'd booked into the Marco Pierre White restaurant for Christmas dinner. Here's Judith perusing the menu. Dinner was excellent.
Boxing Day Boxing Day was another sea day.
Showers The weather was being generally quite kind (considering we were in the middle of the North Sea in December), although there was the odd shower blowing past.
Showers Here's a ship narrowly avoiding a downpour. Whilst the North Sea remained calm, the Channel was a turbulent, gale-force nightmare, which made for a challenging night's sleep.
Southampton Saturday - Back in Southampton where we started. We had a super relaxing time, but I think we'll do our next cruise when the weather is a bit warmer and we can get a bit more use out of our balcony.