THE CRUISE - Alesund

Day Nine - Sunday, 26th June

Alesund is beautiful! We have the whole day here, and we saw the pilot come on board around 7.45am. The scenery from our balcony was superb, with the fjords and the backdrop of the mountains, with patches of snow, and what seemed to be glaciers.

Even before entering the fjord, the water was calm, but once inside it was like a mirror. There are islands near the entrance, and across to the south we could see a couple of long bridges, but they were a long way from Alesund.

(I wanted to try and put in a lot of photos from here on, and maybe do a link to them, rather than have them all here. However I haven't been able to work out how to do it yet, so the few that appear here will hopefully suffice and show just how pretty and different these Norwegian towns are.)

 It took a while to dock, but all was in place and we could go ashore about 9.00am. Trouble was, it was Sunday, and they don't seem to do much on Sunday, at least until after lunchtime, and we were hard pressed to even get a cup of coffee. 

Most of the buildings date from around 1904-06, and were built after a disastrous fire in 1904 which destroyed 500 houses. The rebuilding was done relatively quickly, with support from other parts fof Norway and even Germany and other areas. The style is mostly Art Nouveau, and we went to the Art Nouveau Museum and they had a coffee bar!! The building itself was originally an apothecary (pharmacy), and they had kept all the fittings from the shop  like the counters and the drawers which had held the compounds etc.
There was also a "Time machine" which is actually a presentation showing the fire and the devastation of the town. It was so well done, and fascinating to see how people coped after such an horrific event. Other exhibits upstairs were a vast collection of early postcards, along with some beautiful examples of glass and ceramics. In another section were the architectural drawings and plans, and examples of the crafts used to rebuild the city.

The city is built around a couple of waterways, and many flats and units look out over the water. It is fairly high-density, but so well done and so attractive. The photo below shows just how big the ship was, in comparison to the buildings

The ship is in the centre background!!

When I went back into town later, to get a poster we'd seen of Alesund Doors, there did appear to be some restaurants open, so I suppose they come alive after lunch. I also checked out a gallery whose windows we looked into, with the most beautiful paintings, but it was still closed. I would have bought something there, if there was a way to get it back home safely!

The sailaway was a singalong (!), and so we watched the ship leaving from the promenade deck, and then to our allocated restaurant, to make an appearance. They must have thought we were never coming back to the table, but this organised style of eating is OK, the meals are nice and the servings are of a good size, but not our style of things. I guess we are "loners" in that sense, and prefer to do our own thing most times. After dinner we went back up to one of the top decks and watched some more scenery as we left Alesund.