Back from Norway

Thanks to everyone to emailed me wishing me a great trip to Norway. We had a fabulous time and some wonderful weather. Who would believe that you could get sunburnt in the Arctic Circle? It was about 12-13 degrees (Celsius) most of the time we were away but the sun must have been very strong! I'll know for next time...

I'm really tired right now - have spent much of the afternoon paying bills and doing chores. Have also managed to come back with a (hopefully mild) recurrence of the health problems I had over Christmas. What a bummer...wasn't the best end to the holiday really. Am watching and waiting to see what develops and am hopeful that I won't need more surgery. If I do disappear of the radar for a few days in the next couple of weeks, you know where I'll be LOL.

I'll share some pics of the ports of call with you later, but wanted to just share a few of the ship and our journey out of England first.

I don't know what this building is called but we passed it on the way out of England and I thought it looked pretty.

I've passed these old forts from WWII in the English Channel before when I was working on the Isle of White and I thought they were interesting. I'm surprised they're still there really - for one thing they're a bit macabre and another thing, surely they're a risk to shipping?

Call us cheap but we always go for a cheap inside cabin. Our opinion has always been that it's just not worth splashing out for the amount of time that you spend in your cabin. However on this trip I must admit we did wish we'd splurged and gone for a balcony because there were lots of times we could have used it (normally you don't cruise so close to land so it's not worth it IMO, but we were SO close to the land that it would have been so much better of we had).  Actually we did originally debate getting a balcony but when we saw that it was more than twice the cost, we decided to go on 2 cheaper cruises instead - one was last October to the Canaries and then this was the second.

Loved this little pool at the back of the ship but it got really busy so we went to the main pool which was actually much quieter.

This was one of the main pools on the ship. I loved the sculpture at the end of the pool...

Check out the lovely texture of the sculpture.

Ok, well join me on my next stop (hopefully tomorrow) which is Bergen - Norway's second largest city...and a beautiful one at that!