Tuesday - day 5 - Eidfjord, Norway

Tuesday's cruise plan was that we would be cruising up Hardangerfjord for a number of hours to get to Eidfjord. I think we heard that the pilot would be joining our ship at 1am to ensure that we made it safely up the long fjord. There was to be commentary on the trip in the Crow's Nest (deck 12, forward) and the bow area on deck 5 would be open for us to be outside from 7am onward. 

We decided to order room service and have it delivered at 6:45am so we'd be up and going. It actually arrived at 6:40am, and it did help us be ready to go more quickly.

We initially went to deck 5 to go out on the bow. It was cloudy and damp. You may be able to barely see a bridge crossing the fjord ahead of us. This road bridge is only about 1/2 meter (1.5') higher than the highest part of our ship; other larger cruise line ships can no longer go to Eidfjord.

Along the banks, we saw small communities, many growing some type of crops.

Our ship's travel guide, Gage, said that these communities may only have a few families, and whatever they grow is for the use of their community, not sold outside the community.

We headed up to deck 14 to be up as high as possible as we passed under the Hardangerbrua (Hardanger Bridge).

The bridge comes out of mountain tunnels on both sides, so building it required drilling the tunnels through the mountains, stopping high above the fjord, and then building the bridge out from the tunnels.

It looks like it made it over the navigation equipment in the front!

And it made it over the smokestacks in the back too! Whew!

Looking forward down the fjord

Another small community along the side

Eventually we came to Eidfjord at the end of the fjord.

We were told that the community had only 962 residents, so we would more than triple their population for the day!

From our veranda, we enjoyed watching the folks (local from the town) tying up our ship -- at the back, they got the line to the motorboat and the motorboat carried the line over to the folks on the land. You may also notice that there is a caravan park (RV park) just in the upper right corner of the picture. We saw a lot of caravans (mainly class B (vans)) in town as we visited.

In the front, they were able to get the lines over to folks who were near the cleats where it would be tied up.

The ship docked at about 10am, so we decided to eat on the ship before going in to town.

Using the online app, we could order burgers and fries from the "Dive-In" eating place near the pool -- and they were ready soon after we got there after walking from our room.

When we got off the ship, we didn't have any particular plans -- we saw a large piece of machine equipment in a square in town and went over to look... 

 

There was information about hydroelectric power in this area...

...and about the large metal object we had seen...

Carl in front of the Peloton runner

Our ship from town

We decided to walk up to see the old church -- along the way, we passed the newer church.

Eidfjord old church

The old church

Built around 1309!

There was a barrier that prevented us from going in to the church, but we took a picture. 

View of the church from behind and lower down as we walked back toward town.

As we got back near the pier, we saw a Thai food truck!

The food truck was in the parking lot of a grocery store. We went in to look around. The grocery had not only grocery items, but a small section of hardware, drug store items, and, I think, the post office. One stop shopping!

As we headed back to board, Carl thought that the "TuristInformasjon" sign was funny!

After dinner, we went back up to the Crow's Nest to watch our progress leaving the fjord -- it was still overcast, but beautiful.

We went to the late show (8:30pm) of Darius Uhl, cellist...

... he did a good show!

Back at our room, Carl out on the veranda, 9:26pm.

A waterfall coming down from the glacier (way up on top of the mountains)

We enjoyed our scenic journey in Hardangerfjord and visit to Eidfjord.

Monday - day 4 - Kristiansand, Norway - part 3

Two earlier posts about Kristiansand can be found here:  https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2026/07/monday-day-4-kristiansand-norway-part-1.html

and here: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2026/07/monday-day-4-kristiansand-norway-part-2.html

After we got back onboard, we decided to eat at the more casual Lido buffet. If we eat in the dining room, it takes about 2 hours to place our orders, be served, and eat, and then we end up missing the early show. We've skipped the shows a couple of nights, but thought we'd like to see this one...

It was a performance by Philippa Healey, who is a stage actress in London, having played Cosette (the adult version of the character) in Les Miserables in London. She was an amazing singer, humorous...

... and also is an amazing pianist.

Here's a video of part of her performance: https://youtu.be/7hs3MgxZdQU

We left the theater venue and went to one of the music venues where Mike Vitale was playing acoustic guitar. He had an interesting capability to lay down back-tracks for the song he was about to play, which made it sound like he had access to additional people playing percussion or other background music during the song -- but it was all performed right in front of us (not canned music).

We then walked across the hallway to another music venue where Steve and Gabriel were playing piano tunes.

We made our way upstairs to the Crows Nest Lounge and enjoyed watching the sun -- this was about 8:45pm.

We were heading about due west at this point.

Selfie in the Crow's Nest

It was quite a nice day in Kristiansand and on the ship!

Monday - day 4 - Kristiansand, Norway - part 2

Beginning of Kristiansand can be found here: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2026/07/monday-day-4-kristiansand-norway-part-1.html

We wanted to visit the Kristiansand cathedral...

Cathedral from plaza outside

Main entrance

It turns out they were having an organ recital at 11am, and we got there about 11:15am.

We were allowed in during a break in the music.

The organist provided information about each piece before she played it -- note that the organ is front and center -- it could be moved from the side (where it probably is during services) to the front of the church during the recital.

Here is a video: https://youtube.com/shorts/4vAlmDXhuYM

After the recital, she invited us up to look at the console and to ask questions.

Pipes up in the balcony at the back of the church

We noticed this interesting ship hanging from the bottom of the balcony...

Close up of the ship

We asked Google Lens about it and found out:

Interesting that it was recently restored to "ship shape"!

Tourist information was housed in this building across the plaza from the cathedral.

In the old town, there are houses that still look the same as they had in the past - white-painted frame houses...

... very pretty and clean looking.

There was a "Troll train" in town - kind of like a hop-on, hop-off bus!

We saw a McDonald's, 7-11, and this Burger King as we were walking around.

We've been seeing a number of seagulls (I've told Carl that they have followed him from Dover, story posted earlier). This one is saying, "Thanks for the help! It's tiring to clean up the city alone..."

As we left the ship, we had seen this shipping container repurposed into a photo op location...

Information about moose in Norway

As we were heading back to the ship, we were looking for where it was plugged in. Usually the ship keeps its own power generation going while in port, but this port requested that they plug in and not run the engines (or run only clean-burning fuel).

Since we have to plug in at campgrounds, we wanted to see the power cords -- there were 4 of them, and each of them was probably 4 times the diameter of our 50A cord.

Ah yes, high voltage indeed!

Getting back on board... last post for Kristiansand coming later!