Cruising the fjords of Norway, round trip from Harwich, Essex, UK, May 2015

One more off the bucket list - this time the fjords of Norway. A two week cruise on Holland America's Ryndam , with time on both ends to see a bit of England. That was 5 days in Colchester and 2 days in the Harwich area before the cruise, then 3 days in London after the cruise. The cruise port was Harwich, so we decided to spend a couple of days in the area before embarking, mostly to make it easy to get to the ship on embarkation day. The choice of Colchester was mostly due to it being on the rail line between London and Harwich.

If you click on the link above to the cruise port description (before Aug 2015) you will get all the detail you can stand on the cruise ports and activities. Since the Ryndam is due to be sold off to a sister cruise line in Oct 2015, that link is a transient one.

We learned that a "coach" is a long distance bus, and that there is one that will pick you up at Heathrow airport and deliver you to the center of Colchester, within walking distance from the hotel in Colchester. Much better solution than 2 tube rides to the Liverpool train station and a train to Colchester. Given that success, we looked into a "bus" (local bus) from Colchester to the hotel in Dovercourt. Found that it would pick us up at a bus stop on the street in front of the Red Lion and drop us right in front of the Tower Hotel. Much easier than multiple train rides, especially since we learned from another couple coming into Harwich by train that switching trains involved lugging suitcases up and over to another track with very little time allowed.

Weather on the trip was pretty nice in England, but more cloudy than we would have liked in the ports in Norway. Photographs had less blue for sky, but at least we got to test out some of our rain gear.



Rod's Best Meal Of The Trip was at Melur , a Malaysian and Indonesian restaurant. Down in the basement at the corner of Edgeware Road and Sussex Gardens, its web site was far more modern than the location. Fortunately for Rod, the food was really good, with a bit of spice missing from the standard cruise line fare. That's not to say the HollandAmerica food was generally bad, especially when a bit of Sambal was provided on the side. However, it was Rod's opinion that they must have saved the good Italian dishes for the onboard restaurant with an extra charge, if his two pasta dishes in the service dining area were any indication.



Display of this set of photos takes advantage of the Google+ Web Albums. The mechanisms are more robust there to display the pictures in your browser in different ways. Default is "Highlights" (fewer photos, random order), use the "All photos" button (all photos, chronological order) to see all the photos in the album. Use the little "v" button to the right if you want a slideshow.


Click here for the best of the pictures from England and Norway in rough chronological order




Last updated: 01/31/19