After a train ride to Southampton we started the next stage of our adventure, a 12 day cruise around Norway. We boarded the ship and met up with our regular travel buddies, Ed and Shelly!
It was so nice to get to our room and completely unpack after almost 5 weeks of living out of a suitcase.
After a late night catchup with our friends and an overnight sail, we docked at Bruges (actually Zeebrugge 25min away).
We went into town to join a walking and canal tour, but after half an hour of waiting we were notified that our guide was a no show and the tour was cancelled. So we were literally stuck in fookin Bruges (love that movie!)
I quickly did some research and became our tour guide for the day. Wow, what a beautiful town. So pretty, the buildings and architecture are so ornate and very unique when compared to other old towns.
In the main square we found the site I was most keen to visit, the clock tower which was the centre of the action in the movie In Bruges.
After exploring the town centre for a while we started to make our way towards the canals where we were able to join a canal boat tour. Very pretty. Many of the houses over hung the canal, we were told this is where the toilet was placed.
After the tour we had a final explore before heading back to the ship.
From Bruge we set sail for Norway, it was a 2 day sail before we reached our first stop Flam, tucked away in the spectacular Aurlands Fjord.
We joined a tour and were first taken by bus to a viewpoint overlooking the vast fjords. Spectacular, so beautiful. Along the way we saw many people camping and were very jealous, it would be a wonderful place to tour with a camper.
We were then taken back to water level to join a boat tour back into Flam. While waiting for our boat I tested the water, it was freezing, and they had a nice little Sauna right next to the waters edge. Maybe next time….
On the boat we got to experience the full array of local weather, so there was a lot of going in and outside but we were grateful they had an inside area to seek refuge.
We finished our visit with a quick walk around the town and souvenir shopping.
It was a great start to our Norway tour and we felt very lucky to have the opportunity as the area is now UNESCO world heritage listed and they are going to stop cruise ships coming in from 2026.