Costa Favalosa

 This was our Costa cruise experience, and frankly we found it a bit disappointing. While I wouldn't exactly say that we are experts at the cruise ship thing (this was my sixth cruise and my wife's eighth), we have enough prior experience to have developed certain expectations. And in a couple a significant ways, Costa fell a bit short of what we have come to expect.

Our biggest disappointment was with the food. We ate dinner in our main dining room each night, with wonderful tablemates. While the food was okay, that's really all it was.  I don't expect great food on the buffet, but I have come to expect that the dinner offerings in the sit down restaurants to be somewhat more memorable. That really wasn't the case here.  Not that it was bad, but it seemed entirely pedestrian. In addition, the breakfast service in the restaurant really wasn't significantly better than the buffet, and we heard that the lunch service left much to be desired as well (we never ate lunch in the restaurant).

Beyond the underwhelming quality of the food, we found the availability of food to be lacking as well. To the best of my recollection, every other ship I've been on has had some form of food available pretty much all day, at least until midnight. That wasn't really the case on the Favalosa, where the the buffet closed at 9:00 pm. Our dinner was during the early seating (which was fine, since we normally eat early), but after the evening show the first night, I was in the mood for a light snack before bedtime, and wa disappointed to find the buffet already closed. There were places on the ship where food was available later than 9:00 pm, but they all required payment of additional fees.

They also didn't have many options beside the buffet.  Most of the other ships I've been on have a deli/sandwich station and a pizza station where you can get made to order sandwiches or fresh pizza. The Favolosa had these as well, but they were charging an extra fee. I still can't really wrap my mind around having to pay extra for pizza on an Italian owned ship!

We weren't alone in feeling that the food quality and availability was lacking. Our tablemates at dinner also expressed similar sentiments, as did a few others we met on the cruise. Admittedly, our sample size is small and biased towards English speakers, but it reassures me that we weren't the only ones to note these issues.

Finally, we found that language was a little bit of an issue for us.  We knew that this was an Italian ship, and that we, as Americans, were likely to be a minority on the ship. That really didn't bother us. It was actually kind of fun to listen to all the languages around us, and to watch the ships staff interact in multiple languages.  However, it was disappointing to have two of our shore excursions cancelled because not enough people signed up for them in English.  Since most of our other tours were bilingual, we assume that this meant that the tour didn't have enough English requests for an English only tour, and that there wasn't a bilingual guide available for that particular itinerary. We did book a different tour for Kristiansand, but our choice was extremely limited, so when our tour for Aarhus was canceled and there was only one other choice available, we decided just to explore the city on our own. That worked out fine, but still, it was disappointing to spend the time researching and booking excursions only to have them cancelled once we were aboard the ship.

Based on this experience, I think we will be reluctant to book a Costa cruise again, unless the itinerary is one we really want to do and it isn't available from another company. I don't regret this cruise, since it took us to some spectacular places and we saw amazing things, but the ship itself left us feeling a bit disappointed, and we'll be looking for a better overall experience on our next cruise.

Hellesylt and Geiranger (05 June)

 After our day at sea, our first destination was the Geiranger fjord, one of the longest fjords in Norway. We entered the fjord sometime during the night, and by the time we woke, we were tied to the pier in the tiny village of Hellesylt (2013 population - 253). This was as far north as I had ever been (62° North latitude), and it was a chilly morning compared to this time of year at home. The ship was only staying here for about an hour to disembark passengers who had booked tours from here and would be leaving at 9:00 am to sail the rest of the way to the only slightly larger village of Geiranger at the end of the fjord.



After a short stop to take photos from the bridge in front of the waterfall, our bus started up into the mountains on a one lane road, passing farms on both sides as the mountains loomed above us.  Tiny streams of water fell from the mountaintops all along the way, and everything was lushly green. When the pavement ended, our bus stopped and we continued on foot, beginning a 10km (6 mile) hike over the mountain pass to the village of Flo, on the shores of the glacial lake Oppstrynsvatnet. The climb up to the pass was gradual and did not require any strenuous effort, so we would enjoy to gorgeous scenery around us.  We followed the shores of three smaller lakes and the streams that connected them, gawking at all of the waterfalls, both small and large, that dropped from the mountain peaks around us. The air was crisp and clean, and the sun even came out for portions of the walk, warming us as we made our way. Eventually, on the shores of the third lake, we came to a collection of summer homes, accessible from the valley below by a steep gravel track that certainly required four wheel drive to ascend. The descent down this track was probably the hardest part of our hike, as it was much steeper than our climb, and the loose gravel kept slipping beneath our feet.



When we reached Flo, our bus was waiting for us, having driven back to Hellesylt and taken a longer route around the mountains to get there. After boarding the bus, we drove around the end of Oppstrynsvatnet to the opposite shore, where we were scheduled to stop for lunch at the Heille Hotel. The dining room had a lovely view of the lake for us to enjoy while we ate a lunch of homemade mushroom soup, fresh salmon with potatoes and vegetables, and a dessert of ice cream and berries, all washed down with a non-alcoholic Norwegian beer. After lunch, we had just a few minutes to get some photos of the lake and mountains before continuing our journey.



We quickly left the valley behind, climbing high into the mountains, passing through two long tunnels. As we exited the second tunnel, it was like we had driven back into winter.  The mountains were entirely snow covered, and the lakes we drove alongside were still frozen over. There was one tall, wide slope with ski tracks on it, even though there was no lift or formal ski area.  Looking closely, we could just make out half a dozen skiers working their way down the slope after having climbed up earlier in the morning. 

Our final stop before arriving in Geiranger was the scenic viewpoint at the top of Dalsnibba, the tall mountain peak at the end of the valley that holds the Geiranger fjord. Access to this mountain top is via a private toll road built and maintained by the residents of Geiranger. This steep switchback road was lined with tall snowbanks, often taller than our bus. From the top of the mountain, we were treated to panoramic vistas of the surrounding mountains and the fjord, far below, with our ship (and others) anchored, waiting for our return.



From here, we began our descent, squeezing our way past the ascending traffic on the narrow road. Eventually we arrived in Geiranger, where we browsed the gift shops briefly before catching the tender boat back to our ship, arriving back aboard shortly before our scheduled dinner time.  As we ate dinner, we watched the mountains slide past on either side of the ship as we sailed back down the fjord towards the Norwegian Sea.  After dinner, we spent a little time out on deck, enjoying the scenery, at least until it got too chilly.  Eventually, we went back inside to enjoy the evening's show, and as we prepared for bed that night, we got to watch as we exited the fjord and turned south for Bergen, our destination for the next day.