Visiting Alesund and Molde on our Norwegian Cruise

Aerial View of Alesund, Norway..

We arrived in Maloy at 06:45 and in the darkness of winter I didn’t think that anyone was energetic enough to get up to step on shore.  By 07:30 we set sail again for our first stretch of open sea, the Stadthavet. A two-hour crossing took us to Torvik for another quick half hour stop.  It was pitch dark, so there’s nothing to see.

Alesund

12:00 – We docked in the centre of Alesund, a town known for its beautiful and characteristic art nouveau architecture.  See our post on Alesund.

Alesund was a three hour stop and there was an organized city walk at 12:45.  I stayed with Barbara while Tony went off to take shots of this beautiful town.  Climbing to the top of Mount Aksla, he captured the fantastic views of the town.  The climb up was 418 steps, but according to Tony, the views make it really worthwhile.

Our Hurtigruten cruise left Alesund at 15:00 and it was starting to get dark again.

Molde

17:40 – The Richard With docked in the centre of Molde, a town famous for its annual jazz festival and summer rose blooms.  From the ship you could see the Thon Hotel and at the top end of the hotel was the main street of Molde.  We had 45 minutes to explore this town so we walked along the main street to the town square and back.  All the shop windows were beautifully decorated with Christmas lights, tinsels, candles and floral arrangements, making window-shopping a pleasure.  We left Molde at 18:30.

19:30 – On port side, we saw the bright lights of the enormous ‘Ormen Lange’ gas installation.  Ormen Lange was the second-largest gas discovery on the Norwegian shelf.  From here we entered the open waters of Hustadvika, a crossing which took about two hours.

22:00 – The Richard With called into Kristiansund and stopped here for an hour.  You could walk along the pier to the left, but by this time most of us were ready to retire after a full day of cruising.