Oslo; Tuesday, 28 May, 2024

We had a late breakfast in the hotel before heading down to Aker Brygge to have a wander around the area, including the newer Tjuvholmen area stopping for coffee on the waters edge to watch the morning arrivals of both the Color Line and DFDS ferries from Kiel and Copenhagen respectively.

Coffee finished we headed back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, checked out and caught the bus down to the DFDS terminal to check-in for the next leg of our journey.

Unlike on the Color Line from Kiel where boarding only starts an hour before departure, here the terminal allowed boarding 2 ½ hours before departure which meant there wasn’t a mad rush of people, making for a much smoother journey through the terminal and up onto the ship.

Pricing on the DFDS ferry was a little weird with the difference between an small bed in an inside cabin and a large Commodore DeLuxe suite being less than £100 for the night, so we’d gone for the top tier cabins as they came with Wi-Fi (£30), free breakfast (£20), a free minibar with sparking wine and water (£10) and access to the private Commodore lounge with unlimited free food and drink (well over £50 based on the ships prices). So not only did we save money we were also able to take advantage of the private deck area in the Commodore lounge and enjoy the journey back down the Oslo Fjord enjoying drinks and snacks on comfy seats – right up until the skies came over really dark and the first drops of rain started falling, thankfully, at just the point our dinner reservation was coming due.

After dinner, and with the rain passed we sat out on the Commodore lounge deck for a bit longer before mum turned in for the night. I spent a little longer out on deck, staying until the ship slipped out of the end of the Oslo Fjord and into the open waters of the Skagerrak the body of water forming the junction between Norway, Sweden and Denmark and the boundary between the Baltic and the North Seas.

Having taken a few photos, and with the temperatures dropping quickly with the increased wind now the ferry no longer had to comply with the speed restrictions in the fjord, I headed back inside and to bed myself.