We had an uneventful flight from Heathrow to Stavanger's Sola airport aboard a Scandinavian Airlines Boeing 737-700. It was a very dull, overcast day in Stavanger and we guessed that Bergen, a mere twenty five minutes flying time north, would probably be similar, which was slightly disappointing. Because there was no free food or drink provided on the plane (and we weren't that hungry anyway) we decided to buy a bottle of water at Sola airport, which cost an arm and a leg! Our plane on to Bergen was a smaller Boeing 737-400 (see below).

Bergen looked enticing from the air as we approached, and yes, it was grey as predicted, but we chose instead to imagine it as it might be in the sunshine!

After collecting our luggage, we were escorted to our coach (one of three coaches provided for passengers joining the ship)

We managed to get a few (blurry) pictures of Bergen as we were whisked quickly through. Pity we couldn't have spent some time here.

Our first glimpse of the Island Sky... no, not the one on the left, which we later heard was owned by one person - note the helicopter!

We were greeted warmly by the ship's staff and our cruise director, Jannie Cloete. We soon discovered that he wasn't the only South African helping to manage the ship! Once aboard, we were invited to help ourselves to the welcome buffet while our luggage was being taken to our cabin. We were quite peckish, but didn't want to eat too much, because dinner wasn't that far off.

We quickly explored the ship and got a few photos of Bergen while we could.

A mere forty five minutes after embarking, the gangplank was being taken up and we were off (at 7.00pm). No fanfare, no marching bands, no ribbons, in fact we almost missed the big event!

This is the actual route taken by the shio as we sailed overnight towards Lillesand, as logged by www.marinetraffic.com