We were in Alesund on a Sunday when a fair few places were closed, but you could still get a cinnabun and a lovely coffee overlooking the water. We did the Outer Islands tour which also went to Mount Alska which wasn't in the published itinerary - this was a lovely surprise and the pictures look brilliant.

The port time was shortened twice for us unfortunately - once before sailing changing the all aboard time from 5.30pm to 3.30pm, and once on the day where we were an hour late into port due to the length of time it took to go through the locks to the city. This meant three hours less than expected in port and anybody visiting would have had a whistle stop visit - thankfully we had no tours booked and had been before so we knew where we were going, but if its your first time you definitely wouldn't have had the best experience. No beef with the actual city though - we love it!

We chose the tour to Medieval Ghent and this was superb. Beautiful city, small enough to walk around and be charming all in one, with plenty of different places to buy souvenirs made locally. An hour and a half of free time on top of the tour meant we could fully appreciate the city centre, get everything we wanted and have a local beer and snack before going back. 10/10 well worth every penny, and would travel back to Ghent on another holiday.

One of us had a RIB Boat tour and the other had a Kayaking tour - unfortunately due to the foul weather, the Kayaking was cancelled but the rib went out anyway. Despite a minor stress about the cancelled tour, I was pleasantly surprised to find a hop-on-hop-off bus that takes you to a gorgeous viewpoint high above the town, and drops you also at the Fjord Center from where you can walk down a Waterfall Track following the route of the waterfall through the town. This was everything I needed from a day that could have been a complete washout both weather and tour wise, and in good weather this will be one of the most stunning places you will ever see. The RIB boat tour was a great laugh and you do go up close to the famous waterfalls in the fjord, so to have one member of the party go up the mountain and one stay on the fjord meant we got the best of both worlds.

We chose to go on the Historic Rouen tour as any tours to Paris needed 3 hour journeys each way and this was only an hour by comparison. The city itself is beautiful but this tour is far far too short at 5 hours - 2 of which are travelling, and we lost time due to the horrendous traffic in the port of Le Havre before we even really got started. After we did the walking tour, you only had 20 mins of free time which we used picking up a local souvenir and a takeaway coffee and madeleine. The guide was all too aware of this and said they would go back to the hosting company to recommend it's increased to at least 7 hours, which I think would give people a much better time to explore the lovely city.

We had no tours booked here as we couldn't make our minds up, but we needn't have worried - the hop-on-hop-off bus teams outside the cruise terminal are all over it and the agenda is jam packed. You go almost everywhere in the town including the lovely peninsular with the Kon Tiki museum on it, and given it runs so frequently you needn't be worried about jumping off for a bit. You do miss the ski jump up above the town, but Oslo is a gorgeous city and spending time in it instead of out of it is time well spent.