Cruise ships? In Fredrikstad?!?

... Apparently!


8th of May edit: It seems that due to some mistake, instead of the eagerly awaited Astoria, we were visited by the Astor. Somewhat of an easy mistake to make, especially since the operator is the same, however it did result in considerable disappointment for me. I have sent an inquiry about the incorrect information in the list of visiting ships. 

The Astor in Fredrikstad.

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Those who read my previous blog back during its peak, may remember my annual summaries and "favourite picks" of incoming cruise ships, initially in just Tallinn, and later on I added Turku as well. As I may have mentioned a few posts ago, Tallinn generally bathes in cruise ships, which made living there a whole lot more bearable for me and which I admittedly took too much for granted. I have heard bits of information that Fredrikstad is on its way to become a cruise destination lately, but when I opened up the webpage of the local newspaper, mostly looking to see if the roller derby article I mentioned in my last post has been published yet, I found instead a nice article containing a list of ships for this year with a summary of future plans. Upon opening it, I got a full hit of the same old ship-excitement from back in the day - especially when I saw that the 2019 cruise season in Fredrikstad will be opened by none other than the Astoria!

The Astoria, back then still known as the Azores. I took this one during the World Gymnaestrada 2015 in Helsinki, where I was a volunteer, and my heightened interest in ships didn't go unnoticed among my team members. Funny enough, it was exactly then that one of them decided to ask "So, what's so special about this one?". Oh, nothing special, only the oldest serving cruise ship in the world. Not only that, but in her earlier days, as an ocean liner, she was involved in the collision that sunk the Andrea Doria. I wrote a fairly decent overview of her in my old blog back in 2013; since the last update there, she's been operated by CMV for a few years and seems to be going strong. 

May 2014, Azores departing from Tallinn. Her visit to Fredrikstad will be on the 8th of May,  from 7:00 to 20:00.

In addition to the Astoria, four more ships will call in Fredrikstad over the summer. While it's not quite enough to be "picking favourites", it is the first time ever that Fredrikstad gets a definable cruise season. It'll be great to grab a camera and go spotting again, especially as Fredrikstad, much unlike Turku or even Tallinn, consists almost entirely of excellent photo spots to capture ships at any stage of their visit, but it quite certainly won't be keeping me as busy as back in Tallinn because most of the cruise ship calls are more than a month apart and there's no regular ferry traffic here either, unless you want to count the cute little river ferries that are a part of the public transportation system, or the Sagasund that does daycruises to Strömstad.

The 2nd ship to visit will be the Amadea, that will be in Fredrikstad on the 10th of June from 10:00 to 18:00. Here she is in Storfjord in 2015, as captured by Sverre Andreas Rud. 

And after that, on the 12th of July, we will be visited by the Deutschland, that will  stay between 8:00 and 17:00. Photo taken in Stokmarknes in 2016, by Sverre Andreas Rud.

The last two ships to visit will be the Spirit of Discovery on the 30th of August from 8:00 to 17:00 and the Seabourn Ovation on 4th of September, from 8:00 to 17:00. Neither me nor Sverre had any photos of those two - which is no wonder, considering the Spirit of Discovery hasn't even been delivered yet, and the Seabourn Ovation has also been around for less than a year. At least, if all goes well, I'll have my own photos of all of the mentioned ships by the end of this cruise season. And better yet, the same linked article reports that AIDA is eyeing Fredrikstad as a destination for 2020, which would quite certainly mean a significant further growth, so there is plenty to look forward to on that front.

And as "bonus footage", enjoy this photo I took on the 4th of October 2018. On the foreground, you see two of the aforementioned "cute little river ferries". The one to the left, Go'vakker Vivi II, is one of several ferries serving the long route with multiple stops along the Vesterelva; she was delivered in 2000. The one to the right, Go'vakker Thora, serves as a shuttle just across the main Glomma river. Delivered in 2013, she belongs to the newest generation of Fredrikstad river ferries. However, the main reason this photo came to be is the third ship in the photo - Nordstjernen, a former Hurtigruten ship, visiting Fredrikstad as a part of a cruise she was doing.