Thursday 2nd October, 2025 – Tromsø to Narvik

The day started well enough with another glorious sunrise over the Norwegian Sea. We’d apparently left Tromsø bang on time at 02:00 and were well on our way towards Narvik by the time I’d finished my morning run, and had room service breakfast. Today I was going to have a massage and Lynne was getting a full manicure and pedicure, and we also had a photo session booked in the afternoon, as well as speciality dining in the Japanese restaurant, Aji Wa where we were due to have their omakase tasting menu.

My massage was booked at 9:15 so after breakfast it was into one of the lovely Cunard towelling robes and down to Deck 1 and the spa, which is huge. I had booked a deep tissue muscle massage, which “vigorously alleviates sore areas by stimulating blood flow. Prolonged muscle tension is dissolved, helping to release stress, replacing it with a soothing sense of balance.” The lovely therapist proved very effective and somewhere around 40 minutes into the 50 minute session, Zami had talked me into booking another session of 75 minutes (at the same price as the 50 minute session). She must have been even better at her job than I thought!

From there I scooted back to the room to shower, washing off an awful lot of massage oil in the process. I think I might have spent the day sliding everywhere otherwise! From there we headed to the theatre to listen to a couple of the Cunard Insight talks, starting with Shena Lewington on “What have the Vikings ever done for Us?” which was highly entertaining. It was followed by Matthew Towler talking about fake news and why it is so insidious. This was less entertaining and more enraging, even though many of the instances he discussed were not news to me. The worry was that a lot of the audience did seem surprised by them… It was now lunchtime and we were beginning to run into some pretty rough weather.

Post lunch we went to the Photography Centre to meet Arthur for our pre-arranged photo session. Normally, these include a lot of stops outside, but given the weather this did not seem like a smart idea! When Arthur said we would be staying inside, we agreed with alacrity. He did persuade us outside for a brief few shots in what is normally a pretty sheltered area. I would not have wanted to be in any of the less-sheltered areas is all I can say.

Going back inside seemed like a very good idea! We stopped off in a variety of places including the Queen’s Room, the Commodore bar, and the Library as well as one of the lift lobbies and spent a fun hour posing and breaking out into silliness on a regular basis. It was a lot of fun and I can heartily recommend it, especially as you don’t have to buy any of the resulting photos if you don’t like them.

Later we met up with J and J for pre-dinner drinks, and watched the waves pounding the windows in the Chart Room. It was getting ever more difficult to walk in a straight line on board, although the motion was not an issue in any other way. No one felt seasick, just unable to walk straight ahead. It was no surprise to note that the Promenade Deck was now closed. Just as well I’d got my run in early on.

We drank our cocktails and watched the gloom outside.

We then separated as J and J headed off to the normal dining room and Lynne and I made our way to Aji Wa. In some ways this proved to be quite a disappointing experience, though not because of the food. When we arrived ay 8pm there were only a couple of tables still occupied, and they soon emptied out.

As a result we were whisked through the tasting menu at far too great a pace for my liking, and before we’d finished (less than 90 minutes after we got there) the staff were clearing up and it felt like they couldn’t get us out of there fast enough. Whether that was due to the bad weather, or it’s normal practice, I can’t say. Whatever the cause, I didn’t much care for it. Maybe we should have asked them to go slow, but it wasn’t an issued we’d had in any of the other restaurants so perhaps we were just unlucky. Who knows? The food, thankfully, was really very good. After a very pretty amuse bouche we were ready to go.

We started with a roasted kabocha pumpkin croquette, with tonkatsu and chestnut miso; a dashi with a stuffed shitake mushroom, prawn shinjo and plum-flavoured somen noodles; and yellowtail tuna tartare with yuzu kosho. All of these were very good, well-executed and full of flavour.

We had a choice for the next course, and so we ordered one each of the two options and swapped halfway through. I would not normally order chicken, but the chicken karaage with pickled carrots, lemon and salt had to be tried. It was gloriously crunchy and did not disappoint, unlike many a chicken dish. The alternative was Autumn vegetable tempura, with tentsuyu sauce, and shischimi which included some obvious choices (courgette for example) and some less obvious ones (lotus root).

The “main” course was equally good and from the three choices we went for the black cod with butter lettuce, miso and hajikame and the grilled wagyu beef with garlic crisps, onion and sesame. These were accompanied by Japanese steamed rice, and soba noodles with tonkatsu sauce. The beef was meltingly soft, and the cod cooked just right. The rice was rice, not a lot you can really say about rice, but the noodles were fantastic. I could have happily eaten a bowl of those all on their own!

The final dish of the evening was a fabulous sticky sweet akashi-tai shiraume ginjo umesho and hatozaki whisky baba with a kaki, apricot and honey compote, and a toasted brown rice ice cream which was texturally very interesting as well as delicious.

We opted not to have the matcha green tea even though it was included, partly because we felt as if we’d outstayed our welcome by then, and partly because the ship was lurching quite violently now and we figured we’d be safer back in our room, especially as we were due into port in the morning and would want to be ready to walk. Would I go to Aji Wa again? Possibly, but with a couple of provisos. I would book in earlier than 8pm, and I would state upfront that we wanted to take our time.