Since I visited Iceland in the 80's on business I had always harboured a desire to return there with my wife and this cruise offered that opportunity. It also included some other amazing ports of call that would be new to us such as The Orkneys and the Shetlands. These ports of call subsequently lived up to all expectations and were the highlight of an otherwise bad ship experience for us. In fact, the on board experience overshadowed all the good parts of the cruise and led me to write a lengthy letter of complaint to Norwegian. Their response was to focus on the subjective elements of my complaint but not to refer at all to the core issues that spoiled the cruise for us .I had no intention of writing this review until I read one by Chris Worth who had an identical experience to ours on the same ship but a month later on a British Isles cruise. But more of that later.

Embarkation was neither good nor bad - it was similar to the experience on many other cruises that we have taken with other companies. Disembarkation, similarly, was neither good nor bad.

The ship itself is beautiful with many very nice features and was certainly comfortable when you could get a seat. The location of the main dining room, whilst very pleasant with rear facing sea views, was strange to get to until you got used to the layout. Read more