Polarlys Review

7 Nights of the Northern Lights

Review for Norwegian Fjords Cruise on Polarlys
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SteveH2
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Mar 2018

We choose this cruise primarily to see the Northern Lights. In that respect we were very lucky as the lights appeared on 7 of the 12 nights aboard. We elected to take the round trip which entailed sailing North from Bergen for 6 nights and then the same route back (albeit the time at which we called into the ports on the Southerly return journeyt differed from the outbound journey and therefore gave an opportunity to visit different places in each direction. Our main reason for doing the round trip was to maximise our chance of seeing the Northern Lights. As it turned out we saw the lights on 5 occasions on the Northerly trip but only 2 times on the return but this was probably because we encountered more cloudy conditions on the South bound journey. Apart from the sheer wonder of the Northern Lights the beauty of the Norwegian coastline and the comfort of the ship Polarlys was an added bonus !

We travelled from London via a Hurtigruten charter (operated by Germania). The flights were fairly standard charter airline stuff but being a Hurtigruen charter made it a very seamless embarkation and disembarkation process. Hurtigruten staff met us all at Bergen. all we had to do was collect our baggage at the airport, put it into a Hurtigruten coach and then it was carried onto the ship and put into our cabin. The same seamless process happened on the return and really made the whole process easy and comfortable.

We choose to book a suite because of recommendations from friends and reviews elsewhere and we were very happy with our choice. We also booked a wine package which included a bottle of wine and water each night and unlimited tea and instant coffee (in the coffee shops) during the day (you could also take the wine away to drink in your cabin if you didn't want to finish it during the meal). Be warned, most things, and especially alcohol, are expensive in Norway - a Starbucks coffee is 95 Kroner and a glass of wine is 135-150 Kroner a glass. The prices on or off the ship are much the same. Norway is a very rich country and people are well paid (even in jobs that in other countries are generally lowly paid) but the flip-side is that prices are high for most things and therefore Norwegians probably have a somewhat lower purchasing power than elsewhere.

Cabin Review

Cabin Suite

Cabin was very comfortable and (for a ship) very quiet. The bed was very comfotable.

The en-suite shower was small but perfectly adequate. We had a small seating area and tea and coffee making facilities. There was plenty of storage space and hanging space was adequate. There was a walkway alongside our (fairly) large cabin window but most people used it to simply walk to and from the viewing platforms on the bow and stern and although we would have preferred a cabin on level 6 (which on this ship had no walkway) we actually had no problem with this either from a noise or privacy perspective.

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