Cruising in general is a low stress and (relatively) high reward experience, though I find more active vacations more rewarding if riskier. Be that as it may I’ve gone on 20+ cruises over 35 years including cruises on Oceania, Holland America, Crystal and Viking in the past two years. This was my first Viking cruise and Viking’s first winter cruise to Norway..

The lure of the Northern Lights was strong; I not only booked the cruise but also 3 northern Light excursions; on the other hand I failed to read up on the requisite camera I should bring and left my Digital Nikon at home, relying on my Apple 8. On board I read that i world NEVER get a viable picture with that. Oh well.

We tend to get up early and go to sleep early on cruises; on our night at Tromso I woke at 11:45 pm and based on a feeling we out on deck 7. A few others wee out there setting up, we got a pretty nice light show for about 5-10 minutes, with visible green light bands including some whirling ones. Despite the experts I got some nice pics. The 3 tours were a bust and many passengers including my wife never saw the aurora borealis; despite some weather science it’s largely luck of the draw. Read more