We did enjoy our cruise, but we only had a slight glimmer of the Northern Lights on one evening & the cruise had to be curtailed because of exceptionally stormy weather, and a technical issue with the ship. Norway had floods, roads blocked by snow and truly difficult conditions to contend with. We were also unable to dock at some ports, because of the weather. The excursion to the North Cape had to be cancelled (snow blocked the roads), so there were a lot of disappointed customers on board. The perils of going on a January cruise I think!! To be fair to Hurtigruten they did organise refunds to compensate us for the days we missed, even though the weather was hardly their fault.

However I really wanted to warn possible customers about the following: The provision of decaffeinated coffee and decaffeinated tea is the the worst I have ever come across at sea. My husband & I had paid for a free coffee tea package but it was a complete waste of money. Fortunately, because under no circumstances can we drink caffeinated drinks (or instant coffee, which was what they thought was acceptable), we always travel with a back up supply. And this, our own tea & coffee, is what we had to use on the ship. Bizarrely, there was proper ground coffee machine in the cafe, but it didn't have any decaf ground coffee, so that was ridiculous.

The only place where we found acceptable coffee was in our mini suite, to which we upgraded whilst on board. There we had a Nespresso machine & the cabin staff were excellent at making sure we had the decaffeinated pods we needed for the machine. Read more