Fjord cruise - advice
 

In June this year, my wife wishes to take her mum on a Fjord cruise in Norway.

HEr mum has wanted to do this all her life and now her husband died a few years back my wife is keen to make her wish come through.

It would be a week long and in mid-June. Thay are both (my wife and my mum in law) both quite active and it might be good to have a mix of cruise and other modes of transport..

ANy tips of good cruise companies and routes? Particularly smaller cruise ships?

ttt

A couple of years ago in June, we had a wonderful one week cruise of the fjords combined with another week in the Baltic on the Marco Polo of Orient Lines. It's a smaller ship (about 800 passengers) but quite nice.

You might look at cruisecritic.com for other cruise lines which do this trip. I believe Celbrity, Princess, Cunard and Holland America all have ships on this route.

Norwegian Coastal Line does cruises or rather it is a passenger line that serves the coast of Norway from Bergen to Lappland. You can get on any place along the route. It has nice cabins for overnight accommodations. If you take the whole route, one way, the "cruise" lasts for about 5/6 days. There were people on board that were going up and back for 12 days time. There are several sidetrips to land that are offered as well as one can disembark at each port of call for a short time.

Norwegian Coastal Lines has a website, I believe. It was a relaxing and beautiful way to see the coast of Norway. We did the cruise at the end of May last year and there was still snow on the mountains on the upper part of the trip.

The Norwegian Coastal Voyage (Hurtigruten) company OVDS have MS Lofoten which is one of the traditional Coastal Voyage ships no longer on that route. It now does some summer one-way trips between Bergen and Bodø.

But this is not a cruise ship.

The Norwegian Coastal Voyage is a combination cargo/passenger line that has new ships, several of them, that really is like a cruise ship but better in my opinion. The ships hold 650 passengers so is smaller than a "cruise ship" and can get into the many small harbors of the coastal towns. It goes from Bergen to Kirkenes, on Norway's border with Russia. It has passengers that take the whole 12 day trip up and back or just one way or between one town or another. There are some activities and optional sidetrips, but no evening entertainment or gambling casino. It has wonderful food, a small pool, panoramic lounges and even, I notice from their website, escorted tours. I would definitely check out their website for further info.

This same company does trips to the Antarctia in the winter (the northern winter). We took the one way tour from Kirkenes to Bergen, then took the Nutshell tour by train to Oslo.