First day aboard MS Midnatsol on the Hurtigruten Svalbard Line

We got to the terminal at 10:30 in the morning, and it took about 45 minutes to get through check in, and then there was coffee and pastries and a wait for our turn at the safety briefing video, which is not the glamorous part of a cruise but it is the part everybody wants to know about, so there it is. Nothing about it was stressful. We had time, and having time is the whole reason I tell people to fly in early. The anticipation in that check in line was real. You could feel it in the way people were standing, all of us holding passports and looking toward the same door. The second we stepped on board we started exploring. In and out of every lounge, finding Flora, which is the main dining room, walking the decks until we had already picked our favorite corners before the ship had even moved. My husband and I do this everywhere we go, and I think it is because we both want to know the shape of a place before we can relax in it. We grabbed lunch and did what we always do, which is watch people. Everybody else was doing the exact same thing we were, wandering, figuring out where things were, carrying that excited nervous energy you only get on a first day. Here is what I noticed, because it is the thing clients ask me most and it is the thing no website will tell you honestly. The passenger mix was a lot of nationalities, and it skewed older and retired, with a few multi generation family groups, a handful of solo travelers, and some serious hiker types who clearly came for the landing sites. But most people were there for the scenery and the culture, not to conquer anything. If you have been picturing a boat full of expedition athletes making you feel underprepared, that is not this sailing. We pulled away from Bergen at 2:30 in the afternoon. Sail away party on the observation deck, glass of bubbly, wind going straight through my hair, and a bright sunny Bergen sliding backward behind us. I had spent three days in that city, I had gotten a tattoo inside a UNESCO World Heritage site there, and I still stood at that rail watching it go with absolutely no idea what we were actually starting. Our cabin was on deck 7, an Arctic Superior. The room is smaller than what you would get on a big mainstream ship, and I want to be honest about that, but it worked, because you are not in the room very much. There is a little sitting desk, a big round window right behind the bed, and a bathroom with more space than I expected. If a client asked me whether to spend up for something larger, I would tell them to think hard about how much time they actually plan to sit inside while Norway is going by outside the window. Dinner that first night was at Árran, the Sámi inspired restaurant on board. Árran is the northern Sámi word for the fire at the center of a lávvu, the traditional dwelling, and it is the place where people gather to tell stories, which is a lot of intention to put into naming a restaurant and I liked that they did it. We started with beef tartare and reindeer marrow on bread, and then reindeer filet and a pepper steak sirloin with poached pear, and vanilla ice cream and a smoked cheesecake to finish, and we drank red wine and a Spitsbergen stout. The reindeer was the point. It kept showing up, prepared different ways, and it is the flavor I associate with that whole first night now. Then the sunset happened, and we took something like 500 photos of it, which I am not going to apologize for. If you are looking at this sailing, the practical thing I would tell you is that the day you board is not a day you want to also be recovering from a flight. We arrived in Bergen three nights early, which meant that by 10:30 that morning we were rested, we had already seen the city, and the only thing left to do was be excited. That is the difference between arriving and actually starting. I am writing these as we go, though the further north we get the less reliable the signal becomes, so some of these will show up late and out of order. I would rather post them properly than rush them onto a bad connection. There is a full page here about the Svalbard Line itinerary if you want the route, the ports, and what the sailing actually includes, and the rest of the days will land as they land.