For the first few hours, I headed to the top-floor observatory restaurant, admiring the panoramic vistas while casually tapping away on my laptop alongside lunch. By early evening, I was getting ready in my junior suite cabin – characterised by a large bed, seating area and mosaic-tiled bathroom – for dinner at Oceanic à la Carte, a dramatic, vintage-style restaurant with golden balconies, white tablecloths and chandeliers. More than one friend made a Rose Dawson à la The Titanic joke – which I’m totally here for.
Drinks in the richly-hued Manhattan Bar were followed by the on-board show, where dancers and singers wow the crowd with circus acts and operatic performances. Come evening, movers and shakers can head to the club floor, but I opted for an early night, instead waking up to watch sunrise from my porthole and back to the observatory deck for a delicious buffet of Norwegian delicacies before docking in Oslo that morning.
Technically, you could fly straight from Oslo to Bodø, a regional town where you catch the ferry over to the Lofoten Islands, but the timings didn’t work out for me, and as it turns out, it only added to my experience. I spent a day wandering the beautiful streets of the Norwegian capital, treating myself to brunch at trendy Kafeteria August and a night at the Christiania Teater Hotel.
Back to those timings: an unmercilessly early start saw me up at 4.30am and off to Oslo airport, ready for the hour-and-a-half flight to Bodø. Then onto the ferry to Moskenes. There’s often only one crossing a day and I waited six hours until finally, by 11pm, I arrived at Moskenes port, I was met by a Nusfjord team member who drove me the final hour to the village. As fate would have it, he moonlighted as a Northern Lights guide and knew his stuff about the best spots to see them and which apps could track peak activity. Within 20 minutes, they’d come out to play. Turns out I didn’t have to hunt too hard after all. Although you could say after almost three days of travelling I’d earned it.
