Most trips unfold pretty close to plan. This one didn’t always, and by the time we’d been at sea a few days, we’d stopped being surprised when the schedule changed. Some days ended up better for the change, some were simply different. That unevenness ended up shaping the trip a little differently than we had planned.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Backing up to the time prior to embarking on the Scenic Eclipse I, our last day in London was a good one to end on. A second lunch at Lina Stores, a matinee, happy hour with a few former colleagues, then dinner at Dishoom. Bed, and a very early alarm the next morning for the transfer to Heathrow. I generally don’t book flights that early as a matter of practice, but we wanted a full day in Reykjavik, so we got up in the dark and did it anyway.

Reykjavik

Reykjavik was colder than I’d expected for July, layers-every-day cold, though it’s light until nearly midnight and the darkness gives way to light again in the three-o’clock-hour. Pastel buildings covered in murals and a rainbow street downtown, one of the most photographed sites in the city. We checked in and dropped our bags at the hotel then walked to the Old Harbour for lunch on the recommendation of the hotel concierge. She did not steer us wrong, and it was our first sign of how much we’d underestimated Icelandic food.

We spent the afternoon at Sky Lagoon. Neither of us is a sauna person, or a cold-plunge person, or really a soak-in-hot-water person, which made Sky Lagoon outside our normal instincts and one of the more surprisingly enjoyable experiences of the trip. It’s a geothermal spa built into the cliffs south of the city, and it walks you through a sequence: a warm lagoon with an infinity edge, a cold plunge, a sauna with a full wall of glass looking out over the landscape and the sea beyond, then mist, a scrub, steam, and a shot of crowberry elixir at the end. The cold plunge was genuinely jarring, the kind of cold that forces the air out of your lungs, but I made myself do it anyway because apparently that’s the point. The sauna is what actually converted me. We didn’t stay as long as I would have on my own — Greg had had enough of the heat — but I sat there long enough, watching the coastline through that wall of glass, to finally understand what our son’s been telling us about saunas all these years.

Þórsmörk Wilderness

The next morning was a private excursion I’d booked for us into Þórsmörk, a wilderness area tucked between three glaciers, reachable only by modified “Super Jeeps” across boulder fields and river crossings with no bridges. On the way, we stopped at Hotel Rangá to pick up our picnic lunch, and while we waited, I poked around the lobby and lounge. It’s a hotel that comes up consistently as one of the top options outside Reykjavik. It’s a Small Luxury Hotels property sitting right on a glacial river, rustic in the best sense, remote without being inconvenient. It’s definitely a place where I’d consider staying and would recommend to clients. Lunch was chicken wraps, simple and genuinely good.

Our guide narrated the whole drive in, Norse mythology and folklore attached to nearly every rock formation we passed. The landscape on the way to Þórsmörk was covered in lupine, purple fields rolling out for miles, more of it than we’d seen anywhere else in Iceland, and I asked our guide about it. Turns out the flowers covering half the country aren’t native, they were introduced decades ago to fight erosion and are now spreading across the volcanic slopes in a way that’s beautiful and, botanically, a little controversial as it crowds out what little native vegetation exists. 

We hiked into Stakkholtsgjá Canyon first, with moss-covered walls rising a hundred meters on either side. A river ran through the canyon floor, fed by a waterfall somewhere above us that we could hear, but never actually saw. From there we drove to Gígjökull, the outlet glacier of Eyjafjallajökull, which is the volcano that grounded European air travel in 2010. Up close it’s blue ice pushing through black volcanic ash, no hike required, just a short walk to the viewing area.

The next stop meant crossing a stream, a small step-down waterfall over a jumble of larger boulders. Our guide went first, telling me to “step where I step,” which turned out to be far less useful advice than it sounded, since his stride was a good foot longer than mine. I tested every boulder before trusting it, water running over most of them, and still managed to put one foot straight into the stream on a step I misjudged.

The longer hike came last, marked “green” on the map, which in hindsight was generous marketing. It opened with something like four to six hundred steps, steep and uneven, before continuing up a narrow path for a while longer. Neither of us is out of shape and we still stopped to catch our breath more than once. What we found at the top made up for it: a hillside solid with lupine in every direction with dramatic peaks in the distance. We ate our picnic lunch afterward at a table in the small camp below, then began the two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Reykjavik.

Dinner that night was at Messinn: fresh catch in a cast-iron skillet with potatoes and vegetables. It was my introduction to plaice, a type of flounder I’d never had, and it may now be my favorite fish. On our last morning, before boarding, we walked around Reykjavik on our own, visited tons of cute little shops and then split a hotdog at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, a genuine institution and worth the reputation.

Boarding

We boarded on a grey, overcast afternoon and were shown to our cabin, where we met our butler and spent the first hour just unpacking, an actual luxury after a week of living out of a suitcase. The cabin was ample size for a cruise cabin and we had a walk-in closet and loads of storage. The safety briefing that evening covered the usual life jackets and muster stations, plus a full walkthrough of the zodiacs, the small inflatable boats used for landings at stops with no port infrastructure – of which there were several. That first night turned out to be the roughest of the whole trip from a motion standpoint, not just side to side but front to back. Neither of us was bothered by it, though we heard later that plenty of people on board did not fare as well.

What the ocean decided

Our first planned landing, a wet zodiac landing at Dynjandi waterfall, couldn’t happen. The captain held position, hoping the seas would settle. They didn’t. Greg, who’d been looking forward to the zodiac ride specifically, was a bit more disappointed than me — I’ve seen my share of waterfalls, and what I actually needed was a slower day. The captain pulled up close enough so that we could all view it easily from the ship.

Grímsey, an island known for its seabird colonies and for sitting on the Arctic Circle itself, was our second stop. The plan was to anchor and take zodiacs ashore for a walk into the Arctic Circle and to see the seabird colonies that morning, but the wind and seas were too rough to land. The captain circled the island instead, partly to see if conditions would ease and partly to give everyone the chance to cross into the Arctic Circle and collect pins and certificates for it. In doing so, he found a sheltered anchorage on the far side, and the zodiacs went out that afternoon for a close-up look at the cliffs and the birds nesting on them: puffins, arctic terns, razorbills, kittiwakes. It worked out well for us specifically. Our spa appointments, originally booked for 4pm, had been moved to the morning to make room for a dinner invitation that evening, which meant we’d have missed the original excursion regardless. Instead, we were free to join the zodiacs that afternoon.

The dinner invitation was the chef’s table – 10 people, invitation-only – and we still don’t know how we landed it: a twelve-course tasting menu built around modern technique, a beef and bean burrito shaped precisely like a cigar and presented in a smoky box, a foie gras lollipop coated in cherry gel, laid atop a pillow of cotton candy meant to evoke a Tootsie Pop. We were seated next to a delightful couple from Houston who we ended up spending many more evenings with on the rest of the journey.

Two days after that, Seyðisfjörður gave us the first day where everything went exactly as planned. We did a hike at Skálanes nature reserve and getting there meant taking a modified bus, like the one in Þórsmörk, built to cross rivers instead of roads. The hike led through fields solid with lupine to an observation deck overlooking the water and cliffs, thick with seabirds, puffins included. It also happened to be Arctic tern breeding season, and the terns take it seriously: our guide advised us to keep our heads covered, since they dive-bomb anyone who gets too close to a nest. Outside of Þórsmörk, which was an entirely different kind of landscape, this was the most visually striking place we visited in Iceland.

That evening, sailing out of the fjord, an impromptu concert on the ship’s helicopter landing pad: the cruise director and her assistant, both theatre-trained, performing while cliffs and waterfalls slid past on either side.

Faroe Islands and Scottish Isles

Kirkwall, in Orkney, was the standout of the days that followed: a walking tour past St. Magnus Cathedral, built generations later by the nephew of the saint it’s named for, a man killed by his own cousin in a rivalry over the title, and a gin tasting at a distillery a few blocks from the harbor that was better than either of us expected. 

Lerwick, in Shetland, was the prettiest town of the trip, but unfortunately, we arrived on a Sunday, when the entire town, shops included, was completely shut down. We wandered anyway, mildly toured-out by then. Tórshavn, in the Faroe Islands, brought a pleasant walking tour through town, informative, but not somewhere we’ve earmarked to return to.

Norway

The crossing into Norway was rough, seas similar to what we’d had earlier in the journey around Iceland, and it took overnight to reach the fjords. The next day was a sea day spent sailing through them, one of the best days of the trip. We’ve seen plenty of spectacular scenery over the years, and this still stood out. We ported in Flåm that evening, and a group of us went ashore to a small pub after dinner and evening activities.

The RIB excursion the following morning ran through its own contrast: the main fjord rough enough to rattle your teeth, then a turn into a sheltered arm toward Gudvangen where the water went completely calm. Our guide told us one stretch drops to more than 3,000 feet, hard to reconcile with how narrow the fjord looks from the water. Mountains rose straight up on both sides, streaked with waterfalls, and every so often a cluster of a few houses would appear right at the waterline, too small to really call a village. We got right up next to several of the waterfalls along the way, and spent the calmer stretches just cruising, taking it all in.

Bergen

We disembarked in Bergen, a city surrounded by mountains and water that turns out to be Seattle’s sister city, easy to see why once you’re standing in it. We grabbed a reindeer hotdog around the corner from the hotel, decent, though Reykjavik’s was better, then walked the waterfront to Fjellskal for lunch, where Greg finally got his fish and chips after wanting it since London.

We ran into our friends from Houston at the restaurant, and by early afternoon we were in an Uber headed to a residential neighborhood, invited for wine at the home of friends of theirs who live in Bergen. Beautiful views off their balcony and good conversation. Travel has a way of introducing you to fascinating people.

We finished the day on the Fløibanen, the funicular up Mount Fløyen, a short wait before the crowd thinned out at the top, sweeping views over the harbor and, unexpectedly, a small herd of goats wandering the summit. Dinner at Le Mathis, a small French bistro near the hotel, closed out the trip.

What I’d tell a client

Two things stood out to me from eleven days at sea. A small ship buys you flexibility a large one doesn’t have. When the seas closed off a landing, our captain had other options: circling into the Arctic Circle instead of skipping it, finding sheltered water on the far side of an island, waiting out the swell longer than a bigger ship’s schedule would allow. A larger vessel in the same conditions would have simply missed the stop. This isn’t a ship built for lounging, either. There’s barely a pool, no outdoor seating at the restaurants. It’s built for movement and access in places where movement and access are hard to come by.

The other is about the value of included excursions. When the whale watching didn’t appeal to us one morning, we skipped it, no cost, no risk. We also did historical walking tours in several ports, the kind of thing we wouldn’t normally seek out or pay for individually, but with everything included there was no reason not to. That’s the real value of it being included: you can say yes to everything upfront and then decide, day by day, what you actually want to do.

I wouldn’t book a large luxury ship for a trip like this one, and I wouldn’t book a small expedition ship for a warm-weather Mediterranean sailing. The ship has to match the destination.