In Oct 19 we took my Mum (Lucy) on a Cruise & Maritime (CMV), Iceland & Northern Lights Cruise on their Magellan ship.

We have to say that the ship was much better than expected and would highly recommend CMV for service, food, entertainment and value for money, although they have now gone out of service but Ambassador Cruises are run by the same people.

We upgraded to the Premium Package which included gratuities, drinks (majority, not all) and a bottle of wine in our stateroom.  We booked an outside twin cabin and prior to sailing was upgraded a number of levels, generally the position of the cabin on the ship, from Deck 4 to Deck 7 aft.

The weather on the whole was very cold and windy, however, when we left Akureyi in Iceland the Northern Lights did make an appearance, not as spectacular as I had imagined but definitely made the cruise.

Our ports of call were:

• Torshavn
• Klasvik (didn’t make this due to weather and stayed an extra night in Torshavn
• Akureyi – booked a tour to the Gosfass Waterfall with Iceland Guided Tours, our guide was excellent and we had a really enjoyable trip to the falls and tour of the town with an interesting commentary.
• Reykjavik (overnight) – booked and joined the free walking tour of the town with CityWalk which despite the rain was really interesting and we finished at Harpa the opera house in the harbour.  On our second day we were going on a walk down the harbour as the ship was docked some way out of town but the weather was just too cold and a head wind on the way back!  It was a very choppy journey from Iceland to Belfast and sickness bags were in evidence around the ship but fortunately non of us suffered.
• Belfast – pre-booked a visit to the Titanic Museum, which was much better than anticipated and took just over an hour to get round, but we didn’t read everything we could have, gives discount for advance booking and over 60s.  In the afternoon we took a tour of the Belfast City Hall, for which we had reserved our free places earlier in the day.  Although the building was superb the tour group was extremely large and difficult to hear the tour guide at points, but on a quieter day would highly recommend.
• Dublin – tour the Big Bus Tour and made sure we got on the bus with a live tour guide which was excellent, although the weather was very wet we managed to get a seat up top at the front of bus.

Although we did see the Northern Lights, you really needed a much better camera than we had (photos courtesy of another passenger on the ship) but we did actually see them.  Glad that they announced they were visible whilst we were in the evening show!