Hurtigruten... The World's Most Beautiful Voyage

It’s fair to say I’ve done some cruises in my time, it’s also fair to say that, maybe 15 years ago I suspended my belief that all who cruised were sailing towards the sunset of their life, and, fuelled by the thumping soundtrack of promotional videos by the big cruise operators, I now get it. Sometimes I want to eat all I can eat, to be entertained, to shop, to dance, to be whisked from bustling port to port.

But sometimes I like to stop.

And that’s where Hurtigruten comes in. Ok, it’s a journey zig zagging from port to port through the rugged breath-taking scenery of the Norwegian coast…but that’s not really what it is. In honesty I can’t quite describe what it is at all. Hurtigruten is serenity; as your ship glides effortlessly from clear, silent fjord to fjord. Hurtigruten is the awe you feel as you cast your gaze upwards at towering snow-topped mountains that you feel you can almost reach out and touch.

This is NOT cruise.

This is something with an authenticity you just can’t bottle or recreate in a glitzy onboard shopping mall. This is a beauty, but functional beauty, a working journey that, to this day, brings Norwegian communities together from port to port, a voyage taken by the type of people who want to envelop themselves in natural beauty, and a lifestyle that they won't find anywhere else, to breathe a Norwegian culture steeped in tradition and majesty, and to escape. It’s an expedition, an adventure, a trip of a lifetime.

Hurtigruten, put simply in the words of Conde Nast, is the world’s most beautiful voyage. I’ll see you there.