Hygiene wipes and favourite gripes

[Sekhmet]

We recently returned from a trip to the Norwegian fjords with Fred. Olsen lines' Braemar.

 

[For those of you not familiar with this line, it is a Norwegian company with three - soon to be four - small, under 30,000 ton ships. It is targeted firmly at the Senior end of the UK market, and sails in summer out of UK ports. At 57, we were probably amongst the youngest 50 passengers, and although the music, activities and entertainment were not particularly to our taste, we chose it for the itinerary, TA price and because smaller ships can get further into smaller parts of the fjords].

 

Having said all that, the line has some good ideas which the bigger boys might adopt:

 

Hygiene Before entering any of the dining rooms/cafe, staff squirted an anti-bacterial foam onto everybody's hands - odourless, it rubbed in in a few moments. This practice was repeated each time we re-embarked after a shore visit, and before being allowed to greet the Captain at his get-togethers.

 

Sunbeds Prominently displayed on the outside decks were signs saying "Passengers are kindly requested not to reserve sunbeds. Any items left unattended for 30 minutes will be deemed lost property, and removed to the reception desk".

 

Smoking As well as dividing rooms up as normal, they have designated one of the main lounges completely non-smoking.

 

Drink Prices On our previous voyage with them, we remarked on the high drink prices. On this one, they were much lower, and as a consequence, much more popular. We had 7 bottles of decent wine (from 7 different countries, incidentally), all in the $20 to $25 region; a Gin & Tonic was $3.40, house wine $3.30 a glass, and cocktails around the $4.50 mark.

 

Disembarkation The usual disembarkation by colour coded tickets was used, but our prevous experience is that the bags in the luggage hall are usually also sorted the same way, resulting in a disorganised scrum as 150 people all try and find their bags in one place. This time, the bags were arranged by deck, so each group with the same colour disembarkation ticket disperses in a more civilised manner. It must also make life easier for the crew and dock personnel to unload.

 

Finally, to refer to another favourite gripe. Probably because of the demographics of passengers, compliance with the dress code was very close to 100%, and on formal nights, I would estimate that at least 85% of the gentlemen wore tuxedo or dinner jacket, one or two complete with medals.

[shan&steve]

Well, that is all very interesting! Thanks for the info! My husband is dying to do a cruise of the fjords. Was it as fabulous as it sounds?

[Starbright]

We cruised the Norwegian fjords a couple of years ago (not with Fred Olsen though) and it was fabulous. The scenery is just out of this world.

 

We were very lucky in that we had beautiful weather - even above the Arctic circle the temperature was 80 degrees one day. The Norwegian people are very friendly too. Just be aware though that Norway is a very expensive country to visit. We stopped at a bar for a drink and two small beers cost us £10 (about $17 at today's exchange rate!). :eek:

 

Cruising is the ideal way to see Norway because you can see a lot of the country in a short time, and also you can sleep, eat, drink etc on board without paying the Norwegian prices! :)