Hurtigruten - a few tips....... and reasonably priced coffee!!

Some clients of mine have recently done a Northern Lights cruise with Hurtigruten and have very kindly emailed me some feedback.
Hurtigruten are one of the lesser known 'cruise lines' so I thought their tips might be useful to any of you who are considering sailing with them at some point.
I must say, I like the tip about just buying the one coffee cup! Can you imagine trying to do that on one of the mainstream cruise lines?
Feedback is below but as always, for more information just give me a call on 0800 408 6084.

Just thought I'd give you a bit of feedback on our trip to Norway (went on 23rd Feb for 11 nights)

Absolutely loved it and managed to see the Northern Lights one evening so it was perfect.

Just a couple of things you might like to know in order to help clients in the future:

It's better to try and book a cabin on the starboard side of the ship since it always docks on the port side - this can make it noisy during the night as sometimes several stops are made in the early hours!  Also if budgets allow, it's preferable to have a cabin on a higher deck (we were on deck 3 port side!)

Tea and coffee are available at breakfast and immediately after lunch and dinner but if you want a drink in between it has to be purchased at the bar.  At about £3.50 each, this could be expensive over the course of a holiday if two of you are having a coffee each mid-morning and then something mid-afternoon as well.  It's possible to purchase a special cup on board (£35 each) which entitles you to coffee or tea at any time of day or night free of charge.  We bought one cup between us and felt we got our money's worth!

We didn't bother with alcohol all holiday as Norwegian prices are prohibitive  (£40 for a bottle of wine) -  but that didn't bother us at all as we are not big drinkers.

It was not permitted to have tap water on the table at mealtimes, we had to purchase bottled water (at £2.50 per half litre).

Having said all that, we had a wonderful time and would choose this kind of trip over a "normal" cruise any day.  We've done a Baltic cruise as we wanted to see the cities there but are not really "Cruise" people.  Hurtigruten was perfect for us.