I Took a Mystery Cruise with a Traditional Cruise Line (Nobody Knew The Itinerary!)

I’ve just disembarked one of the world’s strangest cruises, where nobody onboard had any idea where the ship was sailing to, we only found out each day when we arrived in port.

This cruise was with a traditional cruise line, and although it’s not the kind of cruise line I’d usually book with for a few reasons, I couldn’t resist the mystery – I decided to give it a go.

This cruise was one of the most expensive I’ve ever booked in terms of price per night, but I was hopeful that I would enjoy both the ports and the experience on the ship.

I did have a lot of questions, though…

• How could we book excursions for a cruise where we didn’t know where we’d be going?
• What about travel insurance?
• What would I pack if I couldn’t look up the weather forecast?
• What would happen if we had ports I didn’t like at all?
• ….and would I have paid for this cruise if I knew what would really happen?

It all was a bit of a risk, and it was very different from any cruise I’ve ever taken before.

Not just the mystery part, either. From the entertainment onboard to a medical evacuation, things weren’t as I expected. 

Normally when you embark a cruise you see the ship appear over the horizon with blue skies behind it, ideally you’ll be onboard in time for lunch.

That wasn’t the case on this cruise, though, as my boarding time was 5:30 pm and it was pitch black. 

That is very late by any cruise standards, but it was for a reason. Our ship had been in dry dock getting a few updates the week before, and it had overrun slightly.

I hoped that the rest of the trip would make up for missing out on the first afternoon onboard, but it is always a shame to miss any time on any cruise.

I hoped that the ongoing building works wouldn’t affect us at all and that we wouldn’t be cruising on a floating building site. 

The only thing I knew about the first port at this point was a few clues that were given to us by the cruise line.

One said that “The wind carries the scent of salt, waffles and adventure”. Most cruise ports are salty, of course, and I’d say every port is an adventure, so waffles were really the only clue.

The description did describe cobblestones and seagulls – but that didn’t really narrow it down either.

Embarkation was incredibly easy, there were no queues at all at my boarding time.

I do suspect that a lot of people ignored the boarding delay and came earlier, but I do like to do what I’m told, most of the time, and it worked out, as the total embarkation process probably took under 10 minutes.

The cruise ship that I was boarding was called Borealis, and she is owned by the traditional British cruise line, Fred. Olsen.

On all of the cruises with Fred. Olsen dining times for dinner are fixed, and there is usually table sharing.

Not just at dinner, but at breakfast and lunch too, even in the buffet.

I’m not a fan of table sharing with strangers when I cruise, but I had managed to reduce the chances pre-cruise by booking this trip as a group of four.

Most cruise lines have got rid of assigned fixed dining now, and it seems like quite an old-fashioned thing to me, plenty of people love it though. 

Find out more about table sharing on traditional cruiselines – and how to avoid it, here:

Table Sharing on Cruises, An Outdated Inconvenience? – Here’s How I Avoid It!

I’d requested early dining, and I was given it, which was great. The problem was that I knew the early dining time was 6 pm, and I was boarding the ship at 5:30.

I really didn’t want to miss dinner, but it was completely out of my control if we’d make it or not. It did seem like a big ask – but I’m ever hopeful.

I knew that there were other food options, of course, but I wanted to meet my friends who were already onboard at dinner. Otherwise, they’d be sitting there just waiting for us.

At this point, when I boarded, I didn’t know what my table number was, so I headed straight to my cabin, where I found a piece of paper with the information.

I’d booked an oceanview cabin, and my favourite thing by far was the tiny little bath.

My first impressions of the cabin were great, and they were for the rest of the ship too. It all felt so grand. I loved the carpets, and it did feel like being in another world, almost transported back in time. 

Finding my cabin was very easy because it was on deck 2 and the ship isn’t very big.

Borealis is 237 metres long, which is roughly the same as 23 London double-decker buses in a row. That might sound huge – but by modern cruise ship standards, she’s a pretty small ship.

The world’s biggest cruise ship can currently hold five times as many guests.

I was hopeful that would mean our mystery ports might be ones the big ships don’t usually go to, as our ship could fit down rivers and into ports most can’t. 

We made it to dinner with only a couple of minutes to spare, and I was so excited and happy to be onboard.

We watched the sailaway from our table, but had no idea where the cruise was going. 

The main dining room onboard Borealis is split over two levels, and every guest has a table in there.

It’s very grand, and there are lots of windows on all sides. As it was so dark, I could usually only see myself, but we had a couple of great meals in there.

The menu even has its own tassels, which I think makes it very fancy. The food lived up to the quality promised by the menu tassels, so we were all very happy with everything we ordered. 

I even had a Toad in the Hole, which I’ve always joked is my dream dinner on a cruise. I’ve never ever found it on a cruise ship before.

This was just the first of many British touches onboard, which I loved. 

A “Toad in the Hole” is sausages in Yorkshire pudding, for those of you who don’t know. That’s my first of many Britishisms in this article.

We chatted a little bit about where we thought that we were going. We knew, of course, that we couldn’t get too far away in a day, and there were a few likely options.

I guessed Bruges or Le Havre, and maybe Rotterdam for the second port? We also considered ports like Antwerp, which I would have liked to visit, as I’ve never been there before.  

The thing that I thought made it easier to guess was that on the destination board by reception, it had information about the time it takes to drive to town and if we would need a shuttle bus or not.

That actually would trip me up for the second mystery port though, and I would get it wrong.

Borealis started her life as “Rotterdam” for Holland America cruise line and she was built in 1997.

A lot of parts of the ship, like the incredible atrium, have remained mostly the same since back then, and she can hold over 1000 guests in over 700 different cabins. 

One thing that I love about older cruise ships is that they usually have a big bar or lounge up high, it’s called something like the Crows Nest or the Observation Lounge and I was happy to find one on the deck plans.

We headed there after dinner, and in here they would do karaoke, have live music, and they hosted a silent disco in there too.

It was so much fun, so much more fun than I expected it to be. It was so relaxing to just have those headphones on, to sing along to songs and to watch everybody dancing.

It was anything but silent, but I loved seeing everybody having such a great time.

There were two channels, blue and green, and both would play different songs.

At one point on one channel was the famous Kings of Leon song about being on fire – and on the other channel was “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor.

To hear both of those sung out loud, at the same time was really funny. 

I mentioned earlier that Fred Olsen aren’t normally a cruise line that I’d pick to cruise with, and thats mostly because of the fact that it’s quite traditional, but also that the average age is also a lot older than me. I don’t see that as a problem at all.

I do think that I was half the age of the average guest. They had a talk in the theatre about inheritance tax, so I think that tells you all you need to know. An Important topic, I’m sure, but not exactly for me right now. 

I think the age range on this cruise might have been slightly younger than usual because it was a short cruise, and the shorter the cruise, the younger the passengers tend to be. 

The amount of live music around the ship really was a big perk for me. There was almost always some somewhere, it might be a man with a guitar, a trio of strings or the house band, but there would always be music somewhere.

All of the musicians were great, of course, and they played a really wide variety of music. 

Sometimes on a cruise, I find that there isn’t food available late at night, or maybe it’s just something like pizza. I was so happy to find out that just along from the observation lounge was the buffet, which was open for late-night snacks. They call it “Supper Club” which is very fancy.

It was here that I found the most amazing cookies, I can’t describe how good, I could eat these everyday of my life and I’d never get bored.

They were like thick sugar biscuits, and ending my day with one of these was the perfect end to the first day.

They had other food too, like sandwiches and hot dogs, and the buffet itself was big and spacious. I knew I’d have to come back here later for lunch and dinner. 

I didn’t feel like I’d seen a lot of the ship at this point because I hadn’t. I’d not seen any of the main lounges, the theatre, the promenade deck or the pool yet, and we still didn’t know where we were going. Such a strange feeling on a cruise, but I loved it. 

I was half expecting there to be an announcement in the evening telling us about the next port we would be visiting – but we actually didn’t find that out until we arrived in the morning.

Luckily for me, I had booked an oceanview cabin so I could at least see a view in the mornings. If you were in an inside cabin, you really would have no idea where you were. 

From the moment that we booked this cruise, I said “I bet we’ll be going to Bruges”.

Bruges is on every northern Europe itinerary, and given that we left Portsmouth for a 5-day cruise, it wasn’t as if we could really leave northern Europe.

That made it easy to buy travel insurance too, most policies cover ‘Europe’ as a whole, and my policy does so I didn’t have to worry. 

We would have a helicopter medical evacuation later in the cruise, which highlights how important travel insurance is.

You can see here on my cruise globe map where that happened, and I love seeing these little quirks.

You can see all of the cruises you’ve taken just like this on my free website and app, thecruiseglobe.com

Be careful though, thecruiseglobe.com does show all the cruise ships’ live positions and it tells you the next port where a ship is going, so if you are on a mystery cruise, don’t look at that and spoil the surprise for yourself. 

I was not surprised at all when I saw the familiar shipping containers of Zeebrugge when I went to the buffet for breakfast.

The port itself is a bit tricky because you have to get a bus out of the port, and then get a train or a transfer into Bruges. It’s actually quite far inland, but it is well worth the visit. 

I’ve been to Bruges plenty of times before, so I headed to Blankenberg as Fred Olsen had free shuttle buses going there.

I’m sure with blue skies, Blankenberg would be a really nice place to spend some time. It was anyway – but it does feel like a summer city. 

The fact that the shuttle bus was included was a nice touch, as most mainstream and budget cruise lines would charge for this.

As I mentioned earlier, Fred Olsen definitely aren’t a budget cruise line, but for all that’s included and the onboard prices I don’t think that I paid a bad price at all. I only booked a month or so in advance, too.

I’ll let you know at the end how much I ended up paying for everything, including gratuities and WiFi. 

When we came back from the port, we were offered a glass of hot blackcurrant squash, and if that doesn’t sum up the Britishness of Fred Olsen, I don’t know what does!

I’m sure we’ve had this one before, but Squash is basically juice that you dilute with water. It’s usually served cold, but it can be made hot too, kind of like tea. Blackcurrant is a popular flavour here, and I love it. 

I don’t realise how much I miss British things like that until I go back to cruising on a British cruise line. The biggest cruise lines in the world are all American, so it’s quite a strange but amazing sight to see Custard Cream biscuits in the buffet.

The custard creams were amazing, of course. They are the best biscuits by a mile and 15 times better than the chocolatey Bourbon alternative – and 150 times better than Oreos. 

In the buffet for dinner you are seated by the crew, usually at a shared table which isn’t something I’m used to on cruises at all.

You normally just get your own food and then sit down wherever you’d like, that does sometimes leave people wandering around trying to find a seat though so I see why they do this.

They want to make sure that everybody has a table, which is good. I do often just pick up food and wander off with it though, maybe I sit outside, or take it back to my cabin.

We could still do that, of course, but we always had to explain, “Oh, we’re not sitting, just picking up a cookie”. 

We met loads of lovely people on this cruise when we were table sharing, and generally around the ship.

The fact that we were on this mystery trip together gave everybody an easy conversation topic to start with, and I met a lot of people who were cruising solo, and some. this was their first cruise.

They were all very happy, though. I never heard anybody complain about anything, which is really, really rare.

I can’t say how rare that is. I’ve cruised on luxury river ships and even a yacht, and people were still complaining about things on there. The Fred Olsen bunch seem like a happy group. 

There were lots of options in the buffet, and they were mostly served to you.

The food was great, and there were always so many crew members around getting drinks and tidying up.

All of the food in here is included in the cruise fare, as well as the main dining room. Guests can eat in here for all of their meals if they want to, and some do. 

I knew that I’d be eating in here on formal night because the group I was with didn’t want to dress formally for the main dining room, and that suited me perfectly.

It’s always possible to avoid any formal dress codes if you don’t want to take part. I still wore a dress to dinner most days, but I much prefer it when dress codes are optional. 

Find out more about table sharing – and how to avoid it if you want to, here:

Table Sharing on Cruises, An Outdated Inconvenience? – Here’s How I Avoid It!

Another included option, which I really loved, is the restaurant by the inside pool.

We decided to head here for lunch, and it didn’t disappoint. It was here that I found out that they had cans of Pepsi Max, which is my favourite drink in the world, so that was amazing. 

We started to think about our next port. The clues that we were given were that the port had: maritime heritage, scenic waterways and modern architecture.

It also mentioned historic districts with red brick buildings. It got me thinking, but I definitely didn’t have a solid answer in my mind.

The inside pool was huge, and the roof does retract. It wasn’t warm enough for that on our cruise, of course, but we were lucky with the weather.

There are lots of seats around and a bar, and I decided I’d come here for a swim later, perhaps on one of the evenings when it would be quietest.

Not that it was ever too busy at all, the ship never felt too busy. 

As well as statues dotted around the ship, there were lots of other pieces of art that I thought were interesting – memorable for sure.

This scared-looking lion was close to my cabin, and they almost acted like landmarks for me. I learnt my way around the ship fairly easily. 

The halloumi at the poolside restaurant is my recommendation because, well, it’s halloumi, but the fish and chips, burgers and ploughman’s are also good.( A “Plowmans is a salad with crusty bread – normally with cheese or sometimes ham).

Having this as another option when we didn’t fancy the buffet or main dining room was fantastic.

Carrying along the deck from the inside pool we found an area at the aft.

This is one of the reasons why our embarkation was so late on the first day. I was a little bit nervous that the cruise might be cancelled completely when the dry dock overran so I was relieved to be onboard at all.

There used to be a swimming pool here when the ship was owned by Holland America, but they removed it for some reason. I’m not sure why.

Looking at the deck plans, it looks as though they have more cabins under where the pool was, so they definitely can’t put it back. 

Fred Olsen then turned it into a garden of sorts for a while, and now they’re making it into an outdoor restaurant.

I still don’t think I understand it completely, but we never did see it finished during our cruise. I’m just saying that means I have to book another to come back and to see the updates. 

We really didn’t miss the extra outside space on this cruise, given that it was so cold, but it would be nice to try a warm cruise on this ship. I quite enjoyed seeing the progress each day, actually.

At one point, all of the outside decks were all closed off during our cruise, but that was because we had a medical emergency where a guest had to be taken off the ship by helicopter.

This isn’t a rare thing at all, and looking at all of my cruises in thecruiseglobe.com I can see the routes where this has happened.

It seems like on 1 in 7 of the cruises I’ve taken, we’ve either had a helicopter evacuation or we’ve made a detour to drop somebody off while we were sailing.

I won’t show you the person being evacuated because I think that is just cruel. I get so annoyed when I see people sharing videos of other people who are in a bad situation without their permission.

But here is the helicopter before they came to pick up the person, I think it came from the Netherlands.

I hope they got the care they needed and are okay now. It has to be pretty serious for the best situation to be a helicopter evacuation. 

It is so important that you have travel insurance before you step foot on a cruise ship.

The cost of this kind of thing, if you don’t, can be hundreds of thousands of pounds, even more sometimes.

Head to emmacruises.com/insurance for my step by step guide on how to get insurance for a cruise and how to check that your policy will actually cover you.

There is nothing more important when it comes to cruising. Nothing.

Port one was good fun already, but port two I had high hopes for. I really hoped for somewhere we could just wander off and explore on our own.

We didn’t know the ports on this cruise, but we did know the itinerary in terms of when we had sea days and when we had port days, so I knew that the next day we would spend at sea. 

I didn’t expect to like this ship as much as I did, decor-wise. The colourful carpets and the grand atrium were undeniably impressive, even the public toilets felt very grand, and I never saw anything damaged or broken anywhere.

Each lounge had its own distinct theme, and all of the cushions would match nicely. 

There was a lot of glass, which made a nice change from the more modern, minimalist design that most ships have now.

It felt like the ship had really been looked after well.

Borealis was designed by Dr Stephen Payne, the same man who designed the world’s last Ocean Liner, Queen Mary 2. She is a remarkable ship.

I was lucky enough to take a transatlantic crossing onboard Queen Mary 2 – a route she was designed for. Unfortunately, the weather in the Atlantic Ocean in January wasn’t good!

Find out all about that here:

For dinner next, we went to Colour and Tastes, which is an area that’s had an update during the recent refit.

We sat at a table by the window to the corridor, and the food was amazing. This might be my favourite speciality restaurant on a cruise ever, and it only cost £15 ($19) per person. 

On some cruise lines, speciality meals can cost £50, £70 – or even over £100 – so £15 is incredible value.

I loved catching up with my friends too to chat about what we’d been doing during the day.

We didn’t put bets on where we were going, but if I had, I would have put it on Rotterdam. I would have been wrong though. 

After dinner, we headed to the theatre for a production show. I love going to the theatre on cruises, and there was some sort of show here every day.

Sometimes it would be a comedian or something like that, but the production showcast shows are my favourites.

The theatre is split over two levels, and I love how much space there is for all of the seats, with bar service and tables too.

I enjoyed the two shows that we watched in here. I didn’t entirely understand all of the comedian’s jokes, but that’s because I really wasn’t the target audience. Most of the TV shows and people referenced were before I was alive.

We were so lucky on our sea day, and the sun came out on the top decks. I wandered around and sat outside in just a t-shirt, which I never ever expected, sailing from the UK in November.

I was really prepared for constant rain and rocky seas, but this was perfect. Don’t get me wrong, it was around 10 °C (50°F), but that was warm enough for me and more than I expected.

Heading inside the ship, we went to trivia next in the “Morning Light” lounge.

This venue is basically the pub of the ship, and it is huge, it’s almost like multiple rooms together – but that was great because it meant that a lot of people could take part in the activities like trivia.

We had a two-minute silence in here, too, because we were sailing on Remembrance Day. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a cruise ship before where everybody has been silent at the same time, so that was quite an experience. 

We gave trivia a go a couple of times and didn’t do too badly.

We were actually the only table in our area that knew the answer to the question “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” – so in some ways, having a difference in age was a benefit.

There were some really smart people on this cruise though, so we didn’t stand a chance of ever winning. It’s the taking part that counts. 

The entertainment staff onboard were absolutely fantastic. I say that all the time about crew on cruise ships and how they were great, but the Fred Olsen crew were extra great.

If a guest needed help putting on a coat or finding a chair, the crew would be right there helping.

Nothing was ever too much trouble, and it really felt as though the entertainment team in particular, were having so much fun – which is important when you’re trying to encourage everybody else to have fun too.

Our cruise director, Cranny, who oversaw everything, was all that a cruise director should be. He was friendly, funny and a recognisable face around the ship for everybody.

He also had the special task of telling us in the morning which port we were in, in case we hadn’t worked it out. I’d usually looked at cruise globe by that point to see where we were docked. 

The waiters were great too, and the service in the main dining room was always fast. We headed there for our lunch next because we knew that they had a roast dinner on the menu. Complete of course with Yorkshire puddings.

Given that this was formal night and we didn’t plan on going to the main dining room for dinner, this was perfect. I ordered a Pepsi of course and it was automatically charged to my onboard account.

On a cruise, you don’t use money to buy things, when you order something they’ll take your room number and add it onto your account.

It’s then charged to your bank when you leave the cruise, and you can see how much you’ve spent every day in the app.

We didn’t spend a lot on this cruise, but I did purchase the WiFi. At £10 ($13) per day, I was very happy with it.

There were certain websites that just wouldn’t load, but I’ve been on cruises where I’ve paid 3 times as much for WiFi per day, so honestly, I thought that was pretty cheap. 

I often have to work when I cruise, but on this trip, I was focused more on spending time with my friends and family, so I didn’t need the high-speed internet for calls.

We were so close to land most of the time anyway that we could just use our phone’s signal. The sail into our next port was very long, but we didn’t know that yet. 

On this sea day afternoon, we had a performance in the theatre from Andy Burchfield’s Concert Band, who were great.

They played a real mix of music, and it was such a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. It was such a treat to have a big orchestra onboard. 

When we wandered back from the show, we actually came across Dolphin Racing in one of the bars.

That isn’t what you think it is, you might be expecting people galloping around on wooden dolphins – but not quite.

The controllers of the dolphins are told when they can move a step forward, and it’s not that fast. Fun to watch though. 

Most of the entertainment onboard was like this, relaxing and just family-friendly fun. I say “family-friendly”, there weren’t any kids on this cruise at all, but you know what I mean.

When everybody else went to get their formal wear on for dinner, I headed to my cabin to get into my swimming costume.

The pool towels are in the cabins, and we had the whole pool to ourselves, which was such a treat. Swimming costume is another Britishism for you there, I know lots of you call this a swimsuit.

The ship was rocking a little bit, so the water did splosh from side to side.

It wasn’t noticeable when I was out of the pool, but when you are swimming, even the slightest movement makes the water move. There are hot tubs here, too, and this pool is heated. 

The seas were pretty calm on this cruise, but we did have a lot of fog, which honestly just made the whole experience more mysterious. Even when we docked in our second mystery port, we could barely see it!

You can have a look at that in the video below:

Our second port was Hamburg, and I wasn’t expecting that.

I absolutely love Hamburg and Germany generally, but when I’ve visited Hamburg on a cruise before, I’ve always docked quite far out of town. The description that I had seen said that we wouldn’t need a shuttle bus, so I didn’t consider it.

We docked right in the middle, at a different terminal and were able to just wander off to explore which was great. It wasn’t too chilly, and it didn’t rain. 

I was maybe hoping for a port that I hadn’t been to before – but I was more than happy to visit Hamburg again. It is a lovely place to visit.

When I first saw this cruise advertised, the lead-in price was £699 ($919) per person. I ended up paying £949 for my cruise fare because I wanted to upgrade to an oceanview cabin.

That was my half of the cabin fare and my dad also paid the same. I don’t regret doing that at all, our cabin was great, the tiny bath made it worth it.

I added on £50 for the WiFi, £15 for the speciality meal, £25 for gratuities and £42 for drinks, bringing my total to £1081 ($1420). 

That’s the kind of price I’d usually pay for a week-long cruise on a more budget line, but Fred Olsen definitely isn’t a budget line. They’re a high-quality line, and what they do, they do very well.

I’m certainly going to miss those cookies, the bedtime chocolates on the pillow, and the ship-shaped toilet roll on my next cruise. 

From one end of the tradition scale to the other, check out this video next to find out what it’s like cruising with a big American casual cruise line.

This ship is over double the size and holds an extra 3459 guests. When you’ve watched this, you’ll know which you prefer, the traditional Fred. Olsen, or the freestyle Norwegian.

Considering a Fred Olsen cruise, just like this one? I’d highly recommend it! 🏆🩷
Check out the itineraries here (affiliate) 😋✈️

Before You Go

I travelled on Borealis’s sister ship, Bolette, in search of the Northern Lights. Find out all about that memorable trip here:

I Cruised Through ROUGH SEAS to Find The Northern Lights

Have a look at the cabins onboard Borealis here:

Fred Olsen’s Borealis – Cabin Reviews and Cabins To Avoid