Recently renamed after one of the most famous polar vessels of all time, Roald Amundsen's "Maud" from 1917, having previously been known as MS Midnatsol, she weighs in at a little over 16,000 tonnes, with space for 538 passengers. In the process of being upgraded to reduce her carbon emissions, she'll have increased battery capacity to allow her to use no fuel at all while in port.
Three restaurants, a library, lounge and bar, hot tub and sauna, observation deck, and -- because she regularly undertakes expeditions with a scientific theme -- a lecture hall and science centre. Some trips even let passengers get involved with experiments. Not on each other, I hasten to add.
There's a gym, too, but the least said about that the better.
We're on Deck 8 (the same deck as the library and the "Explorer Lounge & Bar" -- can you imagine a more perfect location? :o)) in an "Arctic Superior" Outside cabin (i.e. it has its own porthole) similar to the one shown here.
Actual photos will follow, of course, once we're on board. Some of these cabins allegedly have double beds, but we're expecting ours to be more like this. These cabins have TVs too, but I can't imagine we'll be watching much of that. Not when there's the Northern Lights going on outside on the deck!
If you're interested in learning more about our ship, there's loads of information on Hurtigruten's Maud page, or if you have a couple of hours to spare it's well worth watching "Christmas Cruising with Susan Calman", either online at that link or -- still available at the time of writing -- on the My5 catch-up service.
Incidentally, it's not immediately obvious from the opening photo how large MS Maud is. The answer is "not very", but bearing in mind that some of her expeditions involve going into the fjords and even executing a "U-y" (as Susan calls it on that show above), so she can't be too big. Here's a shot of one of her sister ships sailing beside the more usual type of "cruise" ship, just to give you an idea.
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