Cruising Italian style

Feb 1 2008 Louise Cahill

Louise Cahill discovers northern delights by water

Celebrated Italian film director Federico Fellini may not be the first name that springs to mind when you think of cruising - but the presence of the great man looms large on the giant 85,000-tonne Costa Atlantica superliner.

Our cabin was on Deck Eight And A Half, named after one of Fellini's most famous films. The deck directly below, Ginger and Fred, recalled a Fellini TV movie and other deck names inspired by his films include La Strada, Roma and La Dolce Vita.

Once on board, the link begins to make sense for the bold and brash interior design of Costa Atlantica blends the style of classical Italy with more contemporary ideas. The lobby space, spanning eight decks, feels a bit like a cathedral at sea.

The other eye-catching feature about Costa, which really moved into mainstream cruising when the founding Italian family sold out to Carnival and Airtours (the UK operator no longer with us) back in 1997, is the prices.

While Costa has dramatically upgraded the quality of its fleet since the turn of the century, value for money remains a strong point and some of its cruise-only prices come in under £100 per day.

Money saved is often splashed on luxury spa facilities which are another Costa hallmark.

For our voyage to the Norwegian Fjords, we found our own way to Amsterdam as an overnight stay in this delightful Dutch city made the ideal curtain-raiser to our voyage.

A head of us lay some ports with a rich and varied nautical history - Bergen, Hellesylt, Geiranger, Alesund in Norway; Torshavn on the Faroes, Akureyri and Reykjavik in Iceland, even the remote Scottish ports of Lerwick and Invergordon - before we saw Amsterdam again.

Costa claims to promote 'Cruising Italian Style' and its passengers are drawn mainly from Western Europe.

English is quite rarely heard and often squeezed out by Italian, Spanish, French and German.

The itinerary was fascinating and included gorgeous Geiranger and a tour to the top of Mount Dalsnibba. The midnight sun was another attraction and we felt for the Norwegian monks who were told to rise at sunrise and sleep at sunset, meaning they ended up getting no sleep at all. They sent a messenger to the Pope, asking for a rule change. This was granted, so they then rose at 6am and went to sleep at 6pm.

Despite her vast size, Atlantica navigated her way through some tight twists and turns in locations only usually heard of on weather warnings - Bailey, South East Iceland, Fair Isle and Faroes.

The sail away was more than magic. From our balcony, we viewed emeraldcoloured rock formations and cruised towards Iceland.

We reached Godafoss or 'The Falls of the Gods', where the Vikings took their slaves. It is supposed to have got its name after the local chieftain threw the statues of his old gods into the falls after Christianity was accepted in Iceland in the year 1000 and has two spectacular cascades of glacial and spring water.

All the delights of the North aside, the cruise price was worth it just for the sight of the sky near Surtsey, a volcanic island and the southern-most point of Iceland.

Photographing the red and yellow display, I lingered on our balcony - it would have been an insult to the sky to sleep.