On a Summertime Sail Around Northern Europe

In 2018, my wife, Anne, and I took our two sons, Louis and Gabriel, on what we imagined would be our first and only cruise — a hastily organized six-day trip along the coast of Alaska. We had never considered ourselves cruise people, but Louis, then seven years old, had seen an animated movie set on an ocean liner and decided that a voyage on what he then called a “hotel-boat” was exactly what our family needed.

Family Experience on a Cruise

The hotel-boat on that trip did everything we might have hoped for — the short-duration excursions were both a break from the stress of raising two small children and an adventure for all of us. Four years later, as we considered another cruise — this time with two soon-to-be teenage boys — my wife and I wondered whether we could still handle the close confines of a ship, especially after two years of intermittent isolation. And even if we could, did we want to? Like many, we were desperate to step back into the world, yet also exhausted by thinking about the effort it might require to do so.

The Luxury of Seven Seas Splendor

In the weeks leading up to summer, we studied a list of itineraries on Regent Seven Seas Cruises’ newest, most luxurious vessel, the Seven Seas Splendor. Completed in 2020, the ship was built to reflect Regent’s distinctive aesthetic — opulent, but understated, with an all-suites design, ensuring there were no crowded hallways, no awkward lines, no hovering for lounge chairs. As my family and I explored the Splendor’s amenities together, we joked about finally finding the hotel-boat Louis had dreamed of years earlier. It had everything we would have wanted in the perfect hotel — six restaurants, multiple lounges and bars, a library, a theater, a pool, and a spa — leaving us free to prioritize the very thing that had been missing from our lives for the past two years: the opportunity to see new places.

In the end, we settled on a 12-day trip through the North Sea and the Baltic, securing a firm commitment from our children to spend as many hours as needed visiting museums in each place.

Cultural Exploration in Northern Europe

“Exactly how many museums are we talking about?” Louis asked. I showed him the excursions we had arranged: three museums in Oslo; two in Tallinn, Estonia; one in Liepaja, Latvia; two in Helsinki; and at least four in the two days we had in Stockholm. Any hint of alarm vanished after I reminded him that our first two nights were spent entirely on board the ship once we departed from Southampton, England.

I had employed maps and guidebooks to research the numerous shore excursions included in the trip, then added my own list of very important places to see in each city. The value of that list began to diminish almost immediately, as we explored the comforts of the ship.

Memorable Moments Aboard the Ship

The next day, as we approached Oslo, my wife suggested that perhaps we’d gone about this trip all wrong, and that we should have mapped out a game plan on board as well. She pointed out that every evening, after we’d returned from a shore excursion, we could eat a wonderful dinner at the French restaurant, Chartreuse, watch a former West End star perform in the ship’s Constellation Theatre, and dance away whatever remaining energy we had in the Splendor Lounge.

After arriving in Oslo, we disembarked as soon as the ship docked and headed on our own to Grünerløkka, a once-working-class neighborhood along the Akerselva River. The area is now known for its trendy cafés and restaurants, vintage stores, and lively central square. When Louis and Gabriel asked us where we were going, we told them the truth: we had no plans, no single destination other than finding something interesting.

Over the course of a couple of hours, we fell in love with two thrift stores, a coffee shop, and the views of the Nedre waterfall from the banks of the Akerselva, before taking a guided tour of the city’s maritime museums. Later, back aboard the ship, we had just enough time to swim in the pool and soak in the hot tub before sitting down to dinner at Sette Mari, the Italian restaurant where everyone, from the waiters to the hostess, knew our family by name.

Final Destination and Reflections

During dinner, sailing toward Tallinn, we decided we wanted even more of that sense of discovery from the morning. Over the course of the next seven days, more came to mean a dozen different things. In Tallinn, it meant discovering the beautifully designed and unexpectedly moving Estonian Health Museum, where the transformation of the human body from birth to death is mapped out with elegance and candor.

While we sat outside on a wide, tree-lined avenue, I asked the kids half-jokingly if perhaps we hadn’t already seen enough of the city. As it turned out, they had decided to take advantage of their suddenly lax parents and made their own list of things to do while in the Finnish capital. There was a Lego store that had to be visited, a food market that sold reindeer hot dogs, and the Kamppi Chapel, which, according to Gabriel, resembled a spaceship.

Over the next two days, we did our best not to forget that there would never be enough time for everything. We stumbled into a used-comic book shop on an impossibly narrow street in the old town, then sat in the shadow of the Royal Palace eating ice cream. Moreover, as we neared Stockholm, we had rafted down a river in Kotka, driven through the remnants of a Soviet military base, and watched the last supermoon of the year rise above the Baltic Sea.

As we raced back to get a poolside seat for dinner, Gabriel reminded us that we had only two more nights left on our hotel-boat. “It’s important,” he said, “that we make the most of it.”

Regent Seven Seas Cruises offers similar 12-day London to Copenhagen sailings from $15,099 per person, all-inclusive.