Cruise
an à la carte lunch or dinner
on board. Ships will stay
later in port, or overnight,
so passengers making the
most of the local nightlife
won’t miss the boat either.
It costs from £799pp for
a Danube cruise, departing
from Passau on March 25,
with overnights in Linz,
Vienna and Budapest (riviera
travel.co.uk). Fly to Munich.Nanortalik in Greenland
Aqua Expeditions, which
operates high-end ships on
the Peruvian Amazon, the
Mekong and in Indonesia,
is launching what it claims
will be the only superyacht
in the Galapagos. From May
2022 the 50m Aqua Mare,
built in Italy in 1998, will
offer two seven-night
itineraries that can be
bolted together to create
a 14-night expedition.
Just 16 guests will be
tended to by a crew
of 16, including
two naturalist
guides, and
menus will
GALAPAGOS BY
SUPERYACHT
be designed by the superstar
Peruvian chef Pedro Miguel
Schiaffino. Seven nights’ full
board costs from £6,912pp,
including drinks with meals
and all activities, departing on
May 6 (aquaexpeditions.com).
Fly to Baltra.Viking Cruises will add
a ninth ship, the 930-
passenger Viking Saturn,
to its ocean-going fleet in
2023, with some unusual
itineraries from Reykjavik,
the ship’s summer base.
The Iconic Iceland,
Greenland and CanadaFROM
REYKJAVIK
TO NEW YORK
voyage, for example, will
explore Iceland’s rugged
coastline for five days
before crossing the north
Atlantic to visit Nanortalik
and Qaqortoq in Greenland.
The next landfall is Canada’s
east coast, with the ship then
sailing slowly south to New
York, where the voyage
ends. Fourteen nights’
full board costs from
£5,290pp, including flights,
excursions, crew tips
and drinks with meals
(vikingcruises.co.uk).Sue Bryant has the latest news,
from flexible river sailings to
a one-off Antarctic voyage
CASTING
OFF
In response to customer
demand for more flexibility
in river cruising, Riviera
Travel has launched a series
of voyages for 2022 that will
give cruise fans the chance
to build their own holidays,FLEXIBLE RIVER
CRUISING
using the ship as a base.
Cruise & Explore — which
will operate on the Danube,
the Rhine and the Rhône —
means you pay less for the
cruise but arrange your own
travel and transfers. You will
also source and book your
own excursions, rather than
paying upfront for included
tours, and you will eat ashore
for one meal a day, with eitherThe Szechenyi Chain Bridge spans the Danube in Budapest
Sally Lightfoot
crabs are a
common sight
in the Galapagos