Elite Traveler Fall 2023

This image Seabourn Venture at Siglufjörður, a town in Iceland

Right, from top The Restaurant; the Discovery Center

Maybe it’s because she was born in an Italian shipyard, but whether lying in some far- fl ungbayor docked alongside a rusting container ship, she manages

The PC6 polar class ship will be no stranger to the Arctic and Antarctic. In between the ice caps, though, are a thousand reasons to jump into those Zodiacs, and mine were lying in wait in the middle of the Venture’s voyage from Greenwich (London) to Greenland. Amidst a frisson of excitement as the cognoscenti pore over the new vessel, we head north into an ever colder, ever lighter destiny. A choice of shore visits is carefully choreographed, with the Orkney Islands and its Norse heritage pro ff ering the fi rst steps into a world of Vikings and Icelandic sagas. In Stromness, where there’s a traditional music festival, everyone seems to be carryinga fi ddle. The long dark Nordic nights, we

learn, have spawned a musical heritage, where the ability to play an instrument is as ubiquitous in Shetland as it is in Iceland. Fair Isle, an isolated speck of less around 60 inhabitants between Orkney and Shetland, rises out of the Atlantic in a drama of wild windswept beauty. Afterour fi rst Zodiac landing and a bracing hike, we join the islanders at their community center. Over tea, one islander explains how his wife became Britain’s most isolated head teacher, supervising the school’s fi ve pupils. After Covid, it seems, they were looking for a change. Clearly, they’re experiencing one. An outbreak of pu ffi n mania ensues, as the little birds with the comical beaks fl ap their way into an

tolookase ff ortlessly stylish as only a true Italian can