Spend a Night to Remember in a Glass Igloo on Your Next Expedition Cruise

26.02.2024 - 20:09 / matadornetwork.com / Roald Amundsen / Cruises

We’re in the golden age of expedition cruises. Travelers can board relatively small luxury ships or yachts to explore remote places like the frigid Article Circle, or cruise to Antarctica to hike, kayak, and photograph penguin colonies. According to the Expedition Cruise Network, these types of excursions are the “fastest growing” market in the cruising world.

As competition gets fiercer, and more expedition ships are heading to the same destinations, cruise lines are looking for ways to stand out. In some cases, they look to green-tech innovations to entice sustainably minded guests. Take Norway’s HX, formerly Hurtigruten Expeditions, which launched the world’s first battery-hybrid cruise ship, the MS Roald Amundsen. In other cases, the way to stand out might be an acoustical, multi-sensory underwater lounge below the waterline, such as the Blue Eye lounge on French cruise ship operator Ponant’s Le Lapérouse.

I leveled up my recent trip to Greenland aboard Lindblad Expeditions’ National Geographic Endurance with its igloo experience, which entailed glamping in one of two igloos on the ship’s deck. These aren’t actual igloos built from compacted snow cubes; they’re geodesic glass igloos built on the port (left) and starboard (right) corners of the observation deck located toward the stern (back) of the ship. They run to the edge of the deck and provide unparalleled panoramic views.

Lindblad’s ships, like the National Geographic Endurance and its sister ship, the National Geographic Resolution, take guests on trips packed with outdoor adventures. You can sail to Antarctica, South Georgia, and the South Atlantic’s Falkland Islands; circumnavigate Iceland; explore Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the Norwegian coastline, and the Faroe Islands; voyage to coastal Japan; or go farther south in Patagonia. Wherever you are, an overnight stay in one of the igloos offers a unique view of each of these landscapes.

Photo: Brandon Withrow

I arrived just at sunset to find the igloo aglow in a mood-setting light show – a slow shift between soft purples, greens, and pinks that plays for guests when they arrive. That light show is intended to symbolize the aurora borealis, but it hardly compares to the view you get with a clear night sky, and in my case, the real northern lights that danced faintly in the distance.

There are no blinds on the igloo’s windows. On the entrance side, which faces the deck and an infinity-edged hot tub, the windows are private and frosted. On the other side, which sits at the edge of the ship deck and faces the water, the windows are clear. (Only the wildlife can see you there if you go au naturale.) Since the hot tub sits next to the igloo, it becomes a private space to soak and warm up after