Icebergs in Iceland to the Inland Seas of the Great Lakes Aboard Le Bellot

Some contracts take you to one incredible destination. Our 2024 season aboard Ponant’s Le Bellot somehow gave us two completely different worlds back to back — a few weeks of dramatic Icelandic coastline, followed by a run deep into the heart of North America along the Great Lakes.

Iceland: Fire, Ice, and Fjords

We started the contract circling Iceland, calling at ports like Heimaey in the Westman Islands (still scarred, beautifully, by its 1973 volcanic eruption), Grundarfjörður beneath the iconic Kirkjufell mountain, Grímsey, which straddles the Arctic Circle itself, Akureyri in the north, and Ísafjörður, tucked deep into the fjords of the remote Westfjords. Waterfalls, black sand beaches, whales, and geothermal steam rising out of nowhere — it’s a landscape that takes centre stage here, long before we even pick up an instrument.

Into the Great Lakes

From there, Le Bellot repositioned across the Atlantic for something completely different: a voyage through North America’s Great Lakes, heading down the St Lawrence seaway, past schools of Beluga, onto Montreal where we were halted… A tanker ship had gotten stuck (this wasn’t much long after the Suez Canal container ship hold up!), so what a pity, we had to stay in Montreal for 3 days! It was incredible. The cruise carried on to Toronto and working through Lake Ontario, the Welland Canal, Lake Erie, Detroit, Lake Huron, the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, and on into Lake Michigan, finishing around Milwaukee. It’s an itinerary most people don’t even realise a cruise ship can do (and big ships can’t) — sailing between five inland seas, transiting historic engineering marvels like the Welland Canal and the Soo Locks along the way.

Mackinac Island, sat between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, was a particular favourite — no cars are allowed on the island at all, so everything moves by bicycle or horse-drawn carriage, giving the whole place a genuinely Victorian, step-back-in-time feel. It’s weird because it smells 50% of horse doings and 50% of fudge (which is INCREDIBLE there), so you’re never sure how deep a breath to take.

Two Very Different Stages

Performing across this contract meant adapting constantly — playing outdoor musical sets that suited the Icelandic scenery giving way to something warmer and more Americana-leaning once we hit the Great Lakes. We loved visiting the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland (spent hours there geeking out) and enjoyed it so much we had to go back the next time the ship arrived.

Iceland’s volcanic drama and the industrial-age engineering of the Great Lakes couldn’t be more different destinations, but back to back, they made for one of the most varied and memorable contracts we’ve had.