If you want to do the e-bike tour, ask the day you board the ship. There are often spaces that become available.
For some reason, there was a lot of demand for the Mercedes Benz tour. It was full but we asked when we boarded and added it. There were others and the ship was able to add spaces from other Viking ships. I think everyone who wanted to, was able to go. It was more male than female, although I throughly enjoyed the tour.
We did the medieval village of Colmar, it was great but if I had to do it over again, I would do the ww2 tour.
(We did the Grand European) I really liked the Markburg Castle. We also did a Kinderdijk outing but it was not a barge. Fascinating. They are always fighting the sea.
Strasbourg was such a lovely city—after the walking AM tour we stay in town for the afternoon, strolling the streets and squares, enjoying fresh french bread, macrons, cheese.
We did the Bruhl palaces after the AM tour of Cologne–well worth it. If we had not we would have gone back into the cathedral for a second look–tour guide gave us 15 minutes–15 minutes!!!
We loved the medieval Colmar tour, the WWII tour got rave reviews as well, can’t go wrong with either one, but they cover different areas, as the battle took place outside of town.
Thanks for the feedback. My husband has booked an afternoon tour at Mercedes Benz factory, but I may hang back with our friends to spend more time in Strasbourgh.
The MB tour would be more tempting if I had not already gone to the Audi museum (factory was closed that week) with him in 2015 for his 60th birthday treat when the kids took a tour out to Neuschwanstein Castle.
Popping back here to say I have been learning LOTS on the FB group “Viking Rhine River Cruises 2022 and Beyond”. There are general tips as well as detailed info about specific ships, tours, ports.
Today we made more progress planning our Sept trip, Rhine Getwaye (8 nights, Amsterdam —> Basil).
The bad news: We booked with free air, but the other couple upgraded from the base economy seats. We discovered we are on very different flights, a bummer because we can’t carpool at the airport. Also, the other couple arrives a half day later and won’t have as much pre-cruise time during our 2 night stay in Amsterdam. But we stuck with it because there were no upgraded seats available on our United flights, and we didn’t want to spend another $1100 to switch to their later American flights. If we do this kind of group Viking trip again again, we will lnvestigate the best way to get the same flights. Evidentially visiting the AAA agent together and booking at the same time is not enough (though it may have been if everybody was flying economy).
The good news: We booked the train we wanted Basel ==> Florence. It has only one change, stays on the same train line (Trenitalia). And it has a 20 min layover. That does not sound like much unless you know that some of the options had a 4 minute layover, and per online research travellers need to go up a flight of stairs with suitcases and over the track and then back down a flight of stairs.
The OK news: We can only fly out of Rome, not Florence. So we reduced from 5 nights in Florence to 4. We’ll rent a car and drive through the small towns and stay last night near Rome airport.
I hope I’m allowed to do this, but the CruiseCritic chat boards have a section devoted exclusively to Viking river cruises. You can get tons of info there–those of us who are Viking veterans love to share what we’ve learned.
I apologize to the mod if recommending other websites isn’t allowed.
We’re looking at this itinerary too (not sure when - we may try a med cruise on an ocean ship first), so please come back and do a review afterward!
I’ve joined FB groups and also regularly peruse Cruise Critic. It’s hard to know which river cruise company is the best to go with. Many like Viking but then there’s also a lot of praise for AMA, Avalon, Tauck & Scenic.
Tauck and Scenic are more high-end than Viking, AMA and Avalon, but you can’t go wrong with any of those. Look at the itineraries once you choose a river. In our case we liked Viking’s itinerary best, but that worked for us, may not work for everyone.
We’ve watched a bunch of YouTube videos on the Viking ships and itineraries. It looks like a nice product. From what I can tell, the higher end lines include more things in the price (drinks, excursions) and have less passengers on board so their cabins and common spaces are slightly larger.
We like Viking because we attended a AAA info session and learned they send a ship from both ports each day, have ability to switch passengers to other ship if water too low/high (ie not switch to land tour in that situation). But we are on the Rhine, and most years water level is not an issue. Various friends have definitely liked Viking.
The original appeal of Viking was “no extra cost”. It turns out there is one Included tour each day, which is sufficient per many reviewers. But we’ve also added a few of the paid tours, and they range from $69 to over $200/person. Regardless of which line you select, it is nice that river ports are usually close to town, which was not always the case on our ocean cruise of Western Med (Pompei, Florence, Rome were an hour or two bus ride, pricey shore excursions).
I’ve heard that AMA has free bikes available, but I have not confirmed that.
Here is one important thing to consider when going on a cruise nowadays. Bring your own medication supply. Whatever you would use at home if you got sick (Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Sudafed, thermometer), bring it. Cruise lines are not well equipped for even minor illnesses. You want to get these supplies on the boat? Well, if you’re in port, the gift shop will be closed, maybe you can find it in the port, maybe not. You can pay $$ and see the onboard doctor, but you might not get what you need.
My SIL is on a Viking cruise in Europe right now and she and her partner came down with Covid yesterday. They have only been offered aspirin and cough medicine. They need Paxlovid, I think, since he’s massively at risk (one lung). That certainly isn’t onboard, and they’ve been told they’ll need to go to a hospital for that. I’m very worried.
Another example, we were on a Carnival cruise, got a brutal stomach ailment. Gift store onboard closed, too sick to go ashore, $150 medical visit and they gave my husband a powdered useless medication. A crew member overheard my request to the service desk for anything else (nothing they could give us), and took me to her room to kindly give me a bottle of anti-diarrhea medication.
Actually @busdriver11, I travel with a small pharmacy when I go to other countries, just because me and my docs want me to be prepared. It really can be quite compact if you use tiny ziplock bags to store each medication and put the medication label on each tiny ziplock.
I have done this for peace of mind and my medication pack includes a course of Paxlovid, Azithromycin (antibiotic), anti-diarrhea medication, benedryl, ibuprofen, allergy medication, Tamuflu and more.
Be aware that some countries require prescription medications to be in their original containers and that you bring the script with you. My inlaws just went through this for a cruise in New Zealand. Traveling Abroad with Medicine | Travelers' Health | CDC
I just came back from a Viking Grand European tour.
I don’t think many taxis are big enough for 4 people plus 4 pcs of luggage so there’s no loss there. Take the train from Schiphol to downtown. The ticket machine is right inside the luggage claim area, you can’t miss it.
As of now, Viking has no policy on Covid, that is if you are positive, they don’t require you to mask up or isolate. Towards the end of our trip, many people were coughing, having running nose and skipping meals. One couple felt bad enough to visit a hospital in Vienna, tested positive for Covid and went on their business as usual back on the ship. They didn’t mask up, took bus tours and sat with others at meals. Totally irresponsible.
I came home with Covid, my first ever infection. My husband who’s had Covid once before was fine. We exchanged photos via email with some passengers whom we met on the cruise and almost everyone on our email chain came down with Covid as well. Cruise ships are now super spreaders.
That’s awful. Seems like there would be some liability for not having a Covid policy in place to protect others, even if they didn’t enforce it. My SIL and boyfriend definitely got Covid on this cruise, now it makes me wonder how many people on their boat have it now. They are self isolating.
So smart to do that. Think I’d bring that small pharmacy everywhere, actually. I didn’t know you could get Paxlovid and an antibiotic pre-emptively, but I’m glad you did.
I carry my little medicine kit (including an extra month worth of blood thinners for my husband) every time we go on a trip, even stateside. Since Covid started, my kit has gotten significantly larger, though still easy to carry. I traveled more than ever during Covid, so I added a bunch of things to my kit that I used often. Cleaning supplies for hotel and airplane, a long book in case I was imprisoned in a hotel room for a week or more, and a grocery bag with about a week’s worth of food, because you never knew if you could get food at a hotel or restaurant when you were traveling (forget the airport and airlines). And the most important thing, a screw cap bottle of good red wine! Don’t have to do the food/wine bit anymore, fortunately.
My pharmacist is the one who gave me the tiny ziplock & labels. My lung doc wanted me to travel with all of these Rx so he wouldn’t have to worry about me. I was on a tour and public transit a lot. I wore a hood KF94 mask and never got any infections. We brought covid tests but never tested. The tour leaders tested themselves every other day. As far as I know, no one on our tour was ever ill.
My H’s md wasn’t willing to prescribe Paxlovid proactively. Not sure if she gave him any rx before we left but we figured if we caught something that needed treatment, we at least had something to start with.
My SIL just said that they jumped through a bunch of hoops, went to the emergency room and got the Paxlovid. Sure hope it was worth it and that it helps! Wish they would have brought it with them.
If you can, I would time your covid booster to coincide with any travel.
Last year, we got our booster and flu vaccine 2 weeks before our river cruise. We stayed very healthy. I think the booster helped but luck was some of it.