Viking River Cruise: Water for Orchids

Being an introvert, I need quiet like I need air, find loud music and crowds exhausting and see no reason to stay up past 10 p.m. Just so you know my biases going in.

Service

Viking “transfers” take care of you, beginning to end. They meet you at the airport, take you to greet your Viking trip coordinator at the hotel, (Bonjour, Francoise!) deliver luggage to your room. At departure, you put your bags outside your door, they load them on the bus to the boat, where again they appear outside your door. They confirm departing flights, deliver you to the airport and check in your bags. We never had to schlep a suitcase.

Aboard, by the time we finished breakfast, our room was cleaned, the day’s agenda on the bed. Eight days on the boat with one decision to make: shall I do the tour? Day one they introduce staff and crew, who seem to never sleep, are masters of navigating narrow locks, preparing meals for 180 guests, coordinating four events daily. Many of our crew were Romanian, beneficiaries of the E.U. “You can go where the jobs are,” the second mate said.

Food

On the longboat*, meals are generous and varied. At lunch and dinner beer and wine are included, flow freely. Coffee stations sit on either side of the lounge, dispensing excellent lattes, coffees, espressos, teas. Pastries in the morning, cookies in the afternoon. One large dining room for dinner at 7, dining room and lounge buffet for lunch and breakfast, with wider time frames, so less crowded, quieter.

*Phil says it’s not really a longboat because dragons aren’t carved into the bow.

French balcony stateroom

Staterooms

Spacious rooms with real balconies were too pricey for us. Second level rooms are much smaller and include “French balconies,” a sliding glass door that opens on a “leanable” railing. More than economy but worth it to us. If you’re introverts, even a relatively quiet vessel with 180 guests and 50 crew can overwhelm from time to time. We enjoyed lulls in the room, watching landscape slide past. Below us, economy rooms had sealed windows just above the water line. Rita became a friend—she was reading Margaret Atwood—had one of those rooms, said: “we’re in steerage.” Rita and Lee spent their time on the sundeck, in the lounge or library.

Staying connected

At our hotels and aboard, free wi-fi. We were warned connections might be interrupted, but it was there when I wanted to post photos or check email. T–Mobile has international coverage, no extra cost. My monthly bill after the trip was unchanged. We were entering a lock and I was in the lounge when Bojan, our program director, strode past, phone to his ear, saying, “there’s no signal.” A common problem in the locks. I glanced at my phone: full bars.

Tours

Tour guide, seeing a column of white smoke rising behind a bridge: “oh, we have a new pope.” A joke only available in Europe.

Daily tours were included, in Paris and Prague, as well as at each stop along the river. There were also extra cost excursions. We signed up for an additional cost folkdance event in Prague we couldn’t do, and Bojan (Thanks, Bojan!) cheerfully refunded us. The check arrived days after we got home.

After four tours in four days, I needed a break, stayed on the boat with Phil. Most guests gone, we watched the river roll by, read, walked the track on the sundeck. At Koblenz, we docked a quarter mile from town. I walked there on my own, skipped the tour.

Tour guide: What’s the difference between Americans and Europeans? Americans think 200 years is a long time. Europeans think 200 miles is a long way.

Phil in the lounge after the tour group left

We went through many locks at night. Once I looked outside before going to bed to find a wet, rusty wall inches away. Once I woke at midnight, Frankfurt’s bright skyscrapers sliding past, the boat clipping along, kicking up a wake. By the time I grabbed my phone, the skyscrapers were behind us, but I caught a bridge.

Frankfurt at midnight

Tourists

We hadn’t quite grasped that we’d always be in tourist groups, that all our stops would be tourist attractions, that in October, there are almost as many tourists as in summer. On my solo to Koblenz, I walked two blocks away from old town and achieved a tourist-free environment. But then found myself in an alley-sized street with not another soul in sight. A bit creepy.

Programs

A glassblower demonstrated and sold his wares; a lively power point lecturer told the history of these rivers and their locks; before dinner Bojan brought slides and humor to describe the next day’s events. Many did all the included activities and extra ones too. They must have been extroverts. Music and dancing in the lounge at 9. We were in our quiet room by then, reading.

People

The dining room had round tables for six. Find a table with openings and join. I was anxious about dinner, but we did meet interesting people. We met judges, a man from Idaho one night; an Hispanic woman from Texas the next; a psychiatric nurse from California who specialized in suicide prevention; teachers and social workers, accountants. Everyone avoided politics. But 180 people raise a din: we sometimes had trouble hearing those at our table.

Music

The sundeck and our room were the only places free of piped in music. After a romantic Spanish ballad followed by a bouncy disco tune in the lounge, I’d had it, went to the sundeck. It was cold. Back inside at the coffee station, with its bucket chairs, couch and coffee table, the music was less intrusive. The table held a small orchid. A staff person gently set an ice cube between the twigs of its supporting stakes. He explained: if you give them too much water all at once they die.

That’s true of more than water for orchids. Glad I’d declined the day’s tour, I went back to writing these notes.

Phil on the sundeck

 

 

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6 Responses to Viking River Cruise: Water for Orchids

  1. C.M. Mayo says:

    Hola dear Pat,

    Oh, this sounds so heavenly & relaxing…

    “What’s the difference between Americans and Europeans? Americans think 200 years is a long time. Europeans think 200 miles is a long way.” So true!!

  2. C.M. Mayo says:

    PS Water for orchids… good & most memorable advice.

    • dubrava says:

      It was one of those moments, sitting there writing, the river sliding past, and this staff guy brings a little bucket, lifts an ice cube with his tongs and gently places it. Both a indication of the kind of attention to detail they provide on those cruises and a wonderfully apt symbol. We are all orchids in some regard or another, especially in this present world of American politics, when every morning I click “breaking news” on my phone in dread of what has happened now.

  3. Jenny-Lynn says:

    What a fun and vivid trip report! The sensitive side of my extrovert self finds nothing more rewarding than a solitary walk off the beaten path in a new city. Thanks for another lovely post!

  4. Deb says:

    Enjoying reading your travel posts, Pat, especially as we continue our trek through SE Asia. I can definitely relate to much of it, especially the piped in music and “tourist destinations,” packed with phone clicking foreigners who stop in the middle of a crowded walkway to take selfies (and then review them) giving you dirty looks when you try to pass them. If there wasn’t something lovely to see, it wouldn’t be a tourist destination, so we grin and bear it. Yesterday we lucked out by visiting a unique botanic garden with amazing structures built of teak, full of Buddhist artifacts, and NO people. The Chinese tourists are the loudest and travel by bus en mass, detested by Thais, Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotians alike. Travel is the only legitimate form of adult play and I still love it, but after 6 weeks I am ready for my own bed.

    • dubrava says:

      “Travel is the only legitimate form of adult play.” I am still mulling over that statement. So it’s true, then: tourists have stormed the ramparts of the world and the Chinese are prominent among them. Six weeks is a long time and I’m in awe of your stamina, Deb. Safe journey home!

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