portisheadblue

We live near Bristol and always prefer to fly from there …. Viking have been very happy to route us from Bristol via Amsterdam on KLM to almost anywhere in the world. We don’t mind the connection in AMS as the opposite is 2 to 3 hour taxi ride each way to/from LHR plus an extra £400 cost to us. We did ask Viking several times to fly us with Easyjet but they politely declined. Also, we find the U.K. flight office to be very helpful.

Today we received an email from Viking advising us that September 2024 cruise from Barcelona will now depart from Barcelona and not Taragonna - so for that cruise it is now what we booked originally.

We have done both Ocean and River before and after Covid and we enjoy them both and accept there are differences …. on Ocean we make maximum use of the the speciality restaurants and on River we camp out on the Aquavit Terrace as much as possible. The SSP on River is a much better offering than on Ocean …. but they are both great value.

We’ve stayed in 8003 a couple of times …. no issue with noise from Explorers Lounge (and you get your almost private entrance to EL) and no issue with noise from deck 9 either. cheers

Here we are sat in Athens awaiting our flight home and we are at the other end of the cruise having completed the Cappadocia extension - which went very well on the whole. … on arrival we checked into our hotel, Carlton Hilton, where we spent 9 hours….. arrived at 7pm and up and out by 4am to catch scheduled flight with Turkish Airlines … first surprise was to be told on arrival that we could leave our luggage with Viking and they would look after it and it would be on our bus from IST to the ship … a nice surprise that generated a rapid re-packing …. Second surprise was to be told we had until 2pm next day to confirm or decline a booking for the ballon ride the next day … we opted to do the ballon ride but it was cancelled due to wind speed. Had it gone ahead it was 290 USD per person charged to your room on the ship and nothing to pay if it doesn’t go ahead .. third surprise was that there were about 150 of us doing the pre extension .. we stayed at a “cave” hotel but none of them have 75 caves so don’t be disappointed if, like us, you got a “normal” room Well worth the effort and lack of sleep to visit Cappadocia especially in the good hands of Viking.

Thank You for your in depth reply above …. a great amount of detail; and you are right about the post cruise being very different to the ore cruise. Did you fly Turkish Airlines or Pegasus or another airline please? Kind Regards

We are taking the Cappadocia pre-cruise extension in October 2022. Could any of you have taken this extension recently please? Can you share information on the travel arrangements from and to Istanbul please? Also we’re any of you able to fit in a dawn ballon ride? If so, how? Thanks for reading this far. Safe Travels. Cheers

I would just like to say a BIG “Thank You” for every post you have made on your trip round half the world. I’ve read almost every post and enjoyed the honesty, the insights, the education and your humour. Enjoy the rest of your trip. Kind Regards to you both.