longterm

13 hours ago, whitbob said:

We docked Rosyth on the BIE on Mars in August 2022. 
 

Our research in advance and the port talk on the ship led us to believe we would not be able to hail a cab in Rosyth.  We read on the port websites and the ship port talk confirmed that we could only get a shuttle to the train station or a taxi to the train station.  Edinburgh is only 15 miles, so why cabs don’t line up when a cruise ship appears didn’t make sense, but it was confirmed multiple places to be the case.  🤷🏼‍♀️
 

Our first hand experience was:

-viking did not have a shuttle to Edinburgh. The shuttle ran from the ship to Dunfermline stopping at the Inverkeithing train station. Guest relations provided directions and maps on how to take the train to Edinburgh.

 

-as we left the ship there was a tent (see below in top right corner) that functioned as the cruise terminal.  Once inside, there were guides directing you to Viking Excursions, shuttle buses.  They had maps, brochures, etc..  We asked if there was a taxi queue to catch a taxi to Edinburgh.  The guide said no, but he could call one for us, which he did and reported it would take 20 minutes for them to arrive.  We then wandered outside of the tent to wait.   As it turned out, there were Taxis coming and going right outside the tent/terminal.  Not a line of cabs, maybe one or two every few minutes.    People coming out and seeing the line to catch the shuttle to train station, and jumping in the cabs.  We could have done the same, but decided to wait.  Our driver arrived, spoke to the guide, collected us within the 20 minutes and we were off.  Clean, large sedan, driver was an owner/operator for the service, we were happy with service they called.
 

We cannot remember why we didn’t just Uber, but I would check the app for Uber or Lyft to see if they are operating in the area.  

And yes, the return taxi dropped us right at the terminal/tent, so we were back on the ship in a few minutes.

 

 

 

Perfect, thanks!

Sounds like we can easily catch a cab right outside the tent--we'll give ourselves plenty of time going out, and see how it goes.

2 hours ago, uktog said:

Could I suggest you aim to be at the car a little earlier. 30 minutes from Leith to Rosyth is optimistic during commute times which starts around 3 these days. It’s a route I do a lot and one I’d say is 45 minutes is the minimum during rush hour as you’ve got to get out from Leith as well.

Even on a Sunday?

Thanks for the great info; that was exactly what I was looking for. 

38 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

Don't forget to allow for the time it will take you to get from the drop off point to the ship.  No one has commented if cabs and Ubers can drop you right at the berth. What if it is a shuttle from drop off point to gangway?

I did think about that; our plan is to make sure we're in a car by 3:30, which should get us to the dockyard by 4, and then if it takes 10 minutes to get on board, we'll be fine.

We like being early, so we'll probably err on the side of caution when the day comes. 🙂

On our Med cruise, we watched from our balcony as 2 people ran up to the gangway, right at the time we were supposed to push off. They ran up the gangway, and within minutes the gangway was stowed, lines pulled in, and we were pushing off the dock.

On 11/30/2022 at 5:39 PM, jc522 said:

Previous IA&G cruises must have docked in Chioggia. If you were on one of them, please describe the situation relative to maximizing 2.5 days in Venice, as we had hoped to do.

We did the Italy, Adriatic & Greece tour in March 2021, just as Italy reopened after the pandemic.

At that time, Viking docked at Marghera, which is actually a rather nasty chemical plant (read Donna Leon's books to get her take on the foul place). Marghera is largely out of use now, but still not a safe place; in fact, a notice was delivered to our stateroom telling us what to do in the case of a chemical emergency siren. Luckily, we didn't hear one.

On the 2nd night we were moved to another dock (not Choggia, but close to Marghera); Marghera was 45 minutes from Venice.

We weren't told that we wouldn't be docking in Venice, but I had already known that the lagoon had been closed for cruise ships earlier in the year.

While the distance to Venice didn't affect our trip, we were more affected by the rule that, at the time, Italy wouldn't allow cruise passengers to wander anywhere in Italy without a tour guide. When we did excursions, there were two guides--one at the front of the group, another at the rear. We were never allowed to wander freely, although our guide in Venice did grant us 30 minutes on our own to walk around without chaperone.

We're going on that cruise again in 2026, but are tacking on the Barcelona to Rome leg, and also the Athens to Istanbul leg on the end. Our plan is to get off the ship when we arrive in Choggia, go to Venice, where we'll have a hotel room booked for two nights, and then return to the ship after 2 nights. That way we won't have to make the trek back and forth, and we'll enjoy Venice in the early hours and late hours when tourists loads are lowest.

Thanks for the answers--that was exactly what I was wanting to know.

We've got our day planned out and will rely on either a taxi or Uber to get from ship to the castle, then same to get from the Royal Yacht to the ship at 3:30pm. I've compiled a list of places we want to see; should be a great (but busy) day in Edinburgh!

We will be arriving at Rosyth on July 14th on the BIE cruise. I have a question for the knowledgeable sailors on here:

According to Apple Maps, Rosyth dockyard is 30 minutes from the royal yacht Britannia. Two questions:

1. ls the Rosyth dockyard where Viking will most likely dock the ship, if the itinerary says Rosyth, or will we be farther away? 

2. Is it reasonable to assume that we can make the 15-mile journey from the Royal yacht to the Viking ship in a half hour, on a Sunday in Edinburgh?

Our ship departs at 5 PM, and I am trying to work out a safe schedule.

 Thanks!

9 hours ago, Swick said:

Thanks for the info on shuttles in the other ports…was wondering about that as well.  Slightly off topic of my original posts, but since some of you seem familiar with this cruise…any other recommendations for excursions to do or not to do? Specifically wondering about Santorinin and Athens. In Athens our focus is the Acropolis since most have not been there before.  Thanks again for all of the help!

If you have a chance, do see Delphi; it's not nearby, so it's a bit of a journey, but of all the places we saw around Athens, it was my favorite.

The Acropolis Museum is just as fantastic; it's probably the best archaeological museum I've ever seen. We didn't go down below--I *think* you can--but just being able to see through the floor was pretty amazing.

Viking is now a public company listed on the NYSE, listed as Viking Holdings (VIK); I don't expect that to affect me personally, but it will be interesting to see how this pans out for them.

On 3/26/2024 at 12:31 PM, Torquato said:

We are on t-mobile. Our plan includes international data. Free calls in all of North America plus other perks. We only pay $60/month for two lines including taxes. Very cost effective for us. I don’t know if they offer this plan for seniors anymore. 

Us too. We switched from AT&T, got our phones paid off (almost $900 total), and the plan's much better. Same cell towers so no change in coverage. It's been nice to have data usage outside the US. Also includes Netflix & AppleTV+ as well.

On 4/10/2024 at 10:35 PM, kctwinmommy said:

Yes, we're doing the 4-day Athens pre-extension, and it was $2000 for the 2 of us, but the 2 day one was like $1300 for the 2 of us and seemed to offer so little.

We did the 4-day Athens post-extension a couple of years ago, and both felt that it was an excellent value and were glad we had booked it.

The only negative for us was the hotel restaurant; we were at the Intercontinental (moved from the original hotel because of remodeling). The hotel was very nice, very clean; the breakfast buffet was excellent, but the restaurant was overpriced and subpar. That, however, wasn't Viking's fault. 

The Athens extension was really good; we left the ship early the first morning, went directly to the Acropolis, beating the crowds; this was late March of 2022, when crowds were still not back to normal, and our time up at the Parthenon was excellent, despite a chilly wind. Be sure to go to the Acropolis Museum, which I would rate as one of the best archaeological museums I've ever seen.

The next days were good as well; Mycenae was one of my favorite sites, but Delphi was even better and we plan to revisit it in 2026 when we do another Viking Med cruise.

If you have time and want to hire a local guide, you can visit the temple of Poseidon at Sounion; the drive is really nice along the water, and a stop at a local restaurant on the way there or back is a plus. Also, a walk through the old Plaka district is well worth a visit.

I know this is off topic, but I wanted to mention it because not all post or pre-extensions turn out to be bad value.

10 minutes ago, Mike07 said:

VPNs are largely overrated, because ever since the inception of a secure connection, whether it be thru SSH, HTTPS or effectively any public/private crypto logic key exchange, the assumption is made that somebody else is listening/capturing the data going in an out.

...

 

If VPNs make anybody feel better, then by all means use them. But, I would say by in large nobody really needs one.

I agree 100%. I almost never use a VPN these days, except when I need to do business with a site that won't allow connection from a foreign country.

1 hour ago, Frisky070802 said:

I think you mean VPN? 

Yes, that's what I meant... duh! 🙂

 

1 hour ago, Frisky070802 said:

I assume that the fixed pipe per connection applies to what talks to the ship. Just because you have 3 clients going through a router doesn’t mean the router gets served a higher bandwidth than you would see on your laptop or tablet.

No, that's not what I was trying to say, but perhaps I wasn't clear.

The pipe's size is essentially fixed, so if each passenger on a cruise were to circumvent the rules and use multiple devices, using up more bandwidth than Viking intended, it would adversely affect all the other passengers. 
 

On the other hand, if it's just a question of convenience, and someone wants to have all their devices connected to wifi, even though they only use one at a time, then that wouldn't cause any problems... but Viking has its rules.

I forgot to mention this: a simple way to share an Internet connection is to use a Mac and share the Internet connection. In System Preferences, it's easily found and enabled, although I've never found the need to enable it.

This isn't available on an iPhone, but it's also a function on Windows machines as well, Power User settings.

11 hours ago, ericosmith said:

3.  It provides an added layer of security particularly in environments like hotels and Airbnb.

It's a simple matter to enable VNC if one is concerned about security in places like hotels, airports, and elsewhere; I have Nord VNC on my iPhone & laptop, and enable it when I feel the need.

Perhaps I'm being overly trusting, but I don't consider Viking passengers the types who might be looking to hack into one of my devices. 🙂

4 hours ago, CurlerRob said:

Is this a function of a newer iPhone? I’m very familiar with creating a wifi hotspot on iPhone using cellular data, but I’m unaware of the ability to do so when “connected to ship wifi”. 

Thanks. 🍺🥌

It's doable, but not with the hotspot feature--I haven't tried it, but I've read articles about how to go about it. Not something I would want to fool with though. It has to do with spoofing a MAC address, and more involved than I'll go into here.

Considering the ease of turning wifi on and off on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, it's simple enough to move a connection around as needed, and that's how I've done it on cruises for years.

Also, a ship has a finite pipe through which all passengers' Internet travels; for someone to cheat the system and use more devices than are allowed is simply bad form. 

As to travel routers--they're convenient, I suppose, but I already carry enough electronics as it is, and wifi management these days is a simple one-click process.

Just a thought, and not something I'd bother doing, but an iPhone can be used as a wifi hotspot--which means that if I wanted to (I wouldn't), I could connect my iPhone to ship wifi, then use it as a wifi hotspot to connect my laptop to ship wifi. 

I've never done a definitive test, but I would guess that speed wouldn't be as good as connecting directly to ship wifi. For that reason, I'll continue to simply disable my iPhone wifi, turn on wifi on my laptop (both of which take all of 15 seconds) and do what I need to do.
 

1 minute ago, Mike07 said:

 

 

It's 100% possible to do what OP wants.

 

Take a step back, do you think Viking is getting their internet from an undersea ethernet cable?

Please look at my edited reply. I know exactly how they get Internet.

On 4/12/2024 at 9:29 PM, ericosmith said:

Is it possible to use a travel router in the cabin to allow more than two devices at a time?  Or for that matter to just simplify the wifi connection process.

I just did some reading about "travel routers;" Although I own a company that hosts and manages servers and databases, I really don't see much use for travel routers. 

Connecting to wifi is really simple; a travel router would allow you to connect more devices and enable you to configure it once and use it in different locations, but other than that, I fail to see the point. Furthermore, I would wonder if using one of these would step down the Internet speed at least a tiny bit; given the spotty nature of ship wifi, that's not something I'd want.

I always travel with my laptop so that I can manage my company business, and carry an iPad for watching movies on flights; with 2 connections assigned to our stateroom, it isn't a big deal to disable wifi on my iPhone when I need to do things on the laptop or iPad. In fact, at home, when I leave the house, I have automation on my phone that turns off my iPhone wifi, then turns it back on when I return. It's a good idea to turn off wifi when out and about anyway, because otherwise an iPhone or Android is constantly seeking a wifi connection, and that has a negative impact on battery life.

On 4/1/2024 at 4:28 PM, Peregrina651 said:

Personally, we have been using TravelGuard for years. 

Us too. Easy to book; fortunately, we haven't had to actually file a claim, so I don't know how their resolutions go--probably no better than most insurance companies.

On 3/31/2024 at 3:20 PM, Frenchberet said:

Yes, but does it need to be an either/or situation?  Can a man come to dinner wearing pants, leave his ball cap in the room, and not stink?

Depends on the cap. 🙂

I’d much rather jeans than clouds of cologne, perfume, or powder. Axe body spray will send me to the door.
 

Almost as bad as cigarette or cigar stench. 

Will a hydrofacial grow hair on the top of a man's head? 

Asking for a friend.

3 hours ago, Jim Avery said:

While good suggestions, and I am a fan of the Thames Clipper boats, none are a good choice if you have more than minimal luggage.  If you have more than basic carry on rollers I would suggest Addison Lee car service.

We always use carryon bags plus small backpacks for each of us; I bought tickets for the Thames Clipper for the morning of our boarding.