longterm

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.

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.

That may be where we were! I seem to recall it was a couple of doors down... this is a photo of my son who was 13 at the time, back in 2010, in the restaurant. I bet that's the same place. 🙂

I stayed there with my son back in 2010 and we really liked it; back in those days wifi was nonexistent, but I'm sure that's resolved now. Very good location; we're staying at a different place this time due to price, but the M Gloucester was very nice. Good Indian restaurant next door, if I recall.

I went there with my son years ago; he loved it. We already have tickets to the Churchill War Rooms, have some others for which tickets aren't yet available, but I've got 4 days planned for us with lots to do. Our hotel's about a mile from the London Eye but we could either walk it with our carryons or take a car; I like the idea of cruising the Thames to Greenwich. Thanks all for the good advice.

We’re staying in London, near the Lambeth north station. Is there a train that gets to Greenwich from there, or is a bus the only public method? Also, what is the name of the stop in Greenwich? I see several to choose from. Thanks in advance

I stayed there back in 2010; very nice hotel, close to the tube.

Fortunately, I had booked the cruise with a really helpful guy, whose extension I had, and he was great. He did ask if we had another cruise booked--I'm assuming that in order to make that allowance, you have to have another cruise booked--at least, that's how it sounded. At any rate, all good.

I did! I was ready right at the stroke of 2pm, and I only had 3 optional excursions to book, so I did those first, then grabbed all the included excursions. We've got quite a few private excursions booked, so I only had about 9 excursions total to book. I did notice that some are already sold out.

UPDATE: Called my Viking rep and he updated our booking so that we don't have to make final payment until 180 days out...

I don't want to change the cruise date, just the final payment date (that may be what you meant); I'll give them a call and see how it goes, and will report back. Thanks!

We've already booked a cruise for 2026--from Barcelona to Istanbul; I booked it a couple of weeks ago, but have 2 questions: 1. We'll be on-board the Viking Neptune for the British Isles Explorer in July; while on board, I could book that same cruise. My question is this: when booking on board, is a delayed final payment always offered? As it stands now, we have to pay the final payment by January 2025, but if we booked on board, I'm hoping we could get a final payment date that's only 6 months from our departure. Is this a standard offering when booking on-board? 2. I've been advised that, if we DO book the same cruise while on our trip this summer, that we should REVISE our existing booking, rather than canceling the first and re-booking. Is this good advice, and will the shipboard agent be aware of this procedure? Thanks in advance.

My endocrinologist told me not to worry about it, that not being refrigerated for the flight would be okay and not damage the injectable drug.

For a cruise a few years ago, I ordered euros from our local Chase bank; not only did it take a week to become available, but the bank charged a ridiculous exchange rate and "convenience" fee. Never again. Since that trip, we never get foreign currency ahead of time; when arriving in our first city, I will find an ATM at a bank--not at the airport, never a non-bank ATM--and get $300-500 in euros, which usually lasts throughout the trip. On the ship, I break the larger bills for tipping, and try to use my debit card wherever possible. The other thing that I like in Europe, and which is different from here, is that when you pay with a card in a restaurant, the server doesn't disappear in the back with your card; they almost always use handheld card swipers right at the table, usually of the touchless variety, so that your card never leaves your hand.

Good idea; in reality, a lot of the excursions Viking offers are similar, if not identical, to those offered on other cruises, or by independent tour operators, so a cruise-line-agnostic forum for excursions would be a really useful thing. Perhaps each mention could also note the cruise line it was taken with, along with the date of the excursion, so that readers would be able to determine how fresh the information was. On our 2nd Grand European river cruise in October 2023, most of the offered excursions were the same as what we did back in 2019, and I would guess this is common across most of Viking's cruises.

If you're in Venice on a Sunday, keep in mind that St. Mark's doesn't allow tours on Sundays--at least, they didn't when we were there. However, you can do the Doge's Palace, Murano/Burano, etc.

We did that cruise in 2021--loved it so much that we're doing it again, but with the 1st and 4th legs this time. There *are* people boarding and disembarking in Venice; that cruise is legs 2 & 3 of a longer journey, which is made up of Leg 1: Barcelona to Rome Leg 2: Rome to Venice Leg 3: Venice to Athens Leg 4: Athens to Istanbul If you look at Viking's offerings, you'll see there's a cruise from Venice to Athens, so your cruise will more than likely pick up some new travelers in Venice. We just booked "Mediterranean's Iconic Shores," which is Barcelona to Istanbul.

What I would like would a thread where previous travelers could offer insight on their experience with various excursions, so that we could get some reviews before deciding to book them. Over time, it could grow to include a lot of the more common excursions that Viking offers. For the most part, we've liked excursions we've booked, although a few free walkabouts were pretty thin on substance. In those cases we've left the group and continued on our own (after notifying the guide, of course); I'd find it useful to read reviews that might let us know that a particular excursion might be one to skip.

True, but the port talks can be interesting; so far, we've never changed excursions at the last minute. We always spend plenty of time deciding what we're going to do in each port, so on the day booking opens up, I'm ready to grab everything that we want. I agree that it would be really useful if there were a 'clearinghouse' where we could look up a specific excursion, get some reviews of it, perhaps details about what's to be expected. It'd be a great resource when planning for booking day.

They generally talk about all the excursions, including those that may already be filled. I've never found them to be sales pitches; on river cruises it was always a daily routine to arrive 45 minutes early, have a good German beer, then hear the port talk. On ocean cruises we usually watch from our stateroom. I agree that it would be useful if they were to be a couple of days early so that we could possibly select a different excursion, but the confusion this would cause would outweigh the benefits.

We'll definitely have that set up, but I worry about a couple of the excursions selling out...

You're absolutely right--we just tested it. It wouldn't let us use our separate logins into the same MVJ, but so long as we logged in using the same login, it worked fine. Sadly, it appears now that my wife won't be available at that time, so it became a moot point for us. 😞

Our excursion booking opens up Tuesday, and I've got my list ready, have a question: If I select some excursions, is there a chance that one or more of them could fill up before I actually submit payment for them, or are they "held" for me since I've made the selections? For example, if you are buying tickets to a baseball game, your seat selections are held for you for a set # of minutes, after which the seat choices are released and again made available to the public. If anyone knows the answer, I'd appreciate the info; if selections are "held," I'll select all my excursions, then make payment; if they are NOT held, I guess I'll buy them one at a time, which will be a much bigger pain.

MVJ won't let 2 users be logged into the same account; in fact, if a Viking rep wants to see your account while you're logged in, they'll require you to logout first so that they can get in and see your account. We tested that a couple of days ago; I logged into MVJ, then my wife logged in. While we were both able to login, a banner on the excursions page indicated that she wouldn't be able to do anything other than to view excursions--she wouldn't be able to book anything. If you were able to that then you have some special powers... 🙂 Not sure I see any value in this, unless an excursion can fill up while it's sitting in your cart; perhaps someone can anyone confirm that this can happen.