aronde

We saw it yesterday at Santorini from our Celestyal Crystal ship. It looks nice but wow as also seen in the video above it really pumps out some exhaust. Way more than other large ships we have seen on our travels! 

A lot of things have to happen before cruising takes place again. Travel restrictions need to be lifted. Physical distancing rules need to be lifted. Attractions need to open up again. Bans imposed by governments on cruise ship visits need to be lifted. Travel insurance companies need to start issuing policies again. And a vaccine would be nice.

After all that personally I’d be looking at 6 months of trouble free cruising before I’d consider hoping on board again. And by trouble free I mean no ships being denied entry by port authorities if passengers on board have a sniffle! 

Have tried the premium and standard wines at chef’s table and both have always been good with generous pours and refills. In fact we had trouble drinking our paired wines before the next course came out! 

8 hours ago, zitsky said:

Uh oh.  Now you've given your secret away.  Pax will flood the spa and everyone will eat at 8.

LOL yes will see if any changes when I go on my next Viking cruise!

On 7/31/2019 at 2:34 AM, SrCruizer said:

You cannot book any additional “non guaranteed” reservations. Their website won’t allow it. Once aboard, you can go to the reservation desk at the World Cafe & see about additional reservations. Also, on several occasions we have gone to The Chef’s Table (our favorite specialty restaurant) as a walk in due to people no-showing or canceling. Worth a try with Manfredi’s. The main dining room does not take reservations. 

Unless you encounter a website glitch where after making your allocated reservations in MVJ you are told you have '-1 reservations remaining' and can make some more! 😉

We also had no trouble making reservations for either restaurant via the app once on board. The 8 and 8:30 time slots always seemed available so our plan was often - 

1. See the port we were at.

2. Get back on board, have a rest and go to the spa from about 6:30/7pm when we were often the only people in there!

3. Have dinner at 8/8:30 in Manfredis or Chefs Table. 

I've noticed that your pricing is very different from one country to the next. For instance booking from Australia if I go to your .no site I can get a Jan 8, 2020 Bergen round trip for 37688K (about $A6196) but if I look at your UK site it is 3848 pounds (about $A7098) nearly $1000 dearer for same category Arctic Superior cabin on middle deck! Can I book with your Norwegian site (I'm happy to read Norwegian!). thanks.

We had a great Northern Lights trip last January on the Finnmarken - probably the best cruise we have ever done! Just wondering though why we only spent an hour in Stokmarknes - we were really enjoying the Finnmarken museum there but had to race back to the 'real' Finnmarken. It would be great to make that a longer stop on future voyages.

Yes the dogs, snow hotel and also reindeer are all in the one spot. 

Be aware dog sledding gets cancelled also. We had it booked for Kirkenes but it was -32 and to cold for the dogs to go for a run! Replaced with snow hotel extended tour and visiting the dogs in their unheated kennels. 

We have done both the drive and the train between Seward and Anchorage. Sights from the train are vastly superior in my opinion. The train will also slow down if things of interest are seen. The bus will just keep on going so blink and you will miss things! Renting a car and driving the route is a good option also so you can at least stop at the scenic spots along the way.

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I’ll second that. Caught it both ways with the family and was very easy. It was quite crowded after a few stops so if you have luggage just make sure to park it out the way. But everyone is very polite getting on and off and making room for people. It was the cheapest thing we did in Norway and kids loved the announcements and chimes over the PA also!

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Must be different booking conditions for us Aussies. Tips are included in our fare and I double checked my invoice when I saw this thread! Also from the FAQs on Australian site - What Is The Tipping Policy?

Shipboard gratuities for shipboard personnel are included in your cruise fare on Viking Cruises Europe ocean cruise / tour programs. Additional tipping is at the guests discretion.

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Wow I have never had a response from a cruise line on this forum! thanks so much for taking the time to answer - we look forward to our free movies! [emoji2]

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does anyone know if the hdmi port is accessible? wife and I occasionally binge watch tv series loaded on an iphone!

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We were on Finnmarken in January and had no problems at all. Even streamed netflix a few times!

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Thanks so much for this review!

...

One concern I have is getting cabin fever on the 12 day cruise in December. Did you experience this at all?

 

If you had to choose either the northbound or the southbound, which would you choose?

Thanks for the kind replies everyone!

As for the queries above no cabin fever for us in our balcony suite! :D Realistically though if we were in a 'normal' sized cabin we would have spent most of our time in the various lounges watching the world go by. On Finnmarken we never had any problem getting a seat anywhere on the ship when we felt like it.

We would probably choose Southbound but only because we enjoyed more excursions on that leg. I'd suggest anyone looking to decide North versus South look at the duration and timing of stops and the excursions on each leg and decide what suits their interests best.

Hi all. Our Finnmarken review has finally appeared here.

Happy to answer any questions you may have as my time permits now that I am back on the real world of work and other commitments! :)

Yep they are all by the glass for wine. Sorry I should have clarified as it is not immediately obvious from description. My wife and I took a liking to the Mack ciders only 74 kroner for a 330ml bottle. The full wine list is a large booklet to hard to photograph but took some shots of first couple pages of the fancier wines to add to my full review in due course. Also grabbed the a la carte upgrade menu if you really want to spend some money!

Currently in Singapore defrosting / melting before heading back to Australia. Hard to believe the trip is all over and reality soon awaits!

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Thank you for your comment on the 'bright moon competition' - I checked the moon for January 2019 - Full Moon is January 21 - so moon might already bee to bright by January 16?

 

Another interesting this is a total Lunar Eclipse visible in Tromsø on 21. jan 2019.

Maybe? Check also if it sets some time during the night. I was talking about the moonlight with people on deck last night and was told that a bright moon is not always a problem if the display is good and it can actually enhance some photos as the moon lights up the landscape.

From my limited experience it was a problem last night as the display was only ‘good’ for a short period of time then was fairly dim after that. The moon was also near the area of sky the display was in. On our great viewing night last week I can’t imagine stronger moonlight would have caused too much of an issue as the display was very bright and covered large areas of the sky.

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Thanks again.

 

 

 

Yeah, we had been wondering about sleeping in clothing, especially if we are further north and the sky isn't overcast. Sounds like that might make sense.

 

 

 

The Northern Lights "forecast" does show that Tromso was right "in the band" yesterday/today. Where were you? (Hmmm... wonder if the Lights are ever visible on the ship's webcam? That would be something!)

 

 

 

Glad that your children got to see some brilliant displays.

 

 

 

GC

We were well south of Tromsø heading further south hence why they were just a small display low in horizon at the back (north) of the ship. Bright moon last night also was competing for attention. We crossed the arctic circle this morning so I think our northern lights viewing is over now in this trip.

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...We also have a balcony, but that will only help if the ship is oriented so we are "facing" that part of the sky, and that's pot luck given how the ship often goes in and out of fjords and around little islands, etc.

 

 

 

If there are the really dramatic lights, does anyone know if those are very fleeting or might the most dramatic linger long enough to wake up, throw on *something*, then a jacket/boots, and charge up to the top deck? Or are we "over-worrying" about missing the lights if they do appear?

 

....

 

 

 

GC

Our port side balcony ended up being the side the lights were first sighted on with the northbound leg. However they soon spread to cover the whole sky so we would then head to the top deck. After a while we headed back to the room where it was warm and braved the balcony when we saw them flare up again. The best display we saw was actually from here but people mentioned they were spectacular all around the ship. Also last night we saw the lights from our balcony well before the announcement (they were behind the ship) so we grabbed a few shots from there then rugged up some more before heading to the rear decks. These were fleeting though and by the time the announcement came the best was over.

So short answer to your questions is it all seems pretty random! Some go for ages and some just a few minutes. On the northbound leg they advised us the lights were very likely so be prepared (sleep in your clothes if necessary!). A balcony though was the best investment for this trip especially as we are also traveling with kids.

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What magnificent photos!

 

 

 

What type of camera?

 

DH gets amazing photos - to my all-too-amateur eyes - from his iPhone, and I wonder about seeing if he'd want to fuss with something nicer.... and more complicated (?). (I'd obviously involve him in the process; no fair giving a gift that someone finds annoying to use... and obligated to use, eh?)

 

 

 

We are really curious about either 24 darkness or 24 sun. Does that mean we need to return two more times? :) (Well, somewhere, at least!)

 

 

 

We'll be reading your review as soon as you post it. We leave home a month from tomorrow, so the countdown begins.

 

 

 

Thanks again!

 

 

 

How long in airtime are your flights? That's some distance.

 

 

 

GC

Those pics were just an iPhone 6s. I also bought along an Olympus tg5 which has been great for ‘point and shoot’ in low light/northern light situations (possibly even better with a bit of post exposure adjustment) and also for zooming in on scenes with telephoto lens.

I’m hoping the lights make another appearance so I can try out some of the other camera settings on the Olympus with a tripod. Not sure how that will go on a moving ship but others have had success though they have much better equipment. I was too excited watching the lights on the first few nights to worry about taking too many pics and setting up a tripod. Luckily we have a balcony because I nearly tripped over three tripods in the dark out on deck the first night - they were everywhere!

Flight times I try not to think about! [emoji2]About an hour to Copenhagen from Bergen, then 12 hours I think to Singapore then 9 back to Australia. Add in stopover time but we are breaking it up by having a couple of days in Singapore to defrost on the way home!

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Aronde - Thank you for posting and the beautiful pictures. Which ship.

. I’m planing a trip with Trollfjord from Kirkenes to Bergen January 16, 2019 - this will be the first day with sun in Kirkenes in 2019. I’ll stay few days in Kirkenes pre-cruise.

Looking forward to your review

 

 

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You’re welcome. We are on the Finnmarken. Great ship, crew and food is my short review!

Also you are probably aware the first day with sun ‘visible’ may not be Jan 16 as it is highly dependent on the weather and also it does not rise very high in the sky especially when it first makes an appearance in January. Our guide in Kirkenes a few days ago said this was only the third time he had seen it in the last two months!

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-30 was the air temp in Kirkenes. No wind, blue skies and the sun even sneaked up over the horizon. We transferred over to a tour of the snow hotel and visited the reindeer and huskies. Very nice and given how frozen we were just walking around kind of glad we did not go zooming around the arctic landscape with huskies! Also our ship was an icebreaker getting into port!

No 24 hour darkness. Late sunrises and early sunsets and quite a bit of twilight depending on how far north we are. Crisp, clear skies at the moment. Just had great excursion ‘taste of vesteralen’ where we had massive snowfalls, clear skies and a sunrise/setting sun over the mountains all in the space of four hours with breathtaking scenery. Here are a few shots from today to give you an idea of the light taken between about 11 am and 2pm -

Did a few other excursions as well with one more to go. Will write about them at end of trip in a few days. We have a long flight back to Australia next week!

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