Italy-Adriatic-Greece March 2022

[longterm]

22 hours ago, Hazel52 said:

It seems private messaging is disabled. Would love to have info for your guide in Athens. Thanks so much! Drenshaw@aol.com

Done! If anyone else wants them, just send your email address and I'll send them to you.

[longterm]

20 hours ago, Maite88 said:

I’ve tried messaging you for the information regarding your tour guide in cruise, and the “message” feature seems to be disabled.  Can you send me the info to; wanda.mora@att.net.  Thank you!

Done!

[longterm]

We're home!

 

Having spent a great time on our post extension in Athens, we flew home on the 23rd and are finally home. 

 

On our last tour day with Viking, we took a 3-hour (yes, 3 hours) drive to Delphi. Had we known how long we'd be in the bus, we would have passed, but we were both glad to have seen Delphi, which is certainly worth seeing. Worth a 3-hour drive after having seen so much by this point? If you have 2 days in Greece, I'd say no; if you have 4 or 5 days, as we did, then yes; otherwise, you can stay in Athens, visit the Plaka district, go to the archaeological museum, which we didn't get to see, and go to Old Town, which we enjoyed.

Now that we're back, I've had some thoughts on Viking's post extension:

 

We were not well-informed about the particulars of our post extension tours, and this was shared by others as well. We didn't know tour durations, and at the last minute they changed a tour day from the 4th day to the 3rd, which messed up my plans with a private guide (fortunately, she adjusted without any trouble). We got conflicting info from the ship and on the phone, which didn't help me to plan with our private tour guide in Athens.

Tara, the on-site Viking rep, was excellent; not only was she extremely informative, but she helped us to get to a little shop where we had to make a particular purchase (a cheap suitcase to hold the mountain of treasures we brought back--olive oil, olives, gifts, a beautiful olive wood bowl that I bought in Corfu, and more).

Also, Viking provided little breakfast bags for each of us on our 3am departures to the airport; the arrangements were perfect, on-time, stress-free--and Viking gets high marks for this as well.

Having said all of this, I wondered whether a private post extension would have been preferable; we did this in Rome, and because I'm a seasoned traveler, having toured all over the world with music artists for more then 20 years, everything went very smoothly.

For someone who hasn't done much itinerary planning, it might be stressful to plan for airport transfers, private tours, hotels, but we feel that private tours would be more fun, more personal, and overall make for a better experience. Also, after 19 days away, we could just as easily have headed home when we left the ship on the 19th, instead of 4 more days in Athens, but we wouldn't have gotten to see everything that we did in Athens, and we're both glad that we did--the Parthenon, Mycenae, an olive farm, Delphi, Cape Sounion, Athens Old Town, Epidaurus--all unforgettable sites to visit.

If you're doing a 4-night post extension in Athens, the 3 included tours are all well worth it and you'll be thrilled with them. Even the 3-hour drive each way to Delphi turned out to be okay considering the destination.

I forgot to mention that it snowed on the way to Delphi! Not a light snow, either; fortunately it let up when we got there, and our time at Delphi was really excellent.

The images below are all from Delphi.



 

 

 

[Azulann]

Thank you so much for your wonderful detailed  trip report.   Your explanation of your post extension with Viking is very helpful.

I have done both Viking extensions and ones on my own. It all depends on how much  time, you have to research and plan it yourself or let Viking do it. 

Your pictures  have brought back many memories of my travels to Italy and Greece.

 Have you planned another cruise? 

 

[Cienfuegos]

Thanks for the great report on the post-cruise extension.  There's a lot of wonderful detail.

 

I would be delighted if Viking offered a "lite" version of its post cruise package. Two days, or three days hotel, plus transfers. No excursions.  I know that a part of the Viking revenue stream is marking up tour arrangements, but some folks are happy to arrange their specialty guides and go that route. 

[longterm]

6 hours ago, Azulann said:

Thank you so much for your wonderful detailed  trip report.   Your explanation of your post extension with Viking is very helpful.

I have done both Viking extensions and ones on my own. It all depends on how much  time, you have to research and plan it yourself or let Viking do it. 

Your pictures  have brought back many memories of my travels to Italy and Greece.

 Have you planned another cruise? 

 

We have! We booked a cruise in July 2024, 'Scandinavia & The British Isles,' which is 29 days--starts in London, ends in Stockholm. In fact, I got an email from Viking today about the cruise; they've ceased any tours to Russia, and swapped in 2 different ports of call--Bornholm, a historic Danish island, and Mariehamn on the island of Åland. To soften the pain (no pain here!) they gave us a shipboard credit for both my wife and me, which can also be used for shore excursions. 



 

[longterm]

3 hours ago, Cienfuegos said:

Thanks for the great report on the post-cruise extension.  There's a lot of wonderful detail.

 

I would be delighted if Viking offered a "lite" version of its post cruise package. Two days, or three days hotel, plus transfers. No excursions.  I know that a part of the Viking revenue stream is marking up tour arrangements, but some folks are happy to arrange their specialty guides and go that route. 

I agree; private tours are always much better, in my opinion, because you can interact much more with the guide, even make tiny adjustments to a schedule, and pester the guide with questions, which I like to do.

Having said that though, I'm not sure I'd swap anything in for the 3 excursions we had in Athens, other than the trip to Epidaurus, which was the least interesting of the sites we visited. It was part of the all-day tour that included Mycenae though, and that was a fantastic site to visit--but cold and incredibly windy the day we were there.

[Maite88]

Thank you for a great report about your cruise and post extension in Athens.  You have provided so much information for us doing the same cruise in the near future,  very appreciative!

[OnTheJourney]

On 3/21/2022 at 2:32 PM, longterm said:

No, we didn't leave the ship until 10am; we went straight to the Parthenon, toured it and then the nearby Acropolis Museum, which is probably the finest museum I've ever seen.

This is interesting in light of my recent postings. We have the Athens extension booked, but also have a private full-day tour booked (with driver and guide), so hopefully Viking doesn't mess around with changing the days as you refer to. The Viator tour does not include admission costs- we pay the guide when the day starts -, and they said they'd be willing to revise the tour so as to do something different if we'd feel we'd have had enough at the Museum and Acropolis with Viking, but somehow I'm thinking the two experiences probably aren't even very comparable. Group tour with other people also disembarking, doing the extension and then heading to the hotel versus a more leisurely and extensive private tour at both Acropolis and Museum are likely very different experiences. So probably best to pay the Viator guide and go from there. Looks like a good bit of time could be spent at the museum. 

[OnTheJourney]

On 3/20/2022 at 11:27 AM, longterm said:

She and her driver took us to Cape Sounion,

The private tour refers to having lunch there...sounds like that'd be a nice experience. 

 

On 3/21/2022 at 2:32 PM, longterm said:

we didn't leave the ship until 10am; we went straight to the Parthenon, toured it and then the nearby Acropolis Museum, which is probably the finest museum I've ever seen.

 

This also sways me towards keeping the additional time with a private guide. Very likely to not ever back to Greece again, so might as well spend as much time as possible at Acropolis and the Museum, both being top attractions. 

[longterm]

On 3/20/2022 at 12:56 PM, miami mama said:

So for Day 1 in Athens, did they take the post extension group off the ship early and then right to the Parthenon and onto the museum, leaving the afternoon open for your private guided trip? Also, how long did it take you to walk up to the Parthenon? For our extension Day 3 is left open to do on your own so I am interested in looking at private guided activities.

Yes, we went straight from the ship to the Parthenon; it took maybe 10 minutes total. We waited maybe 5 minutes in line. After the Parthenon we went through the museum, which probably took about an hour or 80 minutes; it's one of the best museums we've ever seen.