Info on Viking Journey to Antiuities and the Holy Lands Cruise

[Mullet62]

Considering booking the above cruise for December, 2023. Would like to communicate with anyone that has done this cruise regarding time frame of cruise (weather) and itinerary. Have sailed on Viking Ocean 4 times so  familiar with ships. Thanks, SG

[Host Kat]

9 hours ago, Mullet62 said:

Considering booking the above cruise for December, 2023. Would like to communicate with anyone that has done this cruise regarding time frame of cruise (weather) and itinerary. Have sailed on Viking Ocean 4 times so  familiar with ships. Thanks, SG

 

Howdy @Mullet62

 

Thank you for your new topic on the Ask a Cruise Question forum! However, it is the forum for general questions regarding cruising. Your inquiry concerns a specific cruise line and is off topic there.

 

To help you out I have moved your topic to the Viking Ocean forum where it will be on topic. The majority of your fellow Cruise Critic members that have sailed on Viking frequent this forum and provide feedback here. Browse through the thread titles on this forum looking for threads of interest. You will probably find your fellow Cruise Critic members have already posted questions and received answers that may be of interest to you.

 

I suggest you use the Follow feature on this thread or any other thread where you are interested in the replies. That way you will not have to go looking to see if there are new replies because they will come looking for you as notifications! If you need more info on how to do it, please click the following: How to: Follow Topics & Forums (Subscribed Threads/Forums Info)

 

Hope this will be helpful and glad to have you aboard Cruise Critic!

 

Happy sails,

 

Host Kat 

[IkonIke]

I absolutely loved this cruise, we sailed in November-December 2023 and experienced beautiful weather. The pace was wonderful since we had two sea days and a mix of shorter and longer stops. We stayed in Rome before embarking which I highly recommend, allowing margin pre-cruise so there is time for delays and for a stress free start to your journey. 

[Mullet62]

Appreciate the response. Which shore excursions did you do when in Israel?

[leishirsute]

On 3/9/2023 at 12:18 PM, Mullet62 said:

Considering booking the above cruise for December, 2023. Would like to communicate with anyone that has done this cruise regarding time frame of cruise (weather) and itinerary. Have sailed on Viking Ocean 4 times so  familiar with ships. Thanks, SG

We have booked this for 11/14/2023.  Looking forward to it.

[IkonIke]

Almost all of our excursions were the additional fee Viking sponsored tours but we saw many folks using private tours. We really wanted to see and do as much as possible while on this trip so we invested more than the included tours unless it allowed us to explore on our own such as in Rhodes, Mykonos and in Athens. We absolutely loved LivTours while in Italy and highly recommend them. Wishing you all the best experiences! 

[IkonIke]

Just now, IkonIke said:

Almost all of our excursions were the additional fee Viking sponsored tours but we saw many folks using private tours. We really wanted to see and do as much as possible while on this trip so we invested more than the included tours unless it allowed us to explore on our own such as in Rhodes, Mykonos and in Athens. We absolutely loved LivTours while in Italy and highly recommend them. Wishing you all the best experiences! 

While in Israel we visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem, then Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, then Caesarea. 

[Canberra601]

We did this trip in January/February this year, and the weather was mostly ok.  We had to leave the port at Haifa on the night of the first day due port authorities requesting the ship to leave due to an expected storm and associated winds.  The result was that our final day in Israel was cancelled and replaced with a sea day.   We also hit a snow storm in Athens which meant that our scheduled trip to Delphi was cancelled.  Despite these two incidents, the trip was great and worthwhile.