Into the Midnight Sun—a live voyage blog from Viking Venus 6/14/24

[FetaCheese]

@DrKoob

Thanks for your detailed descriptions and photos.

[uktog]

14 hours ago, DrKoob said:

We have just spent two weeks in your beautiful country. Take a look at my blog (www.jimbellomoDOTcom) for my photos of your beautiful country in rain or in sun.

I have just looked- you covered so much about the West and the photos are gorgeous. Your assessment of Glasgow was spot on! 

[SteelCity Cruiser]

Enjoying your posts and photos on your website immensely!  What kind of camera/lenses are you using for your photos (which are outstanding)?

 

 

[TayanaLorna]

On 6/16/2024 at 4:38 AM, LindaS272 said:

Geiranger Map of town—pathway to falls shown in upper right—something like 390 steps.

IMG_3929.mov 30.1 MB · 5 downloads  

 

 

Yep, You cross that little river, see the campground and the trail is on the left.  I knew someone would count the stairs!

[WanderingBrit]

The advice to insist on a genuine licensed London Taxi also applies to Edinburgh, where The Knowledge is if anything even more demanding. You'll have acres of space in a purpose built taxi, driven by a licensed driver who is deeply knowledgeable about the area, generally for the same price as some rando in an Uber, and all managed and paid for through their app - that was our experience with City Cabs Edinburgh.

[SailorPaulH]

44 minutes ago, TayanaLorna said:

Yep, You cross that little river, see the campground and the trail is on the left.  I knew someone would count the stairs!

About how long does that walk to waterfall area and back to port area take? (We are fit, so can put on a pace). We have an excursion returning at 2:45 pm, and the ship scheduled to depart at 6 pm. I don't know if we are tendered and if so what time last tender would be. Do you think this walk is something we could fit in?

[TayanaLorna]

9 minutes ago, SailorPaulH said:

About how long does that walk to waterfall area and back to port area take? (We are fit, so can put on a pace). We have an excursion returning at 2:45 pm, and the ship scheduled to depart at 6 pm. I don't know if we are tendered and if so what time last tender would be. Do you think this walk is something we could fit in?

It took us about 3 hours but we did not walk at a fast pace, stopped a lot to take photos and went into the Fjord museum (watched the movie and saw the entire exhibit).  We knew Gerainger was a tender port from the time we booked.  Check your Guest Statement to see if it is a tender port for your cruise.  Our sail away time was 6 pm and the Viking Daily indicates Back On Board was at 5:30.  The last Included excursion returned to the dock at 4 pm and the last Optional at 4:15.  There are no tender times listed in the Viking Daily.  However it does say that the tender travel time is approximately 10 minutes but it does take time to load passengers at the dock and unload them on the ship.  Viking could only bring 1 tender in at a time because a huge cruise ship was hogging multiple tender docks.  Also Viking was anchored way out in the bay compared to the big ships.  My guess is the last tender was 5 pm in order to be Back On Board at 5:30.

[LindaS272]

58 minutes ago, SailorPaulH said:

About how long does that walk to waterfall area and back to port area take? (We are fit, so can put on a pace). We have an excursion returning at 2:45 pm, and the ship scheduled to depart at 6 pm. I don't know if we are tendered and if so what time last tender would be. Do you think this walk is something we could fit in?

No problem. We did the hike in about an hour and a half—but we did not go into the waterfall center at the top. We were not tendered but had the floating pier. You should have plenty of time if setting off from the pier about 2:45-3:00. It’s no more than about 10 minutes to the base of the stairs.

Edited June 17 by LindaS272

[DrKoob]

9 hours ago, uktog said:

I have just looked- you covered so much about the West and the photos are gorgeous. Your assessment of Glasgow was spot on! 

Thank you so much. I truly appreciate the compliment. 

[DrKoob]

3 hours ago, SteelCity Cruiser said:

Enjoying your posts and photos on your website immensely!  What kind of camera/lenses are you using for your photos (which are outstanding)?

 

 

I shoot a Nikon Z7II and my travel lens is a Nikkor 28-400mm. The best part of the rig are the photos it takes. The worst part is the five pounds I carry around my neck.

[DrKoob]

2 hours ago, WanderingBrit said:

The advice to insist on a genuine licensed London Taxi also applies to Edinburgh, where The Knowledge is if anything even more demanding. You'll have acres of space in a purpose built taxi, driven by a licensed driver who is deeply knowledgeable about the area, generally for the same price as some rando in an Uber, and all managed and paid for through their app - that was our experience with City Cabs Edinburgh.

We just returned via Uber from Holyrood Palace to Rossyth for £38. I asked a cab driver for a quote and he said more than £60. I love the big cabs but I can't justify that. My complaint was about the cabs called for us by the hotel and I have addressed that with the hotel's manager.

 

[DrKoob]

SEA DAY! Whew!

 

Good day, all! There's not much to report today as yesterday was a sea day, and I gave my camera the day off except for a photo of a lonely, abandoned oil platform in the North Sea (you'll have to go to my blog to see it). That's the only photo I took all day long. (The photo on the top of the page is a pano I took of the Observatory in Greenwich the day before.) But today, we were in Edinburgh, and we had a beautiful sail-in to the port of Rosyth early in the morning, so I hope to have some great pictures for tomorrow.

 

I want to write a short report about a sea day on Vikings. Yesterday was my 22nd day on a Viking Ocean ship, and it was my first sea day. You see, our cruises in the Med were all port days. So, I had no clue what would happen on a Viking sea day. Yesterday I found out, and the answer is...not a lot. The Daily was full of some lectures, trivia right at lunchtime, some entertainment around the ship, and that's it. No waterslides, go-carts, ice skating, belly flop competitions, or fully-dressed water volleyball matches against the officers. We got none of that. And that's why we sail Viking. We aren't looking for that kind of thing. We wanted what we got. A day of rest (especially for Kathleen and I, who have been on the go for 16 days). It allowed me to work on all those photos I posted yesterday from Greenwich.

 

Ask me again how I like it in about a week when we have two full days at sea. But in the meantime, we have three straight port days, so I am not sure when you will get the next post about Edinburgh. I need to work on the photos now, so I will sign off and say that the weather here in Edinburgh has been good to us and that as many times as we have been here, we still love this city.

 

Don't forget that to see all my photos and check out my blog (no ads/no sales) at www.jimbellomoDOT.com.

Edited June 17 by DrKoob

[Hanoj]

2 hours ago, DrKoob said:

I shoot a Nikon Z7II and my travel lens is a Nikkor 28-400mm. The best part of the rig are the photos it takes. The worst part is the five pounds I carry around my neck.

 

The quality of your photos are worth the weight of your gear around your neck! Thanks for your sacrifice.

[DrKoob]

Day 3-Edinburgh

 

It's 3:26 a.m., and I am back on my usual schedule. My hope is that Kathleen is downstairs on deck five, sound asleep, and because I am sitting on the second floor of the Explorer's Lounge (my favorite place on a Viking Ocean ship) with my shoes off and my feet up on a couch writing this post. At home, this is when I usually wake up, but on this entire trip, this is the first time this has happened. I probably should have gone back to sleep, but I have this nagging cough, the last remaining remnant of my cold, that will not go away.

 

Enough about me. Let's talk about Edinburgh. This is the fourth time that Kathleen and I have been there. It is one of our favorite cities; some of my favorite travel memories come from there. We first visited on a whirlwind tour of Scotland back in 2003. The last time we were here was in 2019 when we rented an AirBnB right on the Royal Mile for a week. I think that was my favorite visit because it was in May, and the city was fairly empty. Not as much yesterday.

Our day started with a sail-in that featured some pretty great photographic opportunities for me. The last time we had been here on a cruise ship was in 2017 when we sailed on Celebrity's Silhouette. We did an overnight here that included us seeing the Royal Military Tattoo (the best show I have ever seen). That time, the ship anchored way off the coast, and we had to tender into the very small port of Leith. Because of the tides and depths of the channel, the tender took about 45 minutes to get from the ship to the shore. Viking uses the port of Rosyth. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because we don't have to tender. Bad because to get into the city, you do have to drive for almost an hour to get into downtown. I guess it's six of one and a half dozen of the other.

 

Once we were docked, it was time for our "included" shore excursion—Panoramic Edinburgh. As you may recall from my Greenwich post, when it says "panoramic," that translates to a "luxury motor coach" ride with a narrator and an hour or so at the end to shop or explore. This one was no exception.

 

But one of the good things about Rosyth is the sail-in. There are some islands and three incredible bridges that you sail under to get to the pier. And you have to be a fairly small ship to get under them. We arrived to find Regal Princess heading into port but stopping just short of the bridges because she could not get under them. For those who aren't cruisers or unfamiliar with Viking and Princess, all Viking ships have less than 1000 passengers and only nine decks. Regal Princess can hold up to 4,272 and has 19 decks—quite the size difference.

But back to the sail-in. We had beautiful weather. I took lots of photos. Sadly, it is taking me forever to upload them so to see them you will have to head over to my blog at www.jimbellomoDOT.com.

 

I just stopped to see if I could find out more about the building  (above) we passed on the island just before we got to the bridges and discovered it is/was a monastery that was built in the early 1100s (it always blows me away to read something was built more than 300 years before North America was even discovered by Europeans). Inchcolm Abbey is on an island of the same name in the Firth of Forth. You can take a tour of the Abbey and the island.

 

 

Our guide for the day was Scott. He made a point to let us know that the country of Scotland was NOT named after him. He was a witty, verbose kind of guy (being one of those, I know from which I speak 😜) who knew his stuff. He got us around Edinburgh with some great tales and anecdotes, and I would have really liked him except for one thing. He totally dismissed something I asked him to do for my comfort and the comfort of those around me.

 

As we were leaving the port on our "luxury motor coach," we were in the back of a PACKED bus. I have never seen a Viking excursion so packed. Pretty much every seat was full. When Scott started his tour, he said, "If there is anything we can do to make your tour better, just let us know." I piped up and asked him if he could request the bus driver give us a little fresh air in the back of the bus. Because we were so packed, it was quite warm and very stuffy. Scott's answer to me was, "The air will come on once the engine is started." And then he was off on his narration. Not a second to check in with the driver. Not a thought about the fact that since we were moving already, the engine was obviously turned on and no air was flowing from the vents. Nope, he basically told me he didn't care about the people at the back of the bus and that his saying, "If there is anything we can do to make your tour better, just let us know," was just the usual thing guides say to start a tour and he really didn't give a damn. All he had to do was take two seconds to turn to the driver and say, "Could you put on the air in the back of the bus?" But he truly didn't care and wanted to get on with his spiel.

 

Yes, I agree with what you are thinking. I am being petty. But it's the little things that make a GREAT tour. I loved what he had to say; I laughed at his jokes, and the entire time I was doing that, I was very uncomfortable because it was so warm. And yes, I could have pressed the matter by speaking up again. But once you have been told to shut up (in so many words), if I were going to ask again, I would have to get up out of my seat and walk the length of the "luxury motor coach" to have a personal discussion with him. As it stands, my usual tip for a guide who makes me laugh and knows his stuff would have been £10 per person. Scott got exactly £0.

 

After we were off the bus, we had a choice; we could shop or explore for an hour, get back on the bus and head back to the ship for lunch, or we could go off on our own for the rest of the day and find our own way back to the ship later in the afternoon. We had already decided before we left the ship that we would spend the afternoon in the city. There were basically two things we wanted to do. One was lunch in the famous Tollbooth Tavern on The Royal Mile. Kathleen and I have eaten lunch there at least once on all four of our visits to Edinburgh. It's not that the food is that great...it's good pub grub. But the idea of eating in a pub that has been open continuously since 1851 and in a building that was built in the 16th century is just too cool.

 

The second thing we wanted to do was tour Holyrood Palace. We have toured the Castle, I have climbed Arthur's Seat, and we have seen just about everything else in Edinburgh that people see when they come here, but we have never been able to get into Holyrood. It is the "official home of the Royal Family in Scotland," and every time we have been here before, some royal has been in town. When a member of the royal family or their guests are in residence, all tours are canceled. That has happened to us every single time we have been there. But this time, I had checked in advance, and tickets were available for yesterday, and we could get in. And we did. A somewhat interesting palace (I got to see Mary, Queen of Scots bedroom) but they wouldn't let me take photos inside and that always bothers me. I usually don't visit those places. I didn't realize that I couldn't until one of the docents told me there were "no pictures allowed." I had not seen a single sign (and I always look for them) telling me that, but I shut the Nikon off. I'm so sorry you won't get to see the King's bed, but there are a few photos I took on the way to the Palace and of the grounds. Again, they are on my blog at www.jimbellomoDOTcom.

 

A personal side note: My favorite "mountain" is in Edinburgh. It sits above the city. It is called Arthur's Seat. I put the word "mountain" in quotes because the definition of mountain in the UK is not the same as in Washinton State. The highest mountain in the United Kingdom is Ben Nevis here in Scotland, which is a hair over 4,000 feet. In Washington, we call those hills. We have Mount Rainier, which is 14,000 plus feet. Arthur's Seat is 823 feet...but still, it is a mountain in Scotland. And It's my favorite because I climbed it...at 4:00 a.m. to take a picture of the sunrise (see the photo on my blog). I did that on my visit in 2019. So it has a special place in my heart.

 

That was it for us. We finally got an Uber that would take us back to the ship, and we were off and back on board. I posted the Sea Day post from yesterday, and Kathleen took a short nap before dinner at the buffet. As a special bonus, while we were eating dinner, we were sailing out, and I was able to get some more photos of the things we had seen coming in, plus more that I had somehow missed. Again, a set of photos I can't upload.

 

That covers yesterday. Thankfully. I say that because it seems the further north we go, the worse the internet connection gets. We were fairly speedy in London, a little slower in Edinburgh, and now we are crawling. I certainly hope this improves. If it doesn't, just know that I will be writing this and may have to post it when we are back home or close enough to land to get better speed. For those of you who know what speed your internet is at home, ours is about 500 megabytes a second. Here's what I am getting this morning. This means that the average photo takes about two minutes to upload...each one. So frustrating.

Today, we are going to visit Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands. We have never been there before, so it should be interesting. We did receive a note from Viking last night that our "included" excursion for tomorrow in Lerwick on the Shetland Islands (our next port after Kirkwall) has been cut from 2.5 hours to one hour. The reason they gave us is a shortage of buses on the island and the fact that there are more than two cruise ships scheduled to be there. That's just sad.

I hope to have a full report on Kirkwall and the Orkneys tomorrow...especially if I can't sleep again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[fruitmachine]

1 hour ago, DrKoob said:

Our day started with a sail-in that featured some pretty great photographic opportunities for me. The last time we had been here on a cruise ship was in 2017 when we sailed on Celebrity's Silhouette. We did an overnight here that included us seeing the Royal Military Tattoo (the best show I have ever seen). That time, the ship anchored way off the coast, and we had to tender into the very small port of Leith. Because of the tides and depths of the channel, the tender took about 45 minutes to get from the ship to the shore. Viking uses the port of Rosyth. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because we don't have to tender. Bad because to get into the city, you do have to drive for almost an hour to get into downtown. I guess it's six of one and a half dozen of the other.

It's great to see visitors enjoy the city where I live and love!

For those reading this, It's worth noting that the vast majority of Viking ships tender to Newhaven Harbour (which is where Celebrity Silhouette's tenders will also have taken you) a small fishing harbour next to the much larger Leith docks.  But the average tender-crossing time is usually about 15 minutes, 20 absolute maximum.  Perhaps Celebrity were a particularly long way out that day.  The advantage of Newhaven for Viking passengers is that they run a free shuttle-bus from Newhaven into the city centre.  As you'll have seen, that didn't happen in Rosyth. 

[WanderingBrit]

6 hours ago, DrKoob said:

Day 3-Edinburgh

 

 

....

Enough about me. Let's talk about Edinburgh. This is the fourth time that Kathleen and I have been there. It is one of our favorite cities; some of my favorite travel memories come from there. We first visited on a whirlwind tour of Scotland back in 2003. The last time we were here was in 2019 when we rented an AirBnB right on the Royal Mile for a week. I think that was my favorite visit because it was in May, and the city was fairly empty. Not as much yesterday.

....

That covers yesterday. Thankfully. I say that because it seems the further north we go, the worse the internet connection gets. We were fairly speedy in London, a little slower in Edinburgh, and now we are crawling. I certainly hope this improves.

...

Edinburgh is our favorite city - we were married at the Royal Botanic Gardens. We too stayed in an AirBNB (back when that was easier in Edinburgh) on the Royal Mile - during Fringe! It was a wonderful type of functional chaos, and our VIP seats at The Tattoo were a milestone experience.

 

I was surprised how busy Edinburgh was when we were just there at the end of May, perhaps that's thew new normal.

 

On our Iceland/Norway cruise last year - significantly further North - I found Starlink worked fine when I had my Internet VPN service active, but was terrible otherwise. The problem wasn't so much bandwidth as it was packet latency, something to do with the way that Starlink handles IP address abstraction I suspect. CC was unusable until I flipped on my VPN, and then immediately everything was perfectly normal. I could upload many photographs on a post without any issue at all.

[Islander500]

On 6/15/2024 at 10:29 AM, DrKoob said:

Lastly (before I start), I take photos. They are pretty decent photos, IMHO 😁. I can't post them all on Cruise Critic. There are too many and they are too big. But I post them on my personal blog (where I am not selling anything, and there are no ads) at www.jimbellomoDOTcom. If you go over there, you will see the same text with many photos.

I used the quote that has your blog HERE because anyone that's only seeing it here is missing most of the incredible pictures which go with your story. Thanks so much for sharing your amazing and colorful trip so comprehensively and in your great storytelling style. I check for updates every day instead of reading the gloom and doom that's posted daily in the news. And just to be clear, I'm enjoying your photos on a 25-inch computer screen (not on the phone.)

Keep enjoying and sharing!  

[DrKoob]

10 minutes ago, Islander500 said:

I used the quote that has your blog HERE because anyone that's only seeing it here is missing most of the incredible pictures which go with your story. Thanks so much for sharing your amazing and colorful trip so comprehensively and in your great storytelling style. I check for updates every day instead of reading the gloom and doom that's posted daily in the news. And just to be clear, I'm enjoying your photos on a 25-inch computer screen (not on the phone.)

Keep enjoying and sharing!  

Thanks so much! What a great compliment. If you like my cruise stuff from this cruise, check out my photographic portfolio, they are all travel photos from past cruises and land trips. It's at the top of the blog.

[DrKoob]

59 minutes ago, WanderingBrit said:

Edinburgh is our favorite city - we were married at the Royal Botanic Gardens. We too stayed in an AirBNB (back when that was easier in Edinburgh) on the Royal Mile - during Fringe! It was a wonderful type of functional chaos, and our VIP seats at The Tattoo were a milestone experience.

 

I was surprised how busy Edinburgh was when we were just there at the end of May, perhaps that's thew new normal.

 

On our Iceland/Norway cruise last year - significantly further North - I found Starlink worked fine when I had my Internet VPN service active, but was terrible otherwise. The problem wasn't so much bandwidth as it was packet latency, something to do with the way that Starlink handles IP address abstraction I suspect. CC was unusable until I flipped on my VPN, and then immediately everything was perfectly normal. I could upload many photographs on a post without any issue at all.

That sounds like a great idea. Do you have a VPN you recommend?

[WanderingBrit]

4 minutes ago, DrKoob said:

That sounds like a great idea. Do you have a VPN you recommend?

I think they're somewhat commoditized, so look for a good deal perhaps? I use Private Internet Access (PIA), but lots of Youtubers have offers for SurfShark

[zzookiemookiw]

On 6/16/2024 at 5:27 PM, Islander500 said:

Same here on both counts.  We'll be on Jupiter leaving Greenwich on June 9th.  Are you on that same cruise? Last time I checked there was no Roll Call started as of yet, but let's connect there.

No we will be doing the cruise from Bergen to Greenwich next June. We will be on the Saturn. 

[DrKoob]

Orkney in the Rain...and the Wind...and the Fog and our Stateroom

Yesterday, we were in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands. To find us on a map, just look directly north of the mainland of Scotland, and there it is. So far, this was the worst weather on the trip. It wasn't that it was pouring rain all day; it came and went periodically, just like we had experienced in the rest of Scotland. It was just that the skies never cleared. It was flat and ugly all day long.

 

 This is our guide Derrick. Nice man but spoke quietly with a deep Scottish brogue. It took a lot of work to get his photo. I shot five photos of him and never smiled or looked up.

 

We did the Viking "included" shore excursion, which was a "panoramic" tour of the island. And you all know by now, this means a ride on a "luxury motor coach." YEAH! At least today, we didn't need the air at the back of the bus because the temps were low, and when we got out to take photos, we were happy to get back on to get warm. The tour around the island (done by our Kirkwall guide, Derrick-above) was very nice, but it basically featured two stops. Both of these were to look at stones sticking out of the ground. We were told that the ancient runes were older than Stonehenge. Well, they may have been older, but not anywhere near as big or as awe-inspiring. When we visited Stonehenge a few years ago, I was amazed at how any men could have lifted those stones into position. Here on the Orkney Island, the stones were small enough for a couple of guys to have placed them.

 

There were two sets of them, and I got off the bus to take photos of the first ones we stopped at but then decided to skip the second because, by that time, it was really raining, they were much further from the bus, and they were out in what looked to be a very muddy field. Besides, we could see them from the bus, and they looked pretty much the same as the first group. And with the sky being totally gray, it was not a great photo-taking day. I will prove it to you and show you all my shots from that morning, and you tell me what you think. And please feel free to take a look at these on your phone. They just aren't that good, proving my point that photography is all about light. Of course to see them you will need to bump over to my blog at www.jimbellomoDOTcom (no ads/no selling).

 

Orkney was pretty much a bust for me. Not their fault. The weather made the photography yucky, and the ship moored in an industrial port, which forced a shuttle ride into town. After our tour, we were back on board so I could try and make something out of the photos. Our sail-out was nice, though, and it got a little sunny, so I was lucky enough to get a few photos as we left from the aft deck of the World Cafe. Sadly, you will have to do the usual click to my blog to see them. I guess my photos are just too big for CC to handle. 

 

Our stateroom

That about covers Kirkwall and Orkney Island. Since it was a short one, I want to take a couple of minutes to show you where Kathleen and I are living right now—our stateroom on Venus. In our cruising life (more than 35), we have had many different staterooms on many different ships. We consider the three best to be the verandah stateroom we had on Celebrity's Flora yacht in the Galapagos, the Neptune Suite we got upgraded into on Holland America's Nieuw Statendam and this Penthouse Verandah stateroom on Viking Ocean. This stateroom is larger than your standard verandah stateroom, and we love the extra room.

When we were in the Med on Viking Sky, we had the same type of stateroom but on the other side of the ship. Then we had 5029, and this time, 5030. The on-board cruise specialist who sold us our cruise told us that this side had better views for this particular cruise. I'm not sure if that is true, but since it is the same stateroom, we are happy with it. Here are the pictures that I took to send to cruisedeckplans.com. If you are not familiar with that website, they have deck plans for every ocean-going cruise ship, along with reader-submitted photos of the interiors of staterooms. Check them out before you pick your stateroom. I took a bunch of photos and they are also on my blog at www.jimbellomoDOTcom.

 

And that about covers it. If you have questions about the stateroom, please let me know. I can tell you that the difference in price between this and a regular verandah is about $500 for this cruise, and as far as we are concerned, it is worth every penny. Kathleen loves the space, the storage and the ability to have an "included" cocktail every night before dinner. I love that you get to reserve specialty dining and shore excursions about two weeks before about two-thirds of the rest of the passengers.

 

Tomorrow is a sea day. We are in Lerwick in the Shetland Islands today, and I have some great photos. I will be back with those tomorrow.

 

[formernuke]

We loved Orkney when we were there a few weeks ago. The weather was nicer, which helped. We had hired a private guide that took us to all the major sites including the standing stones, etc. We were more impressed and interested in the history of the island (ancient and modern). 

[deec]

Dr. Koob you wrote :"I can tell you that the difference in price between this and a regular verandah is about $500 for this cruise". $500 is the difference is the difference between a Penthouse and a DV1 NOT DV6....which is about $3000/pp. 

 

thanks for the great reviews...Anxious to read and see your photos of the Norwegian ports...we go next summer Bergen to NYC.  We had a private guide in Orkney and really enjoyed our day there...but we did have sunshine!!

Scotland was such a wonderful surprise...its beauty was unexpected and thoroughly enjoyed.    We missed the Shetlands.:(

[WanderingBrit]

2 hours ago, DrKoob said:

.... We consider the three best to be the verandah stateroom we had on Celebrity's Flora yacht in the Galapagos, the Neptune Suite we got upgraded into on Holland America's Nieuw Statendam and this Penthouse Verandah stateroom on Viking Ocean. This stateroom is larger than your standard verandah stateroom, and we love the extra room.

...

 

We absolutely love the PV Stateroom, and actually enjoyed it more than an ES2 which seemed to have space where we didn't especially value it.