River cruise spring 2023

Old Oct 2nd, 2022, 06:58 PM
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River cruise spring 2023

I have no experience with river cruises. Our first one will be spring 2023. Our cruise includes one excursion in each port. They offer a variety of optional excursions, my question is to those experienced cruisers what suggestions do they may have. I would appreciate any insight on this.
thank you
Ric
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Old Oct 3rd, 2022, 12:06 AM
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Have you booked already? Be sure to get travel and medical insurance. I don’t know how soon you have to buy it after booking. You might want “cancel for any reason” coverage.
Plan to arrive at least two days early in case of flight delays. It is also nice to get over jet lag before the cruise begins and to have time to explore the port city/country area.
Post your cruise and the itinerary so people will know what options to suggest.
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Old Oct 4th, 2022, 10:18 AM
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=Sassafrass;17403915]Have you booked already? Be sure to get travel and medical insurance. I don’t know how soon you have to buy it after booking. You might want “cancel for any reason” coverage.
Plan to arrive at least two days early in case of flight delays. It is also nice to get over jet lag before the cruise begins and to have time to explore the port city/country area.
Post your cruise and the itinerary so people will know what options to suggest.[/QUOTE]

Thank you Sassafrass for your advise. Our itinerary is a Grand European Tour from Amsterdam to Budapest from April 24-May 8, 2023. We have purchased travel and medical insurance policies and we intend to arrive few days earlier to our embarkation port.
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Old Oct 4th, 2022, 02:17 PM
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What cruise line and what is the actual daily itinerary (as in where will your ship be stopping). Just so you know several of the River Cruise lines offer a “Grand European Tour” but with slightly different itineraries.

It would also help to know what tours your cruise line is offering at each stop.

HINT: Your cruise line will give you this information. You should read the descriptions carefully. Some will be “walking tours” in the town/village where your ship will dock and some will be tours to major points of interest that you can only get to by motor coach. Some of these will be just a short ride but on others you may spend more time getting to/from the attraction than you actually get to spend visiting the attraction.

We’ve done several different River Cruises originating or ending in Amsterdam along the Rhine, Mozelle, Danube and even some canal cruise through the French countryside and can tell you we enjoyed every one.
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Old Oct 6th, 2022, 01:14 PM
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Originally Posted by RoamsAround
What cruise line and what is the actual daily itinerary (as in where will your ship be stopping). Just so you know several of the River Cruise lines offer a “Grand European Tour” but with slightly different itineraries.

It would also help to know what tours your cruise line is offering at each stop.

HINT: Your cruise line will give you this information. You should read the descriptions carefully. Some will be “walking tours” in the town/village where your ship will dock and some will be tours to major points of interest that you can only get to by motor coach. Some of these will be just a short ride but on others you may spend more time getting to/from the attraction than you actually get to spend visiting the attraction.

We’ve done several different River Cruises originating or ending in Amsterdam along the Rhine, Mozelle, Danube and even some canal cruise through the French countryside and can tell you we enjoyed every one.
Thank you for the information RoamsAround. We are doing this cruise on Viking from Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Cologne, Koblenz, Miltenberg, Wurzburg, Bamberg, Nurenberg, Regensberg, Passau, Melk, Krems, Viena and Budapest. Viking provides some information on some port excursions, but nit the list of optional excursions (are those worth the extra expense and time) I am looking for ideas and advice on the options. Thank you
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Old Oct 7th, 2022, 06:30 AM
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Go to CruiseCritic.com -enter Viking River Cruises in the search box. On the new page scroll down to the "Grand European Tour". There you'll find a link to over 100 reviews, many of which give details on the different excursions.

As you no doubt are aware there are lots of interesting places to visit in each port of call and what appeals to one person might not appeal to you. What we did before each of our river cruises is a simple internet search of "Things to do in NAME OF TOWN". We then choose the available tour that most closely matched the places/activities that appealed to us. We took some of the basic "included tours" and some of the "optional added expense tours". In most instances we very much enjoyed the tours but on rare occasions we ended up on a tour that was lees then expected.

Hope this helps.
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Old Oct 7th, 2022, 11:15 AM
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https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/c...est/index.html

Go to the Viking website above.
Scroll down to the daily itineraries. There are large boxes with choices.
https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/c...est/index.html
For each day of the cruise, they list the “included” tours (with descriptions) and the “optional” tours (with descriptions) offered by Viking. Underneath those, they have videos you can watch for visuals of what you will see on at least two tours for each port.

I scanned just a few. I thought the included tours were generally very good. If you have not been there before, they seem to be really interesting and beautiful and it is not necessary to start bussing to other places. If I had already taken this cruise and seen those places, or if any sounded really boring, then I would consider the other options.
Only you can decide what appeals to you. For example, there are wine tours, cheese making tours and hiking tours as options in some places. I have no interest in cheese making and don’t want to spend a lot to taste wine. Hiking is not a good fit for me. Some of these things might be perfect for you. You might love the wine tasting or the hike in the countryside.

Another example: In Regensburg, they offer a trip to Munich. It is just under 1&1/2 hours each way, nearly three hours RT on a bus. No, thank you. With Regensburg being such a beautiful world heritage sight, I would rather spend all of my time actually seeing and exploring close up rather than sitting on a bus, so I would definitely not do the bus trip option. If a few hours in Munich is on your bucket list, you might choose that.

You could also hire a private guide for something or go to a museum or walking on your own. Look at how far you will be traveling. Look at what you will be seeing in each place.

If you look at the included tours and the optional tours, you can then ask specific questions about one versus the other.

Last edited by Sassafrass; Oct 7th, 2022 at 11:16 AM. Reason: Added info.
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Old Oct 7th, 2022, 01:12 PM
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I had a quick look at more of your itinerary. It is great you will be in Vienna for two days. Personally, I hate panoramic tours, especially from the window of a bus, but that is their included tour, so up to you. It is one I would skip. I would arrange a nice walking tour of the city center or DIY with a map. We walked on our own and would do that again. Just me, though. I am not fond of tours, prefer to read a lot ahead of time, then wander. Be sure to go inside St Stephens. I did take a tour there, which was memorable.
Truth is, it has been years since I have been to Vienna, but my DD goes nearly every year, so I will ask her opinion. I would probably take in some musical performance and something to do with Art. I love the horses, but have seen them several times, might do that if I had not seen them before. Skip Sachertortes, but do have pastries and tea.
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Old Oct 14th, 2022, 12:26 PM
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In Vienna, instead of paying for Viking’s city tour, we used the U-bahn and went to Schoenbrun Palace and then over to the Einstein Museum, also saw the Spanish Riding School horses rehearsing and had pastries at Demel.
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