Roaming Pogues

We’ve done a number of ocean cruises and thought river cruising would be similar, but we found a number of interesting difference.

Alcohol

Viking river cruises allow you to bring your own alcohol aboard, this is pretty important because drink packages are $300 per stateroom! You can get house alcoholic beverages during meals, which is usually a white wine and a red wine, as well as two beer options. Wine was considerably cheaper in Amsterdam and Germany than what we were expecting, a good bottle of wine can cost as little as 4 euros. We took advantage of the refrigerator in the room and stocked up before and during the cruise.

CRUISING days

When you look at the itinerary of a Viking cruise, it looks pretty packed, but we still had several hours of cruising time during the day. We had half a day in the Rhine Gorge, and several other days where we left the dock early enough to sit out and enjoy the ride before bed. Had we knows this, we probably would have packed for “at sea” days, similar to an ocean cruise.

Excursions

Viking has an included excursion each day and they are great, but there are a number of optional ones as well as some days you’ll have additional time to wander the town. Do some research, find something local to do, the cruise staff is also very helpful at finding things, they travel these rivers week in and week out. We found a wine bar to hang out at, a chocolate factory to tour, and took in a little shopping during the non-scripted time.