DrKoob

We were not offered a wine list that night. We were also not offered a wine list last night in Manfreddi's. They just asked, "red or white" and started pouring. Total wrong assumption as we would have ordered a bottle or two. The server came back about 15 minutes later and said, "I forgot to offer you a wine list. I will try to find it my tomorrow." And two hours is too long when you really want to go to bed because you have jet lag or have to get up for an early shore excursion.

Not yet. We are willing to give them a second chance. It may have just been an opening night problem. Or a new server just starting out. We are going back tomorrow night (Manfredi's yesterday and a Greek buffet tonight) and we shall see.

I wish I could tell you the exact name. There were six of us that went. I will post two photos. One of the name of the place and the other of the street sign on the corner. Hopefully you can find it. We had all that food (at least 8 dishes to try) with wine for 25 Euros per couple. We were flabbergasted at how low a price that was. I would have paid twice that.

Good morning Viking cruisers I am going to do my best to live report our entire 21-day cruise on these pages. I might miss some days but hopefully, that will be an infrequent occurrence. I will be doing a blog with a lot of photos on my personal blog you can find by Googling my name (Jim Bellomo). For reasons of keeping Cruise Critic happy, I can't post a direct link here. So this is our (my wife who posts as BellKat) and I are first-time Viking Cruisers. We have a very close friend who has been telling us to try them for years. We are long-time cruisers with more than 30+ cruises behind us. Most were on Celebrity,, HAL, Azamara and RCL (with the kids). We are traveling with my brother, his wife, her sister and her husband. My usual practice is to do posts as I am sailing so here goes. We did the Viking pre-cruise in Athens. Two days at the Athens Marriott. The hotel was just fine but the location left a lot to be desired. I am a walker and a photographer. On most of our trips, when we are on land, I like to get out pre-dawn and shoot photos. But the Marriott is nowhere near the center of historical Athens. I tried and walked four miles and got to nothing I really wanted to take photos of as it is a very industrial area. When we arrived at the Athens airport (we had flown down from Amsterdam) we didn't even have to put on our Viking stickers, their rep saw us and walked over and introduced himself before we even had our luggage. He helped us load up and then got us to the coach which was a full-size bus just for six of us and we were off to the hotel. The pre-extension we had reserved included two nights at the hotel (which has the GREATEST water pressure ever), breakfast but no tours so we arranged our own through a company called Tours By Locals. We were beyond lucky to get the incredible George C. as our guide. He took us to all the usual spots including the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Museum of Antiquities, the original Olympic stadium and the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknowns but the best place he took us was for lunch. One of the most amazing meals we have ever had. And it was at what George called, "A momma place" because they cook like your Greek momma. They brought us some of everything and we loved every bit of it. So much food and so many courses plus lots of excellent Greek wine. We ate outdoors on a shady patio next to a farmer's market. What an outstanding Greek experience. I even got a chance to do some street photography in the farmer's market. We did have reservations at a restaurant recommended by Rick Steves in the Plaka district but decided to cancel them after this HUGE lunch. We don't feel like we missed anything. The next morning (Saturday) was our embarkation day on the Sky. We had to have our bags outside the hotel rooms by 7:00 am. We got them out and went down to an excellent breakfast. Lots of choices and great service. We were on bus four of four to go to the ship. Each one left about 15 minutes apart. The Viking machine at the hotel was incredibly well run. Got us on, took 15 minutes to the port, off and onboard within another 10. Total time hotel lobby to Viking Sky living room was 30 minutes max. I do want to mention that due to a strange Greek rule, we had to take a COVID test the day before (between 7:00 and 8:00 am) in order to LEAVE Greece. Not sure why they care who is sick when they leave. Viking has no testing scheduled at all. Viking took care of our tests and I was told that not a single person had a positive test. Once onboard we were greeted with champagne and told that we could go up to the World Cafe (buffet) for lunch. When we had checked in on the pier we were told our staterooms would be ready by 2:00 pm. The rest of our party who were on the deck below us were told 3:00 pm. Needless to say, we were a little upset (i said a little—we were on a cruise 😜) because we thought our staterooms (based on our stateroom class) would be ready by 1:00 pm. But in a surprise under promise/over deliver situation, as we were finishing an excellent lunch, the announcement was made that ALL staterooms were open before 1:00 pm. We are incredibly pleased with our stateroom. It is huge by cruise ship standards, a full 338 square feet (our Celebrity stateroom was about 230 square feet). The only part of the stateroom we don't like is the bed. We have frequently found European beds ot be harder than US beds. At home, we sleep on a Tempurpedic and we love it. Sleeping on the bed here was like sleeping on the floor. My brother had the same problem and mentioned it to his cabin attendant who said he had a foam mattress topper he could add to it. We are. having the same done to ours for tonight so hopefully, things will improve and I will get a better night's sleep. I was going to include a video or photographic tour of the stateroom but I found one online that is much more professional that you can see by clicking here. The rest of the ship is beautiful, the crew has been outstanding so far. The food at lunch was superb...but let's not talk about dinner. Well, let's talk about dinner. We decided to have dinner in The Restaurant (the ship's main dining room) around 7:00. We went for a drink in the living room first and then we headed to The Restaurant at around 7:05. No one was waiting in line and we were seated (our party of six) at a table for eight right near the door. Here's our timetable for dinner. We got to the dining room and were seated by 7:10. We had bread and water on the table by 7:20. Our order was not taken until at least 7:40. In fact after we got the bread and water, we didn't see anyone else for almost 20 minutes. Our server came by and asked if we wanted wine. She had a German red and a German white. She said, "Sorry, I don't have time to do the winelist with you tonight but I will go over it with you tomorrow." Really? So there we were at 7:45 with six glasses of German wine when our server took our orders. That took almost 10 minutes while the server attempted to enter the orders on a very small screen iPhone or iPod. Once the orders were taken, appetizers showed up about 10 minutes later, followed by our entrées about 20 minutes after we had finished the appetizers. Dessert was at least 20 minutes after finishing our entrées. The wine was refilled twice but we had to ask for it. Same with water. We were finally done with dinner and left The Restaurant at 9:15. Sorry, but that's two full hours to eat a meal. That's too long. And to be honest, the meal was not that good. I ordered the Chef's Regional Menu which was a Greek-themed menu including a lentil soup, moussaka and baklava for dessert. I can make all three better at home. I have made all three better at home. That's just sad. My lovely bride ordered the chorizo-coated sea bass. She ate about half and just didn't want anymore. My brother had the same thing but about 10 minutes after the rest of us. They forgot his order so we all waited while they got him a new one. It was just sad. We had such high hopes for The Restaurant after all the videos we have seen but last night did NOT live up to them. But we are very willing to give them a second chance. The food in the buffet this morning and yesterday at lunch was excellent so we know they can make the food we love. And tonight we are eating at Manfredi's, which is Sky's Italian restaurant so I will share our experiences there tomorrow. To sum up...love the ship, love the crew, love the buffet and only had two experiences we didn't like: dinner in The Restaurant and our very HARD bed.

You really can't compare Venice and Cancun. Venice is fighting what may be a losing battle to the Adriatic Sea. The ship (especially the big ones) were causing much destruction of the sea walls and canal bridge with their wakes as they entered and left the city. Whether or not they want the cruise traffic is immaterial. If they needed to save the city, they must go. At least Viking gets to go to Chioggia or Fusina. We board Sky this Sunday and are in Venice the September 9,10, 11 so I will let everyone know where we dock. Our schedule and the port schedule say Fusina/Marghera but we shall see. Either is better than the RCL corp ships that are going to Ravenna or the Carnival Corp ships that are going to Trieste.

You don't have to call. You can do it on MVJ. Just choose more than two and then they give you a space to type in the other reservation number. Their names will pop up.

I agree with all the folks who have posted. Just wanted to say that we have used ToursByLocals and they are outstanding. We got two great guides in Iceland. Another superb one in Amsterdam. We are on Viking Sky next week from Athens to Barcelona and we are using TBL the day before the cruise in Athens and the day after in Barcelona. Jim

Why would you not just do Verifly? It is free. Easy to use. Why not use it?

Love all the great responses on this thread. A couple things to throw in. As per insurance. If you are worried about the existing conditions restrictions, you can always insure a minimum amount (some insurers will let let you insure $2,000) which qualifies you for the existing conditions. Then when you make final payment, you increase it to cover your entire cost. And while I might be willing to book a cruise at the last minute, I see airfare as the biggest problem with doing this. For instance, we are flying to do a Viking Sky a week from today. If we had waited we might have grabbed a stateroom late (cruise has been sold out for months) but the differnce in air (we are flying business) would have been more than $3,000 each, if we could have found a seat. Of course if you are doing a cruise you can drive to, that makes all the difference. But we want to cruise in someplace other than Alaska and living here in Seattle, we have to fly to everything else. How do those of you who book at the last minute handle airfare? And Andy is on the money with Viking requires early full payment...because they can. Most loyal clientelle I have ever seen.

That's why we make lunch our main meal at the time when the locals are eating theirs.

Sadly, not everyone can do that. My bride MUST (medical condition) eat at least 4-5 hours before she can go to bed. That means if we ate at Spanish dining time, she can't go to bed until 2:00 am. When we are in Spain, we make our main meal lunch around 1:30 in the afternoon. That's about the end of the lunch hour so there are a lot less crowds.Then we would go do tapas some time around 7:00 pm.

We are on one of those types of cruises next month. It is a four part cruise (Istanbul to Athens–7 days, Athens to Venice–7 days, Venice to Rome-7 days and Rome to Barcelona–7 days). We are boarding for 21 days in Athens. Those who we know from our CC roll call who are boarding in Istanbul were able to book excursions and dining from 60/90 days before their cruise left. Since we are in the second group, this realy didn't affect us. We were able to get pretty much whatever shore excursions we wanted. But it was very strange with dining. Being in a PV we were supposed to get two reservations, one for each restaurant. But we were able to get one reservation for each place for each week of the rest of the journey. That means that we had 6 reservations each. People boarding in Istanbul had 8! People boarding in Rome found next to nothing available other than VERY late times. Viking needs to figure this out. We benefitted from being early in the cruise but I would have been totally disappointed if we were boarding in Rome. Best of luck and Peregrina has the right idea about writing to tellus@viking.com Good luck.

While I totally agree with you about choice of included excursions (there should be more than one—especially since so many Viking cruisers are repeat customers), I would like to know when you get old enough or have a hip or knee replaced and need a walker, scooter, cane, will you stop cruising? My wonderful bride can't handle the tough excursions and while not needing a scooter she just can climb or walk as fast as she could before her hip replacement. So I go on the paid ACTIVE shore excursion and she takes the less active included ones. You want a more active excursion, you could buy it.

It may be the fact that you want to meet them in another port while we are only going to be off the ship while they are in port. Could be?

We are doing just this off Viking Sky in September. We want to spend the two nights we are in Venice, in the city. We asked our TA to arrange it and it is all taken care of. We have permission from Viking as well as from the Italian government. We are responsible for getting off the ship and into Venice and getting back before they sail. With the ship having to dock well outside of Venice itself, we wanted to experience the city in the late evening and early morning. Have your TA call and set it up. It can be done. We were also told that we should immediately go to Guest Relations when we get on and verify that it is set up. We don't get to Venice until 8 days after we board so they would have plenty of time to get back to HQ for the permission or deal with any problem. They also really made a big deal of how we could NOT ask for any kind of refund for meals not eaten on board. That kind of cracked us up. We just aren't that cheap. 😜

Not on Viking? They don't have insides.

Your TA may work for a salary but as I pointed out to you in my previous post, 75% of individual, local TAs are not. These arguments are not crazy. I asked a question. You could answer it. Do you ask salespeople you deal with who work on commission to give you back some of their own money? No, you don't. And I don't see how the number of cruises you have taken makes any difference in this discussion other than to say that you have been ripping off your TA for years. If your TA offers you something, fine. But when you tell others to shop for a TA by asking them how much they will give them, you are doing a disservice to those people and the TA. On average, a good TA will spend 20-30 hours a week, just on hold with a cruise line. Then they will call back again and again. They will deal with problems and book air (with the way air schedules have been changing currently and cancellations abound a good TA could save your bacon). In the last three weeks alone our TA has informed us of three changes to our air itinerar for our upcoming Sky cruise. One was completely unacceptable. When I told her this, she went right back to Viking Air and got exactly what we had asked for in the first place. I spent 10 minutes on the phone with her. She spent 2 hours dealing with Viking Air. And yet you think I should still ask her (an independent agent) for money that she will have to pay out of her own pocket? Really? I would love to know what you do (or did) for a living. It was definintely not in sales because you would know what this is like. I sold high school yearbooks for 40 years and refused to work with schools who wanted a kickback that had to come out of my own pocket. And you may book your cruises directly with Viking but you obviously have experience booking cruises. Telling a novice cruiser to book his own cruise when he could have the services of someone who is a professional at no charge is again, doing them a great disservice.

Use e-Med (https://www.emed.com). You can use it anywhere that you have WiFi. All done online and all the cruise lines accept it.

What the heck? Are you serious? This is a comment for everyone else who replied about getting OBC or a cheaper price. I have a question for you. When you go to a store and buy something, do you ask the person who helped you to put their hand in their own pocket and give you some money back? For instance, when you buy a pair of shoes at a shoe store, a nice person who works on commission helps you find just the pair you want. He or she brings you a number of pairs of shoes. When you find the pair you want, you go to check out and pay for them. Then, would you turn to the salesperson who helped you and say, “Could you please give me $10 out of your own pocket since I bought the shoes from you?” Not the shoe store’s money, the sales rep's money who just spent the last half hour finding you shoes that you love.A half-hour he could have been helping others who bought 10 pairs of shoes or sometimes he shows a person 10 pairs of shoes and they buy nothing. Expecting refundable OBC from a TA is pretty much the same thing. TAs (not the online booking agents) make commissions from the cruise line, not from you. And unlike that shoe salesperson, TAs don’t get paid an hourly wage. They work on commission only. If you ask them to do a ton of work, then book with someone else, they don’t get paid for any of that time. You are charged the same price whether you book through them or not. When they give you OBC, it comes out of their own pocket. Why would you expect them to do that? They are doing a bunch of work for you for free and yet you still think that a “good” TA will give you OBC out of their own pocket. I don't get that. Now if they give it to you without asking...that's awesome. But I just have a problem with new cruisers who have heard that their friends get x-amount of freebies. That's their first question (even before they book the cruise)..".how much are you going to give me?" My TA gives us lots of great stuff but I also never ask for it, I come to her with just about everything finished (or, maybe we booked on board) so she has little work to do other than a single phone call or computer booking. And believe me, there are lots of small moms and pops everywhere. We accompanied our TA on a ship visit last summer here in Seattle. She and about 100 other travel agents got to tour and have lunch on the NCL Bliss (quite a ship) and I would say that more than 80% of the agents were either booking from home, or working with a franchise (which means they make at most 7.5%) or working for another small agency. None of those people get paid by the hour. They get paid when they sell a cruise and every penny that they give back, is one they don't get to feed their families, take their cruises or whatever they do with their money. And I totally understand the sales job thing having been in sales and marketing for more than 38 years. I can't count the number of presentations I have done where the client has gone another way. I have no problem with that (yes I do, but I get it--they like something that someone else has better than what I have) but when they go into the sales process having already decided that no matter what this person does for me, I am buying from the absolute cheapest I can find, that's wrong. If you want the cheapest, go to Costco. You will get the service you deserve (God help you if you have a problem) but you will cruise cheaply. Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine.

Do nothing? My TA handled my COVID cancellations. Through three separate cancellations. When Viking only wanted to give us 100% and not 125% as promised. Took care of our air and made sure our seats were exactly as we asked for them. Told about a lover fare and rebooked us. Saved us $600 each. And when she did the cancellations, she got ABSOLUTELY NO COMMISSION on the cruises that were canceled. Most of the other cruise lines paid commission on cancelled cruises because the TA had worked so hard. Why would you say that about a TA. They don't cost you a cent.

If you have not sailed with Viking before your final payment will be due on one of two dates. If you reserve a 2022 cruise, it will be due almost immediately. If you book a cruise in 2023 or 2024 your final payment will be due on 12/31/2022. Most people pay at least a year in advance but we know people who have paid almost two full years before their cruise. Their entire amount. After you have sailed with Viking once, your final payment will be due six months before the cruise. Viking can do this because they have the most loyal customers in the world.

I would be looking for someone who has booked at least 15-20 Viking cruises (river, ocean, expedition). And taken at least one ocean and one river. Also ask them if they have taken all the Viking training.

Heidi 13 got it right. You have to do a little interviewing. Just like you would with a new insurance agent or a real estate agent. You are going to spend a lot of money on travel and these people aren't going to cost you a penny. The best deal ever. Just Google Travel Agents in your local area. Then make some calls and ask how many Viking cruises they have booked and/or sailed. Both are important.

Ok, I know I will sound like a broken record here but this is a great reason to use a TA. A TA who books a LOT of VIKING will have some sway with them. They will also spend all that time on hold with them and once you have told the TA what you want, it is their problem to get it for you. Find yourself a good one who knows the Viking System and let them do the fighting for you.

Amen! We are really hoping it clears up. We are flying in to AMS a month from today. And back out three days later to head to Athens to meet Sky. Been tracking our flights every day and they have been on-time most days. Fingers crossed.