whyask

I’d be surprised at whoever that guidance was from being $2/$1 per day for any service. Kind of insulting if you ask me. The whole “tipping” topic is a viral one though so this thread may explode.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. We disembarked in Venice and Viking offered an option for us to have them provide the transfer to our hotel we had personally booked near St Mark’s Square. Sure it was more expensive but since we had not navigated Venice before, we found it worth the extra $ and it allowed us most all of disembark day to explore. We stayed an extra night to be fresh for flying the next morning. Our hotel arranged a private transfer via water taxi and Mercedes van to Marco Polo airport for 150 euros. Having time to explore Venice is well worth it. You can’t avoid the bus to the Venice cruise port no matter what anyway. Staying near St. Mark’s Square as a hotel base is preferable.

Can’t say I blame you but be sure you find some great private excursions during your “on your own” days. It takes a day or so of getting lost in Venice to get comfortable. Staying very close to St Marks Square was the best choice we made regarding Venice. If you are early risers, walking into an empty square at 7am is awesome.

I believe it was 10:30pm. Our gondola excursion was scheduled to end later so they were holding a bus just for those on that excursion.

We’ll, that’s a timely question. It was one of the few times Viking dropped the ball. On the 20th we had 2 excursions. During the day a lengthy tour walking in Venice, during which, the Viking “escorts” turned it over to a local and knowledgeable guide who took longer than expected. This caused a relatively short allotment of time between the day excursion and our evening gondola excursion so I asked the “escort” taking us back to the water taxi if we should just wait in Venice for the evening gondola excursion instead of only having around 30-45 minutes at the ship before the scheduled 2nd trip to Venice that day. She said “you’ll need to go back”. You’ll have enough time. So we trudged on back, rushed to clean up a bit and grab something from the World cafe before heading back to the bus for trip 2. We rushed ourselves to only find that the new “escorts” were waiting and waiting to find missing passengers who were supposed to be on the bus. After waiting over 20 or 30 minutes past the scheduled time we left with just 6 passengers. Very odd since I knew there should have been many more. When we arrived back at St. Marks square we were told we are going to meet some that were waiting there. Apparently some others who had different day excursions were told “ No do t go back, just wait in Venice. Those waiting in Venice kept asking why is it taking so long, not knowing the “escorts” were late because we waited at the ship for them. Anyway that happened. BTW, both excursions were good and I don’t have info on if those just using busses for “on their own” had delays. I expect they did not as there were plenty of busses. Regarding the 21st disembark day, those of us on our own were given the option the day before to choose the option of having Viking arrange a private water taxi to whatever hotel in Venice we had booked. This was at a premium price but worth it to us. It appeared their were at least more than another dozen couples who chose it also. It was a shorter ride as I said and we were totally taken care of by Viking with the private water taxi who did an excellent job helping us to the hotel Rosa Salva( highly recommended it). Hope this helps.

We were there on Viking Sky on 5/20 and 5/21. For the Viking excursion on the 20th traffic was bad and it took between 45 and 60 minutes. On the 21st for a disembark it was around 35 minutes with almost no traffic.