Included tours

[jiminyC_fan]

I have been reading up on the included tours for the Viking Homelands tour. It confuses me. With the River Cruise we toured castles, churches and such. In the included tours for the Ocean cruises the description sounds more like we pass them by on a bus or on a walking tour without the chance of actually going inside. Please tell me I'm wrong.

[Hawkmoth]

I have not been on the Viking Homelands cruise, but we have been on two other Viking Ocean cruises, both of which we enjoyed a lot. But I would say your impression of the included excursions is reasonably accurate. They are pretty superficial. I would say this is a weak point for Viking overall. We have more limited experience with the paid excursions, but ones we have taken have been more satisfying.

 

You will surely receive other replies that are more specific to the Homelands cruise.

[Dauntless]

I have been reading up on the included tours for the Viking Homelands tour. It confuses me. With the River Cruise we toured castles, churches and such. In the included tours for the Ocean cruises the description sounds more like we pass them by on a bus or on a walking tour without the chance of actually going inside. Please tell me I'm wrong.[/quote

 

Having been on the cruise, I would say that the included excursions paint with a broad stroke. They seem to be an overview and the extra time you have can be more detailed on your own. On the panoramic tours there are a couple of stops for you to get out and shall I say 'stretch your legs'. They are not stops to delve into the material. Allborg and Tallinn are walking tours. The walking tours in Bergen and Stavanger included extended stays at museums but if you wanted to experience the city, very little of that can happen inside a building. Overview tours are hard to please everyone. They are either too detailed or too superficial, depending on which side of the mirror you are on. I think they are to give you an idea of the stop. If you have never been here before and may never get back, they serve that purpose. If there is free time and you have an objective, plan to make that happen. The museum or gallery may only be a couple of blocks walk or stops on the bus from the port so find out. If you have more time in port you can go farther afield. You are visiting the capitals of many of the countries you visit and they are going to be multifaceted destinations, not so quaint as riverside towns with less to offer and a chance to delve deeper. Ocean cruising offers a chance for 'snapshot' tourism. It will not be the same as a land tour where you have control over your timetable. We opted out of 'included' in SP, Copenhagen and Gdansk so we could hit some things that peaked our interest. We arrived early and stayed later to enhance those ports on the cruise so we could get a little longer experience there. It's a chess game, taking a cruise. The playing field is constantly changing and with the proper knowledge you can come out a winner.

[jiminyC_fan]

Thank you both. Your responses help me decide on how we want to approach each port. While we both want to see the town itself, it is just as important for us to actually see the landmarks. I pretty much never book a paid excursion on any cruise line but wanted to weigh out the the included vs doing it on our own.