It simply could be probably the most lovely practice journey on the earth.
For the previous 4 hours, I’ve been watching, mesmerized, as one stunningly scenic tableau after one other fills the image window subsequent to my seat on the Bergensbanen — the famed teal-colored practice that winds by means of the mountains of Norway.
Crystal-clear mountain lakes fringed with evergreens, picture-perfect villages, snowcapped mountains — it is all the things that I at all times imagined the inside of Norway to be. Together with, now, sweeping glaciers.
We’re simply passing the snowy excessive level of the seven-hour journey between Oslo and Bergen, the Hardangervidda plateau — a wintry wonderland so pristine that George Lucas selected it as a stand-in for the ice planet Hoth in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Again.”
It’s, palms down, the spotlight of a five-day go to to Norway that’s taking me from one aspect of the nation to the opposite.
A spotlight that comes with a twist: I did not get right here by way of a reservation with the practice firm. Or a practice tour firm. Or, certainly, even a land tour reserving service of any variety.
I’m right here because of Viking, the fast-growing cruise firm.
This practice journey, together with nearly each different aspect of my go to to Norway, from my pickup on the airport in Oslo to lodge stays, guided excursions and museum admissions in every metropolis I’m visiting, was organized by Viking as a part of a multiday precruise land tour.
Viking, it seems, is not simply one of many fastest-growing cruise traces on the earth. It is a rising land tour firm, too.
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With an ever-increasing array of multiday land excursions and lodge stays designed to be seamlessly added on to one in every of its cruise itineraries, the road is making it simpler than ever for cruise-loving vacationers to custom-design the right prolonged trip — all whereas solely coping with a single firm that arranges all the things from begin to end.
Greater than 100 precruise and postcruise choices
Viking is not the one cruise line to supply precruise and postcruise land excursions and lodge stays, after all. Providing what Viking calls cruise “extensions” is a typical follow within the business. However as Viking has grown larger in recent times, it has developed an unusually big selection of such journeys that may be tacked on to the overwhelming majority of its voyages.
For 2025, Viking is providing 147 of those extensions, up from 91 simply six years in the past.
Within the case of my journey, as an example, there have been 4 precruise extensions and 4 postcruise extensions obtainable so as to add on to the core cruise that I had booked — a 14-night “British Isles Explorer” crusing from Bergen to London that included stops at almost a dozen ports alongside the coasts of Scotland, Eire, Wales and England.
The precruise extensions included all the things from a brief two-night lodge keep in Bergen paired with a pickup on the airport — good for somebody who simply needed to reach on the departure port just a little early to acclimatize — to the four-night “Better of Norway & Scenic Prepare” tour that I added to my crusing. The latter supplied a full cross-Norway tour expertise with a two-night lodge keep and guided tour in Oslo, the practice journey over the mountains, and a two-night lodge keep and guided tour in Bergen.
Among the many different precruise choices that I may have picked was a three-night lodge stick with guided excursions in Iceland — an add-on that lets North American passengers like me break up their transit to Norway with a cease in that nation.
Amongst postcruise extensions obtainable, the choices have been equally various, starting from a two-night lodge keep in London with out excursions to a five-night “Churchill’s Britain” add-on that introduced intensive touring.
The latter was one I might have beloved to do — if solely I had the additional days free. The historical past lover in me was wanting to see the various iconic and generally hard-to-get-into websites that Viking had lined up for a go to, together with Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill’s birthplace and the present house of the twelfth Duke of Marlborough and his household; Chartwell, the place Churchill lived a lot of his life; and Bletchley Park, house of the World Struggle II code breakers.
The big variety of choices meant that I may have created a Viking-organized trip round my cruise that ranged wherever from 16 nights (with a single two-night lodge extension) to 23 nights (if I signed on for each of the longest precruise and postcruise excursions).
Such flexibility is without doubt one of the massive appeals of the extensions.
Amongst basic Viking itineraries that supply an analogous array of not less than eight precruise and postcruise extensions are the model’s seven-night “Romantic Danube” river cruises, the place add-on choices embrace a two-night precruise keep in Budapest, a four-night precruise go to to Croatia and Slovenia, and a three-night postcruise keep in Prague (with or with out included touring).
Some sailings, furthermore, embrace really epic extensions, comparable to a five-night tour of the Galapagos that may be added on to Viking sailings in South America.
Amongst Viking’s most uncommon extensions, the model gives a four-night tour of websites in England tied to the invention of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb that may be added to its Nile river cruises in Egypt. The tour contains particular entry to Tutankhamen-related archives and displays within the U.Okay. not usually accessible to the general public. These embrace a not-normally-open non-public assortment of Egyptian objects at Highclere Fortress, which was the house of the earl who supported Egyptologist Howard Carter’s efforts to search out Tutankhamen’s tomb (and can also be identified right now as the situation for the filming of “Downton Abbey”).
The latter tour is designed to happen simply earlier than a Nile crusing and ends with a flight to Egypt.
A seamless expertise
As I noticed throughout my journey, reserving a precruise or postcruise extension with Viking, or one in every of every, takes away a number of the ache factors of arranging a visit round a cruise.
One of many issues that cruise followers love about touring by cruise ship is that it makes journey simple — not less than for the particular days of the crusing. The ship not solely supplies you with a spot to remain when you’re touring but additionally all your meals and leisure. It additionally serves as transportation for you and your baggage to maneuver between locations in your itinerary, and it gives guided excursions in all places you go (at some traces, comparable to Viking, some excursions even are included within the fare).
That stated, the standard cruise reserving would not embrace all the little (and generally massive) issues that you simply may want or wish to add to your journey within the days main as much as stepping on board a vessel — or simply after you disembark.
Do you wish to keep a few nights in your embarkation port earlier than your cruise to get to realize it higher, or simply to regulate to the time zone of the area if it’s miles from house? Do you wish to add guided excursions in that port or different close by locations? Do you want transfers out of your arrival airport to your lodge?
What about recommendation from an area on native eating places or store hours or sights?
With its precruise and postcruise extensions, Viking gives to care for all of this.
My “Better of Norway & Scenic Prepare” extension included a pickup on the Oslo airport by a Viking consultant for a fast drive to the included lodge, the Clarion Resort The Hub — clearly strategically picked by Viking for its central location (which couldn’t have been higher; we have been simply steps away from Oslo’s essential purchasing road and strolling distance to all its essential sights).
As soon as there, Viking representatives have been ready at a devoted Viking hospitality desk with my room keys — no must even method the entrance desk to test in. I used to be up in my room inside minutes.
These identical Viking representatives, all locals, remained readily available on the desk all through every of the times that I used to be there to supply recommendation on issues to do on the town — that’s, after they weren’t main us on the included excursions that have been a part of the bundle.
In addition they personally escorted us on foot to the practice station (which was only a block away) on the finish of our Oslo keep for the Bergensbanen practice journey throughout the mountains to Bergen and even stayed on board with us for all the journey to ensure we made it to our subsequent set of Viking guides within the vacation spot metropolis.
On the Bergen practice station, these guides and a few buses have been ready to whisk us to our Bergen lodge, the Resort Norge by Scandic — additionally completely positioned within the coronary heart of town.
In brief, it was a seamless expertise — one the place we actually did not must do something besides present as much as get pleasure from our time.
The associated fee
Viking’s precruise and postcruise extensions will not be cheap. The four-night “Better of Norway & Scenic Prepare” tour that I added to my “British Isles Explorer” cruise prices $1,999 per particular person — or about $500 per night time. The 2-night Bergen lodge add-on prices $899 per particular person — about $450 per night time.
The three-night “Iceland & The Golden Circle” precruise tour prices $3,099 per particular person — a whopping $1,033 per night time.
That stated, the fares for these extensions typically embrace fairly a number of parts, together with a lodge room, some meals, excursions and transfers. In some instances, such because the Iceland tour famous above, the fares additionally embrace flights — within the case of the Iceland tour, a flight from Reykjavik, the place the tour ends, to the start line of the cruise in Bergen.
The associated fee to ebook all of those parts individually can add up, too.
Whether or not or not you’ll find a cheaper strategy to have the identical tour expertise by reserving all the weather by yourself will rely on a number of components, together with how savvy you might be about making lodge, tour, restaurant and switch bookings by yourself.
Nonetheless, the true worth in reserving one in every of these excursions by means of Viking is the best way it makes each the reserving course of and the expertise of touring simple.
With only one name to Viking, or a number of clicks on-line, you’ll be able to organize nearly each little element of your cruise trip — not simply the cruise itself however all the things you do on the journey earlier than and after you board your vessel — with the best of ease.
When you’re in your strategy to your trip vacation spot, you hardly must do something.
For a sure sort of traveler, together with me, that is one thing for which it is value paying.
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