One year and three cancellations past the plan, we’re finally on a Viking river cruise. Though not on the river we expected. Rather than blazing heat, crocodiles, hippos and ancient temples we’re on familiar European waters, with hawthorns blazing the hillsides with white, castles crowning promontories and half-timbered villages bankside. Welcome to the Grand European Tour, 15 days meandering from Amsterdam to Budapest at a stately pace.
Covid is, of course, the reason we’re here. The ability of Egyptian customs officers to deliver spot PCR tests and send failures to two weeks in a government quarantine hotel didn’t fill us with enough confidence to try that route. And Covid is still casting a long shadow, even over European travelling. We had to submit negative test results to get to our starting point, self-quarantining for a fortnight before the trip to ensure them. Staff illness wreaked havoc with Heathrow and its airlines, cancelling scores of flights including our original early hop to Schipol. (While the rescheduled flight got us to the ship on time, it killed the possibility of getting to Keukenhoff Gardens for the tulips.)
Though we were told we grabbed one of the last free cabins, the Viking Modi set sail with only about half of its full complement of 190 guests. Whether the no-shows were ill or just nervous, I can’t say. The on-board crew is short due to illness, though you’d never know it from excellent levels of service.
Covid also introduces a new kind of holiday stress: the daily PCR test. The daily routine includes spitting into test tubes and delivering them to the front by 8am. Anyone with a positive test gets whisked off the ship to quarantine in a Frankfurt hotel, so there’s always a frisson of anxiety that a tap on your shoulder could eject you from holiday paradise … especially when you discover the people you’ve been drinking regularly with were amongst the six who’ve already had to leave.
The Covid situation means that an already small ship is even more intimate. Approaching a week on board, we’ve spent time with at least two-thirds of our fellow guests. After dinner, there are rarely more than 20 people drinking in the lounge. The barmen know and call everyone by name. One guest, adept at the harmonica, ended up duetting for two sets with the ship’s pianist. There’s an Agatha Christie-like vibe to the whole thing, with the familiarity of the lounge dwellers channelling Death on the Nile while the daily PCR test results conjure And Then There Were None.
Even with a full crew and guest list, river cruising would be a much cosier proposition than an ocean ship. There’s no pool, no spa, no grand lobby and only one restaurant. Public areas spread across three floors. On the lowest you‘ll find the restaurant, with just one seating per meal and the freedom to sit where you like. The middle … though it’s the highest enclosed deck … features a small library, a couple of computers, two 24/7 coffee and snack stations and the combined bar and lounge that opens into an outdoor area at the ship’s prow.
Upstairs, running almost the entirety of the Modi’s 443-foot length, is a sun deck strewn with loungers, tables and chairs. The more active can walk around a track 12 times to make a mile, though most shore excursions will get you to your 10,000 steps a day. There’s also a shuffleboard court and a putting green. Unfortunately, the frequency of low bridges in the middle of the journey means the sun deck is closed for several days, but otherwise it’s a glorious place to enjoy down time.
And, as anticipated, there is down time aplenty. Half-way though this journey we’ve only had one truly packed day, with activities morning, afternoon and evening in Cologne. But the ship spends most of its time moving … a necessity when you’re covering more than 900 miles at a stately pace of no more than 22 kilometres per hour. It’s no surprise that Viking has done this for 25 years; their pacing along the route is masterfully planned. Industrial and lock-heavy areas usually glide by while you’re sleeping, though locks are such a feature of these waterways there are plenty in daylight hours, too. (There are 68 locks en route.) Many excursions start from unremarkable spots on the riverbank, bussing passengers to their sightseeing destinations while the ship keeps on with the business of sailing.
It’s worth noting that despite what’s pictured in the brochures, and my photo up top from Cologne, the ships don’t usually moor right in the heart of the tourist district. You’re often in more industrial ports a short distance from town, making it difficult to walk anywhere. This is a challenge for the independent traveller who’d like to explore on their own … something that’s clearly not the norm. The expectation is that most guests will leave and return to the ship with the guided excursions, whether those are the included walking tours of destinations or the extra cost add-ons. Later in the cruise, when we get to destinations we know well and want to do on our own, we’ll be sharing the tour buses in and out but breaking off from the group for the time in between.
The river cruisers (of which Viking operates more than 70 in Europe) are surprisingly quiet. We can hear the engine from our balcony, though not from our room, but it’s a gentle purr rather than an intrusive growl. In the mornings, the burble of weirs and the dawn chorus of the local birds easily rises above it. The motion is also completely unlike sea cruises, with their constant rocking. Most times, it’s hard to even tell you’re moving without looking out the windows to see if countryside is passing by. I miss the sensation of being at sea, and that strange sensation of having to find your land legs when you disembark, but it does add to the placid relaxation of the whole scene.
The small scale of a river cruise also means a more sane approach to food than the big ships. Aside from the breakfast buffet, everything is a la carte with European portion sizes. While you can order as much as you want, sticking to two or even three courses a mean here is a saner, less weight-compromising affair than on ocean ships.
The food is generally to excellent standard, and less inclined to global sameness than your typical cruise. Each night has a three-course local offering to reflect the countryside we’re sailing through. It’s not particularly seasonal … it seems odd to be on holiday in Germany in April without being bombarded with spargel, their beloved white asparagus … but I assume these menus are planned to be repeated year-round without variation for efficiency’s sake. There have occasionally been some Asian offerings that get closer in origin to the chefs and servers (mostly Filipino and Indonesian); a soul-warming tom kha gai and a chicken tikka masala that wouldn’t embarrass a top English curry house.
The crew is a well-oiled, customer service machine; this is unquestionably a five-star hotel that just happens to move. The design is more simple than Viking’s ocean ships, given the much smaller canvas they have to work with, but still a gorgeous mix of pale woods, thoughtfully mixed textiles and Nordic decorative elements. It is elegant and tasteful throughout. There’s the usual cruise industry variety of nationalities, with plenty of Eastern Europeans rounding out the already-mentioned Asians. A German hotel manager and Hungarian cruise director tie us solidly to our route.
The guests, however, show no such variety. Despite Viking’s enormous investments in UK advertising and sponsorship, we are the only Brits on a vessel entirely populated by Americans. Perhaps three of those, by our current conversations, were born outside of the States, but on the whole it’s a very homogenous group. Which brings a few advantages, and a great many more disadvantages, I’ll write about in a future entry.
But next comes a round-up of our first week.
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