KTRaveller

Thanks very much for this idea, Clay. I'll start following this thread assiduously.

Guess you couldn't give Viking a pass given what happened after your Kathleen went to the medical office. I hope your experience and reporting and writing about it will improve the customer service. Viking usually responds to problems. I wonder if the fact that people are hiding Covid infections has made the medical staff much less patient or if Viking has a hard time hiring good people since the pandemic has sucked up all available medical personnel everywhere.

Food poisoning can really happen anywhere -- for me it was Taillevent, a superb Michelin 3-star restaurant in Paris and probably the langoustines (crawfish) but we'll never know. I'd go back if someone else was paying -- it was a wonderful experience at the time! The other time was a dinner at the Ambassador's residence at one of our posts. Glad you are giving Viking a pass on that one, but sorry Kathleen had to go through that -- not fun. We happen to like hard beds, so Viking Ocean is perfect that way. We hope the river cruise we have coming up has the same ones!

Hi FlyerTalker -- I understand that the airline has the final say on baggage allowance, but what happens when code sharing airlines have different allowances? Our first flight on a small plane ("Horizon, operated for Alaska," but with a Finnair flight # as well) has no weight limit on carryon -- just the dimensions, but our continuation on Finnair restricts carryon, including the personal item to 17 pounds -- one of the lowest allowances on the list. Any idea whether we'll have a problem boarding the first actual Finnair flight? I've searched their website and google for a clue, but nothing definitive shows up. Thanks!

Sure, but on our original itinerary, before the flights disappeared and we were rebooked with Finnair, Viking Air got us economy seats for no charge. So, it's just an annoying additional expense.

In MVJ under Air/Preferences, each traveler can select his/her favorite kind of seat. If one of you selects aisle and one window, they should seat you that way. My husband and I usually go for "aisle across" which is an option since we both like the aisle on long flights. I wasn't referring to this situation though, but to the completely unprecedented one of having Viking Air Plus tell me that they were unable to book seats for us on Finnair and then have Finnair require a payment just to book any old seat now instead of waiting until check in! I just checked MVJ Air/Preferences and they have an option to select Aisle/Window for a couple. If you go to MVJ Air/Itinerary that's where you might be able to adjust the itinerary, but be warned, you can't just play with one leg or even just one way -- the whole thing gets thrown out and you start over.

I tried to use the MVJ process but any change I tried would wipe out the whole itinerary, not just the flight I wanted to change, so we paid for Air Plus. Early ticketing may be possible, but if you make any change after that point, I was told it would incur a fee of $350 per person. I needed the early ticketing because without it Finnair would not assign us seats. BTW, when they did allow us to select seats (in coach) there was a fee just to select a seat and not wait until check in time! This is for a TA flight so we didn't want to risk center seats so paid the $39 euro fee. I know -- it's a drop in the bucket, but still very un-Viking so I'm going to let them know. It's not their fault -- the original flights they had put us on (Lufthansa) where we had good seats were discontinued by the airline, but I think they should pay the fee to select seats. Air Plus said they couldn't do it for us because they had no way to pay the fee. ????? I wonder if Finnair is a "budget airline" like Norwegian. Anyone know?

I've thoroughly enjoyed following your journey. We'll be doing a Viking Athens to Rome trip in fall of 2023 and this made me want to add Istanbul to Athens, but no luck! Someday... I imagine time stretched out for you as it usually does for me when I'm traveling and having new experiences and that looking back, your week at sea seemed much longer. Hope so! I've thought about producing a daily record of our next Viking cruise (we've only done one so far -- but I've become such a Viking groupie that it feels like more, and we have 3 booked which have been postponed, replaced, rescheduled etc. etc.) We'll be on the Grand European River cruise in October from Budapest to Amsterdam with a pre-tour in Prague. Anyway, I wonder whether you were able to preserve your entries and pictures from this CC thread somewhere separately for longer term use or if you'll always have to find them here in CC. If you were able to preserve them, how did you do it? Thanks so much for sharing your travel joys and tips.