longterm

Actually, what you'll want to do is buy a regional eSIM instead of for a single country. To do that, download the app onto your phone, then in the STORE, click the link at the top, to see Regional eSIMs. You can buy one for Europe, for example, that covers 39 countries; this covered the cruise we did recently that included Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, and Greece. The package I bought the regional Europe package (39 countries) for 30 days, 10GB data, at $37. Our trip lasted 24 days total, so I paid $1.54 per day for full use of my cell phone.

Cruise ships sell jewelry because profits are obscenely high. I have a friend who was the diamond buyer for one of the largest jewelry chains in the US; he used to shock me with the costs they paid for diamonds, compared with what they sold them for in the stores. No bargains to be found in jewelry stores on Viking cruise ships, that's for sure.

A couple of those giant Toblerone bars would probably eat up a good part of that $50... not that I've ever gone in the gift shop and bought one... okay, maybe just once.

I had a different experience; we arrived on board ship after flying overseas, had reservations that night at the Chef's Table at 6pm, but our luggage had yet to arrive in our stateroom. I'd flown in a t-shirt and jeans, so that's all the clothes I had at that point; we went to Chef's Table, where I explained that my luggage hadn't arrived yet. The maitre'd graciously led us to our table, and we had dinner. No problem at all. The days of having to wear a dinner jacket into most restaurants are long gone; having dress requirements in the 2 specialty restaurants on Viking ships are a throwback to the old Queen Mary days, when tuxes were common attire at dinner. Having worn tuxes in my line of work hundreds of times (I toured with various recording artists and we played Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Reno, and Atlantic City a dozen weeks or more each year, and the band wore tuxes in casino gigs), it certainly wasn't something I enjoyed, just something I was required to wear. I understand the restriction against shorts, flip-flops, and torn jeans, but I appreciated that Viking understood my predicament and made an exception in my case.

Actually, a phone can't legally piggyback onto another cell service; it may be using the ship's wifi to make calls, but it's not actually routing through the ship's cell service, which I would guess is satellite-based so that it works when away from land. When you make a wifi-based call (using Viking's ship wifi, for example), your carrier typically treats the call just like any other international call, so you'll probably get charged for it. On AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, when traveling abroad (or in international waters), calls to U.S. numbers can be made at no additional charge; calls to international numbers are billed based on your international roaming package. The best and least-expensive way to use an iPhone overseas is to use an eSim, which I explained earlier. I used to use AT&T's $10/day plan, which is automatic after the first use. If you send or receive a text, you get charged $10 for that day, after which you can make calls or send texts without any additional charge. If you do this 10 times in a cruise, you'll be charged an additional $100 for that month. eSims are different; you can buy a package for a set # of days, and use your iPhone without restriction during that period. For example, Airolo has a package in Italy that provides 30 days of coverage while in Italy, with 3GB of data (which isn't much if you send/receive any large files like PDFs, or plan to watch any video), for only $7. That's an incredible bargain; the only thing one has to watch out for in this scenario is not to send/receive large files, and certainly not try to watch any streaming video, and NOT to make FaceTime calls. IMPORTANT: Keep in mind that texts are data-transfers; so, if you text a lot, you're transferring data back and forth, and if you do it enough, can easily eat up 3GB of data in 30 days. If you're texting photos, that 3GB limit gets eaten up even faster. Airolo even has a better package; for $16 for 30 days in Italy, make unlimited calls, with 10GB of data transfer. This means you could make a few FaceTime calls if you wanted, and probably still stay under the 10GB threshold. Easier solution is just not to make FT calls while overseas though.

iPhones have a small chip called a SIM that holds all the information that the provider uses for billing. Without a SIM, you can't make calls. If you look on the lower right edge of your iPhone you'll see the outline of the SIM tray. iPhone 14 doesn't have a physical SIM; it uses an eSIM. On my iPhone 14 Pro I see the SIM tray, but I'm assuming there's no SIM card in there. There are now digital equivalents of SIM cards, called eSIMs, which are the digital equivalent of the little SIM cards previously used. You can use an eSIM with an iPhone, while keeping your account with your US carrier. When you sign up with an eSIM, you can select the country in which you'll use it. I use a company called Airolo, but there are lots of them. Do a search in the iPhone App Store, and you'll find quite a few companies. Rates are low, and it's the best and easiest way to use your phone overseas without roaming charges. To convert your phone to use an eSim, do this: Go to SETTINGS>CELLULAR; tap SET UP CELLULAR or ADD eSIM, then choose the phone number with a physical SIM (your phone number). Tap CONVERT TO eSIM, then follow the onscreen instructions. Then, whenever you travel overseas, use your eSIM instead of your physical SIM, and you'll pay low rates and have full use of your iPhone. Here's Apple's information about using an eSIM while traveling out of the country: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213448

Breakfast in the room: coffee, juice, smoothies, granola, berries; or, in The Restaurant, salmon Benedict.

As a Dad to a son who delivered for Dominos for many years, I try to remember that the server may be having a tough day, and that they rely on tips to survive. Having servers rely on tips, and paying them far less than minimum wage, is a lousy system, in my opinion; I'd rather restaurants pay their servers properly and fold that cost into the meals, like European restaurants do, but it's a culture that's not going to go away anytime soon in this country.

No, it won't affect the credit he might get (if any); I always find what I want, book online, then I email my TA and transfer it to him. I don't know what he makes, but assume it's enough to justify the onboard credits we get. I always get nice agents when I call Viking; some are more knowledgable than others, but they're always friendly and as helpful as possible. On one of our recent cruises, we booked a cruise to the British Isles, and the agent there actually used the online pages, just as we would have done ourselves; the only advantage is that we got the on-board discount.

I book online and have always gotten the stateroom that I wanted; I then transfer the booking to my TA, who gives us an OBC. Not being one to need much assistance, I generally don't use my TA much at all. My preferred method though is to book the next cruise during our current cruise, so that we can get the on-board discount. We plan to do that again on our next cruise.

We always tip excursion guides; they're almost always locally hired, and it's just something we do. It's not required, nor do we ever get the impression that it's expected, but it's something we choose to do. As my mom said often, "Chacun son gout" (to each his own taste).

If their river cruises are any indication, I would say definitely not. When we booked our 2019 Grand European, there was (of course) no mention of the possibility of interrupted travel along the rivers. We got an email about a week before the cruise, telling us that the river levels were perilous; when we got on board, we were told that we'd know that night whether we could make it all the way from Amsterdam to Budapest without disembarking. Fortunately for our cruise, we were able to make the whole trip. We're doing the same cruise again next October; I've already researched alternate cruises if it looks like we might have interrupted travel. Naturally, there has been no mention of river levels, even though there have been issues this season with water levels on the Rhine, Danube, and Main Rivers. Unfortunately, there really is no way to know until the ship sails whether the rivers will be navigable. My plan is to try to make a decision by late June, for our sailing in early October--no way to know for sure, but we don't want an interrupted or shortened voyage.

Interesting vessel; it looks like a barge transformed into a cruise ship, but without the deep hull. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/viking-cruise-low-water-mississippi-river/index.html

It's available on YouTube; search for "Nova" and you'll see "Saving Venice." Definitely worth watching.

We've started on Viking before the pandemic and have taken a couple since they opened back up (Italy, the Caribbean); in all cases, we've had excellent trips and exemplary service from Viking staff and crew. Even when Venice decided to change its rules with docking, Viking worked out a way to get us into the city without much fuss; we made every port of call around Italy and along the Adriatic; we had some great excursions in the post extension in Athens. Food was consistently good on-board; my morning favorite of salmon eggs benedict was always spot on, espresso delivered without my even asking from a waiter we got to know--there just wasn't anything to criticize on any of our cruises. I used to travel as a professional musician with well-known bands all through the 80s and 90s; we went all over the world, in and out of hotels every day, flying almost every day to the next dates. There was invariably that person in every group that found fault wherever we went; if a plane didn't leave on time, we'd be sure to hear about it; if a hotel didn't have our rooms ready when we arrived (even if we got there in the middle of the night), he'd complain. Usually, his voice would be the one we'd hear, rather than all the others who seemed to be quite content with things. I quickly learned that when I left my home, I was no longer in charge and had to be willing to adjust to shifting winds; the more I kept that perspective, the happier I became. Fortunately, we've had almost no adjustments on Viking cruises, and have never regretted our trust in them.

We've traveled in the Caribbean and also in South Africa; for any trip to a 3rd-world country, we always get a prescription of a strong antibiotic (Cipro) and carry it with us, just in case. These days though, medicines are a lot more available than years past, unless you're out in the bush (which we were in Zimbabwe) or on some of the Caribbean islands.

Is Colon canceled too?

I still see Colon, Panama listed in the description for this cruise, but it would really have rankled had they removed that port call and we were still on that cruise. I did cancel our reservations and we'll apply those funds to our upcoming British Isles Explorer cruise instead; $150 credit per person seems a little low as a compensation for skipping a port of call, but I suppose that's their standard policy--don't know, haven't had that happen to us yet.

We haven't yet done a cruise with that many sea days, so maybe we'd like it more than we think we would. We're fairly active and like to see new destinations, so we generally look for cruises with only a couple of sea days wherever possible. I regret not getting to see the Canal though.

We had a Panama Canal cruise scheduled for March 2023; I got that notice yesterday about Key West. We cancelled our cruise when we got that notice; 6 sea days out of 14 just doesn't make any sense for us.

We're scheduled to do the BIE in July 2024, unless we decide to forego next year's Grand European river cruise for the BIE (river water levels don't look promising). I certainly hope we don't miss out on the Shetland Islands, which we would love to see--big fans of the show "Shetland." We'll probably extend our cruise to take the train trip from Bergen to Oslo...

We just got the 3rd booster; we have all our original cards (not laminated) and took them to the UPS Store, made 3 copies of each, had the copies laminated. The originals aren't laminated so the booster information was added to them. Our next cruise is in March, down to the Panama Canal; we'll probably only need our Covid cards to get onboard the ship, but I'll probably take care of Verifly just to be prepared for anything.

We were in Carcassonne in May on a Rick Steves tour; not sure it warrants 8 hours (perhaps 1-2), but we didn't go into the town itself, just the walled town, which is, unfortunately, filled with souvenir shops selling cheap trinkets. My wife and I like to go into shops, but these were a huge disappointment. Perhaps the town itself is interesting, but we didn't get there. However, nearby is the Carrieres de Lumieres, which is absolutely fantastic and one of the best things we saw on our tour through the Loire valley. If you were to choose something to see in that region, I would strongly recommend this: https://bucketlistjourney.net/see-the-carrieres-de-lumieres-quarries-of-light-in-the-south-of-france/

I was able to get my mower, fertilizer, and gardening tools stored without any trouble.

I was told by a TA that if you book travel insurance with Viking within a certain time period after booking the cruise, pre-existing conditions are covered, but not covered if you add the insurance after a short period. For example, if you book travel insurance (thru Viking) within 2 weeks of booking the cruise, pre-existing conditions are covered--but after 2 weeks, they're not. I could be wrong about the time period, but I think that's what I was told; I wondered at the time if it was just a way to encourage me to get travel insurance immediately, rather than waiting later. From everything I'm reading, I think my next travel insurance will definitely NOT be through Viking.