id4elizabeth

Another vote for Malbork - yes, it's a drive but we had enough time there to explore just about everything EXCEPT the church you described - last year they were doing emergency restorations due to safety issues, so we only saw the outside. But the castle is fascinating, and the amber museum was quite interesting too.

We used an AMEX and got charged a transaction fee. I called Viking and, after e-mailing then my cc statement, they credited my account with the amount. So pay attention to your CC statement. The transaction fee was at the bottom of the statement under "Fees and Interest" - not with the charge itself.

Freyja is fine with blond dyed hair (highlighted). Can't comment on other darker shades. The products did seem kinda mild to me.

Are there any small boat river cruises in Ireland and / or Scotland?

There was Conditioner.

I have that exact camera. I recently bought a new camera, the Sony A7ii only because the HX300 Sony does not shot in Raw format. I wanted to do more post-processing in Photoshop and felt that the option of starting with Raw would be a benefit. Other than a few minor other things, the HX300 does almost as much as my new camera and with the lighter lens, the whole package of the HX300 is a lot lighter to carry around.

We just got back from a trip to Eastern Europe and I carried the A7ii while my husband carried the HX300. When I needed a lot of zoom, I'd borrow his camera. It's a great little camera that let's you shoot great pics in Auto, while still giving you the option of switching to Aperture Priority, Shutter priority and even full Manual. If you switch to intelligent auto, it does a pretty good job in low light.

As far as the zoom goes, when you're zoomed out to the max, it's pretty grainy and you more or less have to be on a tripod or brace the camera onto some fixed structure to get a good focused picture. I found if I didn't zoom quite out to the max, it did better.

Hope that helps.

We got $300 off our next cruise. Can't remember whether that was per person or both.

We were on the 50-day cruise from Istanbul to Stockholm and there was only one incident that we heard about and that was in Ephesus, Turkey and it was the Turkish authorities (not Viking) that confiscated the bottle because it was over 15%.

When you reboard the ship in any port, you do have to put your bags through a small x-ray machine. But in all the times I saw folks bring bottles aboard in bags, and put them through the machine, I never saw the Viking staff look at the labels, or even take the bottles out of the bags. Most ports don't have a separate security check by the port authorities themselves - they seem to count on the ship's themselves to provide security.

They might have this 15% "rule" but on our cruise it was only a problem that I know of in Ephesus.

You could always try one bottle and if that doesn't work you'd have to ask for it to be stocked in the mini-bar. Depending on your cabin category you might have to pay for it.

We just, this evening, finished our 4 day tour with Transylvain Discovery Tours with a wonderful fellow named Bogdan. I will write a more exhaustive review when I'm not so exhausted myself. What I do want to clarify, Bogdan's original price to us was 475 euros at a lovely pensione. Trouble is, let's face it, we like our western creature comforts when it comes to bedding down for the night. So Bogdan arranged at our request a very upscale Hotel that turned out to be very high-tech and modern. That's why the price you see me paying is higher - I particularly chose a higher priced lodging.

The advantage over our trip to the Viking extension is: 1. You see so much more, 2. You see off-the-beaten-path types of things you'd never see with Viking. 3. In our case with only 2 of us, we could spend as much or as little time in an area as you want. Bogdan was eager to accommodate any wish or whim you might come up with. He was totally punctual, polite, informative and helpful. The Viking extension basically takes you to see Peles Castle and Bran Castle and give you a panoramic tour of Brasov with a bit of free time there, that's about it, before you're whisked back to Bucharest.

You've only just scratched the surface of the delights Transylvania has to offer. With someone like Bogdan you get a so much more in depth experience.

Roothy - the reason you haven't found the 50-day Star trip on my blog is that I haven't written it. And here I am in Bucharest having just come off a 3-week trip of Eastern Europe that included a 10 day Viking land/cruise. My plan is to write up the current Eastern Europe one first. Might be awhile till I get to that 50-day Star trip.

The real problem is sorting through an overwhelming number of photos to pick the best ones for the blog. I took over 100,000 photos for the Star trip and find getting them even sorted is just too daunting.

So look for Eastern Europe next.

CharTrav - Most of our "systems error" adjustments to our tours were indeed included ones. Often there is only one time for any given optional tour. I say most because some of our optional tours were indeed switched on us. We had carefully planned Naples to first take the Herculaneum tour in the am (only time it was offered) and then Pompeii in the afternoon (Pompeii was offered in am and pm). When we boarded we got tickets for the am for Pompeii and they had cancelled our Herculaneum tour as they said we were overbooked. Finally did straighten it out and managed to see both. Moral of the story - check your tickets once onboard.

You can sort of tailor it how you want - let's say you only drink diet Coke - let your cabin steward know that and they'll keep refillin it with just that. If you're allergic to peanuts that won't give you those. Tgey'll let you know what they can and cannot get for you as freebies based on your cabin category.

Related to this, Viking does not mind AT ALL if you bring your own wine, beer, spirits or any other (legal) beverage on board. And not the fridge is not really set up to hold large bottles of wine, BUT all the components can be removed and/or rearranged to accommodate almost any sized bottle(s). ;)

Don't know if what you're asking is "how long has this problem been going on?" If you are I can tell you since the first sailing of the Star on April 11, 2015. So for over a year. So, my advice is to expect this to happen to you and decide how you want to handle it. Is it really important that you keep to your original time slot? If so, be prepared to go down to the Excursions Desk and straighten it out. If you are firm and explain your reasons, they will accommodate you (at least they did us - many, many times). On the other hand you might not mind the new time slot and are prepared to just go with the flow. We were in this situation a couple of times - had signed up for early morning and got changed to early afternoon. The advantage with the early afternoons is that they are usually not as crowded.

And then for some minority of folks , they'll be no changes and everything will work out as planned.

My advice is to plan on some mix up and plan how you're going to deal with it and don't let it get to you - it will all work out in the end. I know it's just frustrating to have to deal with it and you haven't even sailed!

You just show up at the MDR. This is another one of those little "internal systems errors" that Viking has. Whatever you sign up for on MyVikingJourney makes no difference at all, as the MDR on board ship has no automated reservation system. It actually works out fine. We seldom had to wait more than 10 minutes and most times we were seated right away.

Yep - sure is - although not as great as it used to be :p. I've checked my booking and unfortunately it was quoted in Euros. :(

We've completed Day 1 of our 4 day excursion and am certainly pleased so far. Bogdan was a bit early getting to the Hilton so as soon as we came down we were whisked away; he has a nice, although not extravagant van that comfortably would seat 6; the hotel we requested as an upgrade to the pensione is absolutely fabulous...best hotel we've stayed at so far on this trip. Had a great dinner in the hotel restaurant. We went to Peles Castle and Bran Castle and had a driving orientation tour through Brasov today.

Dauntless - you are absolutely right - I would never do a maiden cruise again on any line, Viking or anyone else - my lesson there was learned big time. And yes we enjoyed our cruise. I'm not against Viking or it's efforts to establish itself with its Oceans line. We just finished yet another Viking Rivers cruise so I can't be that negative about Viking. My point was that the review seemed a little too good to be true. There's the "glass is half full" optimist point of view, but this review was more like "my cup runneth over."

Just to throw another option at you - how about the A7ii - without the R in it.

Are you planning on shooting in Raw or JPEG format for stills? If Raw, the A7Rii will chew up a lot of disk space. I wanted a camera that I could shoot in Raw so went with the A7ii instead of the A6300, but when I found out how much space I'd need (I shoot A LOT of pictures) I decided against the "R". The A7ii is also a lot cheaper.

Out of interest I went to this Travel Agent's review. While I don't think he was untruthful about anything he said, I think it was very one-sided. It's why I never trust the opinions of folks who get comped their cruise or whose livelihoods depend on positive relations with cruise companies. I'd rather get my info from the folks on this board who give you the good and the bad about their trips.

Having lived through the maiden cruise of the Star where Viking had travel press and other associated VIPs on board, I can also tell you Viking pulls out all the stops to impress them, often at the expense of their paying customers. His experience and yours may be entirely different.

Gimp - here's the link to all my shore excursion reviews, Istanbul to Greenwich:

50-day Empire excursions – included, optional, private, and DIY

Yes - that was it - so glad you could remember for me! The castle was fabulous. The guide you get for the castle is a castle guide/docent - not the Viking supplied guide. Our Viking supplied guide was HORRIBLE! but the castle guide was great. Viking had many negative reports about him, so I'm sure they don't use him anymore. Just fair warning - the bus ride to the castle was not short - can't remember how long it was, but it wasn't short - definitely shorter than Berlin though.

We're in Bucharest right now or I would look up the details in my notes. I did do a fairly lenghty review on Cruise Critic in this Viking Oceans forum entitled something like "Excursions Optional and Included 50-day maiden". I did write ups of all our excursions up through Greenwich.

Yes - that's them - although we didn't specifically ask for the "Dracula" tours. The guy I've been dealing with is Bodgan. The cost is 625 per person, but can't remember whether that's USD or Euros - plus entrance fees to particular castles, museums etc. Breakfast is included but other meals are on us. Viking's price for our time of year was $799.

We specifically asked for a private tour and are booked for a van, driver, and guide for just the 2 of us. Fine with me if you tell him Elizabeth sent you and I'm to be picked up on Sunday - might help insure a great trip! Now if you could just insure fantastic weather, I'd be eternally grateful!

On our cruise this time last year we tipped in Euros and the local guides seemed quite happy with them. Others on our cruise used USD and that was OK too. The only thing I would not do is tip in Krona where the local currency was Rubles for example. As a matter of fact, in St Petersburg, USD seem to be preferred - more stable than the Ruble.

In some ports you won't have time to get to an ATM before you have to give the guide a tip. And most ATMS won't give you small enough denominations of currency to tip with. You'd also be left with a bunch of misc bits and pieces by the end of the trip that you'd have a hard time converting back. Stick with Euros - much easier!

Most (but not all) of those on our cruise gripped about the long bus ride which turned out to be 4 hours going and 5 hours back. As I recall they didn't return to the ship until almost 11:00 pm. If Viking has switched from train that's certainly better, but remember that only gets you to the train station in Berlin.

We went to an optional Castle but don't remember the name.

Harley - fyi, our initial tour on offer from them was 3 days, but when we listed all we wanted to see, we expanded it to 4. They were very willing to adjust the schedule and accommodate our wishes. The hotel originally proposed by the standard tour was a "pensione" but we upgraded that to the Hotel Kronwell. Now we just have to see if they deliver.

We start our private tour with tdtours.com this coming Sunday for 4 days. I cannot recommend them yet as we have yet to go. That being said, the trip is for 4 full days in Transylvania at the same hotel Viking uses for the same price. With the Viking tour you only really get a day and a half of Transylvania - the rest in Bucharest - and 3 days total. Plus ours is supposed to be a private tour - not a bus load. (On our cruise, there are 33 people booked for the Transylvania Viking extension.)

Wish I could give you a full review now, but I will post back here once we've gone. I'm hoping it works out as planned!