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Viking River Cruises - How much time is there in port?


Aurora1525
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I'm about to go on my first river cruise - Viking's Cities of Light (Paris to Prague). I'm familiar with ocean cruising where there are clear arrival/departure times at each port. Many of the reviews I've read seem to suggest that while you are touring, the boat continues down the river. The included tours I've booked in cities like Trier, Cochem, and Koblenz are running about 3 hours long. How much time do we actually have in port? Do we have any free time after the tours or do we need to hop back on the bus to catch up with the boat? Thanks in advance!

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Varies all over the place per port. Also, river traffic (lock congestion) and other issues can affect the time docked. Every cruise I've taken there have been SOME ports where I was able to wander off ship on my own and explore. I love that feature of river cruising.

Sometimes there are shuttles back to the ship so you can stay where you are longer post tour. Even the same river company will do some of their tours differently over the seasons & years. River cruising is an unpredictable adventure but always fun for us.

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I have been on 2 river cruises. One with Viking on the Danube, and the other with Grand Circle on the Rhone. Neither cruise had any bus trips to catch up with the ship, and generally you had the entire day in port after the morning tour with a guide. On Grand Circle, we actually spent 2 days in Lyon, so as the above poster notes, it can vary considerably depending on the cruise line and itinerary.

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On Viking’s Rhine Getaway two years ago, we made a stop for people to get off to visit Heidelberg. We’d been to Heidelberg twice before so we stayed on board and sailed for five hours to Speyer, where we visited the Technik Museum on our own which was a short walk from where we docked (it’s an awesome museum if you like older planes and antique cars), then the others who went to Heidelberg returned to the boat in Speyer. We really enjoyed sailing on the sun deck enjoying the scenery with barely anyone else around.

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