Excursions on the Sky in Iceland

We went on a river cruise in China on Viking and fell in love with the cruise line. In China your days excursions was planned as a group everyday and led by our tour guide that we had the whole cruise. Right now there are no excursions listed for me to choose from on my own page. I am a planner and would like to start building my itinerary for the voyage. I know that you get one excursion per day, so do you book an optional tour or plan one on your own? Any suggestions on must see places in Iceland and Norway? TIA

I assume you are booked for the “ Iceland’s Majestic Landscapes”? We are on the August 1st 2019 sailing. I am anxious as well to start building my “wish list”. My guess is that it is a new itinerary for Viking and they are still working on building tours. I suppose options for tours may be few in some of the smaller ports in Iceland and the Faroe Islands?

Long before Viking posts the excursions that will be offered on your sailing on MyVikingJourney, there is information about the the possible shorex on the Viking website itself. Go to the itinerary page your your sailing and scroll down to where it says Day by by Day. Click on one of the "Read more" arrows and you will taken to a new section featuring a generic page for each of the ports that you will be visiting (generic in term of any time that port is featured in an itinerary that is the page that you will see). These generic pages will change over time, so keep checking them; they are always a work in progress and even more so when a new itinerary is being developed. To make it easy for you, here is a link to get you where you want to be.

Viking has been bring pax to Iceland ever since it launched in 2015 as a pre- or post land extension to some of its Scandanavian cruises. So, the area is not entirely new to them. Also, their transatlantic repositioning cruise from Bergen to Montreal has been calling in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

We went on a river cruise in China on Viking and fell in love with the cruise line. In China your days excursions was planned as a group everyday and led by our tour guide that we had the whole cruise. Right now there are no excursions listed for me to choose from on my own page. I am a planner and would like to start building my itinerary for the voyage. I know that you get one excursion per day, so do you book an optional tour or plan one on your own? Any suggestions on must see places in Iceland and Norway? TIA

Nonnie, Viking China hooked us as well but I will tell that their China packages are very different from everything else that Viking offers, river or ocean. No one does it like Viking's team in China. For one, no escort. You will be with a a different guide and a different group of people every day.

There is one tour that is designated as the included tour (on occasion you get a choice of two). You will need to register for the included tours on MVJ when booking opens. At that time, you will see what times the tour is being offered. Viking also offers optional tours in most every port (and as I explained above, you can see what those may be on the Viking wesite). What you will not see on the Viking website are the prices for the optional tours.

You will not see any tours listed on MVJ until about 120 days prior to sailing (not a fixed date, just a reasonable guestimate based on past performance).

So, bottom line: three options for guided tours 1) the included tour, 2) optional paid tours and 3) private tour that you arrange.

IMHO, in Geiranger, plan your own. Geirangerfjord Services offers a variety of tours, kayak, zodiac boat, bus, etc. etc. etc. (we took the bus to Dalsnibba and then the boat ride on the fjord)

In Alesund, we did ÅLESUND & SUNNMORE OPEN AIR MUSEUM and then spent the afternoon just wandering around the town and checking out the Art Nouveau buildings.

We went on a river cruise in China on Viking and fell in love with the cruise line. In China your days excursions was planned as a group everyday and led by our tour guide that we had the whole cruise. Right now there are no excursions listed for me to choose from on my own page. I am a planner and would like to start building my itinerary for the voyage. I know that you get one excursion per day, so do you book an optional tour or plan one on your own? Any suggestions on must see places in Iceland and Norway? TIA

We thoroughly enjoyed our day in Iceland, opting for a ship's excursion, rather than booking a private tour, due to distance travelled. The following places are worth researching:

- Thingvellir National Park with the North America/Eurasia fault line,

- Gullfoss Waterfall,

- Strokkur Ggeyser,

- City drive through downtown Reykjavik

- Icelandic Horse Show.

You can check out photos and reports on our travel blog - at the following links

https://andyandjudi.com/2015/07/22/day-58-reykjavik-iceland-circle-tour-july-18th-2015-part-1/#more-3570

https://andyandjudi.com/2015/07/22/day-58-reykjavik-iceland-circle-tour-july-18th-2015-part-1i/

We loved Reykjavik. The Golden Circle tour (usually Gullfoss, Thingfellir, and Geyser area) is classic, and we pretty much did that using a rental car, getting lost once. If you just google Golden Circle Tour Iceland you can get a preview. Plenty of companies offer tours. All 3 places were crowded but very worthwhile. We also walked around and drove a little in Reykjavik, went up to the top of the stunning church, and drove to the Blue Lagoon, although we did not pay the admission and go in. (There's a free area where you can at least view the lagoon.) We also drove out into the country to see several lighthouses, since I'm a lighthouse nut. We did all of this by rental car, over a period of two plus days, so obviously you likely won't be able to see nearly as much on a cruise stop. However, everywhere we went, we loved. You can't go wrong, although there's a good amount of walking on the Golden Circle Tour, so that may make it a little hard for some people.

I would love to go back to Iceland; next time going to the south coast. My pictures are here: http://www.pbase.com/roothy123/iceland__into_the_midnight_sun&page=all

How quickly do the tours book up. We are DV, and I afraid everything will be booked by the time it is our turn? I have some things that are on my list that I really want to see.