Getting around cities in Europe

[zitsky]

I'm on a River Cruise on Viking in September. But this is a general question. I imagine most of these cruises include a walking tour of the city they go through. Do most companies do a good job of getting you oriented, in case you want to explore more later? I guess in some places, your ship is not right on next to the city, but instead may be a bus ride away. So you may not have the option to wander around later?

 

I just wonder how easy it is to avoid getting lost? Some of these places seem more like small towns, other ones are small cities. Example Arles, Avignon, etc.

 

I have been to Paris twice and other places, so I'm not really new to Europe. But in Paris I could grab a map at my hotel. I suppose now you could rely on your phone and Google maps to tell you where you are.

[id4elizabeth]

Viking will hand out maps for the towns and cities they visit on the cruise. These maps are not the best in the world, but generally adequate. I always take a zerox copy of maps out of guide books - they're better. Many of the port towns are walkable from the port, but when not, either we've taken a taxi or Viking has provided a shuttle.

[nancyevans]

IMO, do some research on your own and have an idea of what interests you at each port. Also do some research on the local transportation system. Public transportation is excellent in Europe and its generally easy to navigate on your own.

Be certain to have local currency with you, preferably in smaller denominations in case the ticket machines don't take credit cards. If using a tram or bus, its good to know if you can buy tickets from the driver/conductor or before your board.

Also, know where you have to validate the ticket. Sometimes, its before you board, sometimes its machine on board.

Most towns and cities have a tourist website with information about public transportation. Trip Advisor is also a good source of information.

It can really be to your advantage to get out on your own. We took the 1/2 tour offered by our cruise company but then used the local subway to visit a local palace.

Have fun planning your trip.

[notamermaid]

Hello zitsky,

 

as you have not mentioned the itinerary of your trip I would like to give you a general answer. Yes, as id4elizabeth has mentioned, some ports are quite a distance from the town centre. From posts over the last year it seems that Viking in Le Pecq outside of Paris (but close enough to be within the Paris outer city boundaries) appears to be the furthest. Some towns do not have a navigable river like Regensburg, there you are actually on a canal outside of town.

 

Viking used to have the info booklets of the itineraries they offer online. They might have been moved to a login-site for their existing customers. Look around the website a bit. The embarkation / disembarkation ports infos are online.

 

Public transport is easy in Europe in general. Just be aware that on national and public holidays options are fewer, i.e. less frequent.

 

notamermaid

[G.M.T.]

I suppose now you could rely on your phone and Google maps to tell you where you are.

 

Phone & Google maps are fine so mlong you have a connection, not afraid of roaming charges etc.

 

There is a much easier way to navigate (on land) with an app "CityMaps2Go Pro". With this app you work offline just using the GPS function of your phone, just download the maps and/or wikipedi poi that you require.

[jpalbny]

Hi GMT, Google maps has (finally!) made it a lot easier to download sections of their maps for offline use. Thus is now my go-to method for cruise stops. I only download when connected to the ship's WiFi, or at home before we leave if I'm organized enough.

 

This is particularly helpful because I can save locations on Google maps while working on my laptop while I'm home, and they will automatically synchronize to the cached map on my phone. Once I'm in port, even when I'm out of range of the ship's WiFi, I have a customized map of all the things I want to see, and my phone's GPS guides me along said map. No data connection necessary to access the cached map. Very handy!

 

I have looked at the program you mentioned (CityMaps2Go) but I can't remember why I didn't end up using it. I think it wasn't free, and I am an inveterate cheapskate! :)

 

Haven't cruised Viking but pretty much any company I've used will hand out some sort of map for each stop, which I'll use as a backup.

 

And I enthusiastically second what everyone has said about public transportation. We use it very frequently. Pretty much every small city has a website with enough English information so that you can figure out everything you need to know before you arrive. Many have apps, though I've found them highly variable in terms of practicality, because most require an active data connection. More frequently, I just download a route map to my phone for reference.

Edited February 22, 2016 by jpalbny

[4774Papa]

Agree with others that you should do a bit of research on the places your cruise will visit.

We have done the AMA Rhone/Saone southern France cruise that includes one large city, Lyon and several medium sized cities like Avignon and Arles. Most are very walkable from the dock. Some do involve a short bus ride.

 

You can find lots on the internet on TripAdvisor (things to do) and from guidebooks like Rick Steves, Framers, etc.

[zitsky]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Much appreciated! Online maps sounds like a good idea.

 

My itinerary is Avignon to Lyon, France with pre visit in Nice.

[rjscott]

Avignon is very walkable from the ship. We had a nice walking tour, then stayed in town on our own and walked back to the ship later. Where we docked at Lyon was a bit of a bus ride from the center of town, but would be a short cab ride.

 

Becki

[franski]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Much appreciated! Online maps sounds like a good idea.

 

My itinerary is Avignon to Lyon, France with pre visit in Nice.

 

We found Nice very easy to navigate. They have a great bus system - and you can get to both Eze and St. Paul de Vence quite easily on the bus. We purchased day passes - easy to buy right at the various stops --> and you just validate on the bus, or before you board. Be careful - my friend had her wallet stolen on the bus. Luckily not a lot of money --> but definitely upsetting.

 

Monaco is also an easy trip from Nice. We took the train over as our cruise actually included 1 night there - but we did have a bit of a walk down from the train station. I think you can get there on the bus - and would probably see some nice country side.

 

Fran

[4774Papa]

If you do the Rhone river cruise, don't miss Pont du Gard, an amazing Roman aqueduct still standing for centuries.

[zitsky]

We found Nice very easy to navigate. They have a great bus system - and you can get to both Eze and St. Paul de Vence quite easily on the bus. We purchased day passes - easy to buy right at the various stops --> and you just validate on the bus, or before you board. Be careful - my friend had her wallet stolen on the bus. Luckily not a lot of money --> but definitely upsetting.

 

Monaco is also an easy trip from Nice. We took the train over as our cruise actually included 1 night there - but we did have a bit of a walk down from the train station. I think you can get there on the bus - and would probably see some nice country side.

 

Fran

 

Fran, what did you do or see in Monaco? I've always wanted to see it. Grace Kelly and too many Bond movies, I guess.

[franski]

Fran, what did you do or see in Monaco? I've always wanted to see it. Grace Kelly and too many Bond movies, I guess.

 

We basically just walked around and enjoyed the scenery. We had thought about trying to visit the palace, but didn't really have time.

 

It is not a big place. If anyone is an F1 fan, it is nice to see the curve in front of the Fairmont Hotel. The shoreline is beautiful. But everything is *VERY* expensive.

 

Fran

[zitsky]

We basically just walked around and enjoyed the scenery. We had thought about trying to visit the palace, but didn't really have time.

 

It is not a big place. If anyone is an F1 fan, it is nice to see the curve in front of the Fairmont Hotel. The shoreline is beautiful. But everything is *VERY* expensive.

 

Fran

 

You've given me an idea. Lunch at the Fairmont and a visit to the palace sounds like fun to me.

[nancyevans]

Check the website for the palace for the time of the changing of the guard and the tour times. The area around the palace is nice with lots of restaurants and shops.

Also up there, near the cathedral, there is a little tourist train that will take you all over Monaco. Google "petite train Monaco" if you want to search for operating times.

We were in Monaco for 3 or 4 nights back in 2007. The restaurants are closed during the afternoon from about 2 until 6 or 7 p.m. You can get ice cream in the middle of the afternoon but not much else. We did find one restaurant that was opened 24/7. We had a terrible time getting in sync with the restaurant opening times.

The buses are very easy to use and , at that time, taxis were not too expensive. At Beaulieu sur Mer, a museum called a taxi for us to take us up to the Rothschild villa. The villa, in turned, called a taxi to take us back to the bus stop.

[Got2Cruise]

Fran, what did you do or see in Monaco? I've always wanted to see it. Grace Kelly and too many Bond movies, I guess.

 

You can visit the cathedral where Princess Grace was married and now is buried there to pay your respects. Monaco has two sides, the side with the casino is Monte Carlo. We only stayed on the side with the palace. There is also a very lovely botanical garden.

[mort&fran]

We did not find much interesting in Monaco, which is where our ship docked. So we took the bus to Nice; fare was only 1 euro and the scenery en route was amazing! (Be sure to take the local bus [the express takes a different route], and sit on the sea-side - left when heading to Nice, right going from Nice to Monaco.)

 

There are Matisse and Chagall galleries ("musee") in Nice that we enjoyed; they were easily accessible via a local bus. (Had to walk perhaps 2 blocks from where the bus from Monaco stopped, to get the correct local bus. It was perhaps 3 years ago; I believe info I found on Cruise Critic provided all I needed to know. Except how to speak French...)

[id4elizabeth]

Monaco - The Gardens along the coast up near the Palace were beautiful! We booked tickets for the Monaco Palace ahead of time on-line before we left home. Last year anyway they were good all day - not for a specific time which was great. We found the changing of the guard not all that impressive but really enjoyed the Palace and audioguide. The Cathedral was very cool, particularly if you are a fan of Grace Kelly. We took the double-decker bus which takes you all over both Monaco and MonteCarlo, but be aware that it stopped at 5:00. We went to the old iconic casino, but it does actually cost to get in - not worth it in my opinion. We found the city quite beautiful and spic-and-span clean. The people we found a bit aloof.

[Host Jazzbeau]

We found Nice very easy to navigate. They have a great bus system - and you can get to both Eze and St. Paul de Vence quite easily on the bus. We purchased day passes - easy to buy right at the various stops --> and you just validate on the bus, or before you board. Be careful - my friend had her wallet stolen on the bus. Luckily not a lot of money --> but definitely upsetting.

 

Monaco is also an easy trip from Nice. We took the train over as our cruise actually included 1 night there - but we did have a bit of a walk down from the train station. I think you can get there on the bus - and would probably see some nice country side.

 

Fran

 

Bus #100 goes direct from Monaco to Nice along the Lower Corniche and is much more scenic than the train. Coming back, bus #112 runs along the Upper Corniche and is even more scenic -- but it does NOT run on Sundays. If you have enough time you can go to Eze, but it takes four buses and would not only limit your time in Nice but make it a little scary getting back to the ship on time :eek: so I would save Eze for another trip.

[TravelerThom]

...Some towns do not have a navigable river like Regensburg, there you are actually on a canal outside of town...

I have docked twice (admittedly almost 10 years ago) in Regensburg along Marc-Aurel-Ufer immediately downstream from Eiserne Brücke and a short walk from Steinerne Brücke. That docking location is on the Danau (not a canal), isn’t it? Are they no longer allowing riverboats to dock there? That docking location was a dead-end as we would not have fit under Steinerne Brücke, and we did have to bypass Regensburg on the canal.

 

Thom

 

PS I greatly appreciate all the information you so generously provide on river cruising in Germany and Europe.

[notamermaid]

Hello TravelerThom,

 

Thanking you for pointing this out. I was under the assumption that the large river boats do not cruise into Regensburg. As you say it is a dead end because of the bridge.

 

The Donau or Danube is sort of divided in Regensburg into river and canal.

 

I think I confused the situation with Nuremberg. :o Sorry.

 

Towns vary a bit in their docking situation and as the rivers become more crowded some harbours are reaching their limits with "good touristy docking locations". Rüdesheim and Koblenz are two examples.

 

Also, river levels might impact your docking situation at short notice.

 

Thank you again.

 

notamermaid

[rrgator]

On our last Viking cruise, the Romantic Danube in Dec 2015, we made a decision to go by train to the neat little town of Bamberg on Sunday, during our post-cruise stay in Nuremberg. It was a neat place and worth the trip. We only made 2 mistakes that I will avoid in the future. We didn't really understand how to navigate the ticket purchasing process at the train station and once we did, how to get to the correct platform. A quick trip to the station, which was across the street from our hotel, on Saturday would have been a good idea. Also, we should have gotten a map of the town before we left, as we got to the Bamberg train station early on Sunday morning and realized we didn't know where the Christmas markets were. I figured if we just started walking, we would find them. After all, how big could Bamberg be? :D Well it turned out that we walked the exact wrong direction and since it was early Sunday morning, there were not many people out and about or places open to ask directions. We finally found a guy on a street corner and with his limited English and our much more limited German, but with a lot of pointing, we finally got headed in the right direction. Once we found the Christmas markets, everything else we wanted to see, mainly all of the churches, and believe me, Bamberg may have churches per capita market cornered, was in the same general area. However, when we decided to walk back to the train station, it was dark, as Germany gets dark around 4pm in December, the way back was not that easy to find. I knew the general direction, but wasn't sure if we were going straight or to the right of the station. As it turned out, we ended up to the right of the station so a little bit more of a walk than was probably necessary. It also became evident that Google maps on an iPhone in the dark in an unfamiliar town in Germany is not the best option. In hindsight, I should have taken the time on Saturday to find a map and then taken the time to figure out the route to and from the Christmas markets to the train station. I also should have looked into transportation options once we got there instead of walking. It all worked out, and Bamberg is a great place to visit, but we could have avoided some stress if we had done just a little more preparation before heading over to the train station. After all, how hard can it be? ;)

[nancyevans]

Rgator, but you have a great story to tell and will always remember Bamberg.

My friend and I took a tram, subway and train from Prague to a very small town in the Czech Republic to visit Konopiste (the home/hunting lodge of Archduke Franz Ferdinand). We walked out of the train station and stopped on the sidewalk when we realized we had no idea where Konopiste was from there.

We wrote down where we wanted to go, showed it to the taxi driver, then she wrote down how much it would cost.

 

Always carry a pen and some paper.

Always carry a card with the name of your hotel or location where you want to go so you can show it a taxi driver or ticket agent.

Always carry small local change to pay for trams, buses, etc.

[Daisi]

Phone & Google maps are fine so mlong you have a connection, not afraid of roaming charges etc.

 

There is a much easier way to navigate (on land) with an app "CityMaps2Go Pro". With this app you work offline just using the GPS function of your phone, just download the maps and/or wikipedi poi that you require.

 

Another good off line map app is Maps.me. We use it all the time traveling, even includes routing.

[jpalbny]

rrgator, glad you had fun despite some small missteps. I agree that the train station in Bamberg is less handy to the old town than it is in many other cities. We visited by train as a day trip from Würzburg last year and also found that the route is somewhat circuitous. You'd think there's a more direct path to the old town, but if there is, we never found it. Almost missed our train back because it took longer than expected! But definitely worth the trip!

 

The only time we've had trouble finding a track has been in the Munich Hauptbahnhof. It's huge, and some of the tracks are well hidden! I've always found the ticket machines to be pretty intuitive to use.

 

Now our greatest adventure using public transportation was in Italy, going from Rome to Tivoli. To get there, its the Metro to a train station in the suburbs, then go find train tickets from a tobacco shop before boarding. That worked easily enough, but we really didn't know where things were once we arrived. We wandered and found Villa Gregoriana and then Villa d'Este...so far, so good! Then we thought we'd get bold and try to visit Villa Adriana, which is a few miles out of town.

 

You have to grab a local bus to get there, and they sell the tickets in a random local pizza shop! Never would have figured that out without help from the TI kiosk. We made a run for tickets as the next bus was imminent, grabbed the bus, toured the villa, then afterwards we had a long wait for the bus home. We wondered if they had quit for the day...

 

But eventually, it did arrive (seemingly not following any kind of schedule) to bring us back to Tivoli. As time ticked away on the slow ride back, we thought we'd be 5 minutes late for the train home. But as luck would have it the train was running 10 minutes behind schedule! So we caught the express train back to Rome, then the Metro home. All for just a few euros per person!

 

When it works, it's great. Always a little bit of adventure though!

Edited February 29, 2016 by jpalbny