Copenhagen in Foot excursion = Demanding?

[CrookedRidges]

Hi travelers, question for anyone who has taken the complimentary Viking “Copenhagen on Foot” tour. 

 

We noticed that the itinerary shows this excursion as a 2.5 hour tour with a “demanding“ activity level. 

 

Can anyone comment on this particular tour with first hand knowledge? I’m surprised to see this as a free, but demanding tour for Day 1. 

 

We are all in in our mid to late 50s in reasonable shape, but would like to know what we are signing up for. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

[TERRIER1]

I have not been on the included Viking Ocean Copenhagen by Foot excursion. However, I have been to Copenhagen by cruise ship and have taken Viking's included walking tour in other ports. I would imagine that the "demanding" rating given for the Copenhagen tour is due to the distance covered during the 2.5 hours. The ships dock at the Langelinie which is very close to the "Little Mermaid" sculpture. From the dock to Nyhavn which is the farthest the tour goes, the distance is 2.5 km so return walk would cover about 5 to 6 km. Copenhagen is flat and the walkways paved. The streets in the old section are cobblestone so could be difficult for those in wheelchairs or are mobility challenged. There isn't any hill climbing and it doesn't appear that this tour actually goes into the palaces where there would stairs to climb. A really nice way to Copenhagen at leisure is to take a canal cruise that can be picked up at Nyhaven where the tour leaves you off. Enjoy.

Edited February 3, 2019 by TERRIER1

[moatenote]

Don't know about the walking tour, but I highly recommend taking a canal boat ride from the Nyhavn area  on your own.  We did an included tour in the morning and the boat ride in the afternoon. It's about a 5-minute walk from the Viking shuttle stop.  I read about it on Rick Steves website and it was a highlight of the trip.  The company is Netto-Badene, lasts an hour, and was inexpensive.

Edited February 4, 2019 by moatenote

[Indefatigable]

We did this tour in May 2018. Tour was easy and had interesting stops. Pace was a little slow for us.

[CrookedRidges]

Thanks for the advice and insight folks!  Very much appreciated!

[CCWineLover]

On 2/5/2019 at 4:49 AM, Indefatigable said:

We did this tour in May 2018. Tour was easy and had interesting stops. Pace was a little slow for us.

 

We did Viking Homelands in May and did the Copenhagen Included Walking tour.  There were quite a large number of guides as it appeared quite popular.

We enjoy the demanding tours and thought this one was just fine.  Perhaps the "demanding" part is that it is a decent amount of walking - but they did warn people that it would be 2.5 to 3.5 miles of walking in 2.5 hours.  We got to see a lot.

We were in one of the first tours to depart and loved our guide - he kept a very good pace (not a slow one), which we enjoyed, and thus was able to spend more time at the stops like the Palace, than other groups.   We heard later from friends that their guide was too slow.  We unfortunately had several people on our group of 22 who probably shouldn't have been on the tour as they, through no fault of theirs, were handicapped and needed walkers and caines.  This is definitely not the tour for them.  They fell behind and eventually dropped out after a short time, and presumably went back to the ship.

This seemed to be an occurance multiple times on Viking, where the demanding tours had many people who couldn't keep up on them - even though Viking had been quite explicit about the demanding nature required for them.

 

I would also agree that the canal cruise was quite good and required no walking at all.  Very relaxing.  We did that in the afternoon and were quite pleased with our guide.

[Jaysee]

We plan to do this tour, and recognize we may not keep up. Accordingly, we will break off on our own so as to not hold up the more able bodied. We'll work our way over to Nyhavn at our own pace, buy tickets there for the Canal Cruise, and following the cruise, return to the ship via bus 26, which runs from Kongens Nytorv square (close to the canal cruise landing) to Langeliniekaj. Check it out -

Edited February 13, 2019 by Jaysee
Typo

[Nippy Sweetie]

We took the shuttle as we wanted to go to the Royal Copenhagen porcelain shop and Georg Jensen. Mission accomplished we had an amazing lunch at what turned out to be a Michelin starred restaurant. Just a snack but wonderful.

Our favourite excursion of the whole cruise was the jazz cruise round the harbour and old town. The Scandinavian Rhythm Boys did us proud as we sailed round with glasses of bubbly.