Booking hotel on my own prior to Viking Amsterdam to Basel cruise

[Squawkman]

3 minutes ago, travelin_nat said:

Hi - we are doing a Christmas Market cruise on Viking from Basel to Amsterdam mid-December.  We booked the Basel extension through Viking.  The extension includes a walking tour of Basel the day after we arrive, but I was thinking about taking the train from Basel to Lucerne for a day.  Would this be easy to do (in your opinion)?  Any advice?  We would just plan to walk around the town.

Our thoughts were the same, so we also booked the Basel extension. We're planning something similar for our A to B cruise in November, 2022 as there is a whole day free in Basel. One issue is the time of year - most attractions in Lucerne close 10/31. There are more things to do in Zurich that are open in November, so our plan is to go there. There are attractions walking distance from the Zurich train station, primarily the Swiss museum.

[sharkster77]

40 minutes ago, travelin_nat said:

Hi - we are doing a Christmas Market cruise on Viking from Basel to Amsterdam mid-December.  We booked the Basel extension through Viking.  The extension includes a walking tour of Basel the day after we arrive, but I was thinking about taking the train from Basel to Lucerne for a day.  Would this be easy to do (in your opinion)?  Any advice?  We would just plan to walk around the town.

Basel to Lucerne was an easy one hour train ride. Trains run roughly every hour.Maybe 3-ish stops along the way, but not bad.  The location of the train station is right on the river in the old town center.  It would be easy to walk along the river from there on both sides, and along the lakeshore as well.  On the side of the river across from the train statin are several old medieval squares that are neat as well.

 

What you describe is very doable.  Go to the SBB website to look at the train schedules.  Google maps was also helpful when we planned, as it let us see where things were in proximity to each other.  Enjoy!

[KBs mum]

On 8/14/2021 at 6:42 PM, Gigikaren said:

My husband and I are booked on our first Viking river cruise next April. We are considering booking a hotel in Amsterdam on our own for 2 nights to save money. In this situation would we need to arrange travel from the airport to the hotel on our own? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

We prefer to arrange our own extensions and flights either end of a cruise, but with covid causing so much havoc we've booked the viking ones.

Not so good, but if the cruise starts or finishes somewhere else at short notice it's viking's problem and we don't have the hassle of  dealing with individual providers for rearrangements/refunds. 

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by KBs mum

[travelin_nat]

1 hour ago, Squawkman said:

Our thoughts were the same, so we also booked the Basel extension. We're planning something similar for our A to B cruise in November, 2022 as there is a whole day free in Basel. One issue is the time of year - most attractions in Lucerne close 10/31. There are more things to do in Zurich that are open in November, so our plan is to go there. There are attractions walking distance from the Zurich train station, primarily the Swiss museum.

Thanks for the head's up on closing dates.  We'll look in to that.  Will also consider going to Zurich.