Viking Venus…We have embarked!

Yesterday was our embarkation day on Viking Venus. This 14-night cruise will take us to three additional ports in Great Britain and five ports in Norway, including the one way up north on the map (that I can’t spell and would take 20 minutes to try and get right) deep inside the Arctic circle.

Embarkation was a piece of cake. If you are taking a cruise with Viking from Greenwich, you tell the driver to take you to “the Cutty Sark.” This ship (which is on dry land) is directly in front of where you want to be dropped off. If you are coming on a coach, you will be about half a block from where you are if you are dropped by a car. You will be right at this spot as soon as you are out of your car. Two or three Viking people will take your luggage and send you to the next Viking person, who will be about halfway to the Cutty Sark. From there, you turn right and head into the back of the building directly next to the Cutty Sark. Inside, you get your sea pass card, and they send you to the “tender” that takes you to the ship. All along the way (about every 10 feet) there is a Viking person in red telling you where to go next. It is impossible to get lost.

Thankfully, Viking does not use its lifeboats at Greenwich as tenders. Instead, it hires the same type of boat we took yesterday—the Uber Boats (aka The Thames Clippers). Each boat holds about 200 people in decent seats. The best part is that the entire trip from dock to ship takes about five minutes. From the time we got out of our taxis until we were onboard, it was less than 20 minutes. Impressive.

Before I tell you the next step in embarkation, I would like to mention taxis and Ubers. We had been using Uber for everything on this trip until we checked out of the hotel to head to the ship. Because we needed room for our luggage we decided to take two cars, so we thought, why not ask the hotel to get us a taxi. Not a great plan. The day before, when we headed to the Ted Lasso Tour, we left the hotel and took an Uber to the Cutty Sark, where we boarded the Uber Boat. The total charge by Uber for four of us (UberXL) was $6.43, or about £5. When we took the taxis at the same exact distance later in the day, the charge was £13 for Kathleen and me and £20 for Steve and Jamie! WTF??? (Please excuse my French.) And we thought we would get one of those nice London Black Cabs you see everywhere, but I am pretty sure the hotel desk person called his relatives because two guys showed up who barely spoke English and had VERY ratty cars. Our driver even had a hard time finding the Cutty Sark/cruise terminal, even though it is less than a mile away as well as being the biggest taxi destination in Greenwich. So beware! Take an Uber. Download and learn the app before you go.

Once we finished our short tender/ferry ride, we were on the ship which is still moored in the center of the Thames. I need to mention here…keep your sea pass cards in your hands. We had to show the at least six times between the pier, the tender and the ship. It was crazy. Not bad, just crazy. Once onboard, they sent us to deck two forward to the Star Theater for our quick life jacket demonstration. One of the young entertainers showed us how our life jackets worked and then told us that once we were in our rooms, we should watch the video on our TV and then answer a question at the end of the video. By the time we finished that, it was 11:45. We had left the hotel at 10:50, so we were at lunch in the World Cafe (buffet) by noon. That’s what I call a great embarkation. We finished our lunch (the food was excellent) and headed forward to our favorite place on the ship, The Explorer’s Lounge. We sat down and had a single drink, and they announced that all staterooms were ready at 1:00 pm. Exactly as promised.

We have precisely the same stateroom as we had on Viking Sky two years ago in the Mediterranean—5030. It was like coming home. It’s a Penthouse Verandah, which is slightly bigger than your standard verandah stateroom—338 square feet as opposed to 270 square feet. Besides our one-time upgrade to a Neptune Suite on HAL and our stateroom on Celebrity’s Flora in the Galapagos, this is the nicest stateroom we have ever been in. After three weeks in the Med in this room, we feel we are back home again. BTW: we weren’t actually in this room because we were on Viking Sky, and now we are on Viking Venus. But Viking builds all their ocean ships to be pretty much exactly the same, so if you have been in one of their staterooms, you can be very confident that you will have the same one on another of their ships.

We were in the stateroom for a very short time when our luggage arrived. This, too, was pretty impressive since it had to come over by barge. It was not far, but still, it had to be put on and taken off a barge. When the luggage got there, we quickly unpacked, took all our dirty laundry and headed to the deck 5 laundry! YEAH! Clean clothes. We were the first ones there and started two loads immediately. After two weeks on the road, it was great to have 99% of all the clothes I had with me, clean and dry. If you have not used Viking’s laundry before, There is one on pretty much every deck with staterooms. The washing and drying are free, as is detergent. So you pop them in, set a timer on your watch, go back to your stateroom and then return to change them or bring them back. We were sure glad we got there first because there were a lot of people like us who had been in the country for a few days or, in our case, weeks and needed clean clothes.

After laundry, Kathleen took a quick nap, and I headed to the Promenade deck to do a little walking. The Promenade Deck on a Viking ship is deck 2. And four times around, it is a mile. I did a quick three so I could shower and be up in the World Cafe for dinner by 6:15. It felt great to get out and walk for exercise. We have been walking a lot, but you saunter when you walk on a tour. When I walk on the  Promenade Deck, I walk for speed. And I love that the Viking Ocean ships have a deck that goes completely around the ship.

We had dinner at the World Cafe (buffet), and the food was excellent. Contributing to my happiness was finding an entire seafood section of the buffet, where they had mussels, seafood salads, poke, halibut ceviche and more. All of it was delicious. Throw in a roll and two breadsticks, and I was all set. So far, through two lunches, a dinner and a breakfast, the food has been delicious.

After dinner, I got kind of Victor Mildrew again because, by this point, it was 8:00 p.m., and our room wasn’t made up; we had not met our stateroom attendant(s). To top it off, Steve texted and told me that our excursion for the morning (today) was at 8:00 a.m., but my excursion ticket said 8:30. The ticket also said to check the meeting place in the Viking Daily. The only problem was that since our room had not been changed over, we didn’t have a Viking Daily yet. But never fear; there is one in the Viking app. So we go our phones and look up the excursion to see where we were supposed to meet, and it said, “Check your ticket for the time and place of the tour.” We went back to the ticket, and it said, “Check the Viking Daily.” WTF? (Again, please excuse my French). So I called the Explorer Desk that handles shore excursions, and she told me that “you can find the time and meeting place in the Viking Daily.” I explained to her that we don’t have a printed copy yet, but we had checked the Viking Daily on the Viking app. She tells me, “Oh, don’t bother with that. The app is hardly ever correct.” Seriously? Then why have it? We finally got it all figured out, and we went on the excursion. More about that tomorrow. Today I just want to get this online.

Tonight, we sail for Edinburgh at around 7:00. This should be a great sail out as we are pretty far up the Thames. Our guide told us today that when she does big ship tours, the closest they can dock to London is Tilbury, a 90-minute drive to Greenwich. That’s three hours total in both directions. YIKES! I don’t care if it is on a “luxury motor coach;” no thanks!

We start our cruise with an overnight here in London/Greenwich, so that means later, I will have some port info for you as well. I just wanted this one to be about our embarkation.

BTW: we did finally meet our stateroom attendant and his assistant, and as Kathleen and I both believe, their tardiness in getting to meet us and turn our room over has much less to do with them than it does that they have more than 30 staterooms to take care of. When we started cruising, most stateroom attendants handled 10 or 12. I am not sure how Viking (or any cruise line) expects them to be able to meet that many guests between boarding and bed that night. Another case of staff shrinkage.

One last thing. On our previous Viking cruise (21 nights in the Med), I had a real problem with the beds on Viking Sky. Well, I am VERY happy to report that the beds on Viking Venus are wonderful. I slept like a baby last night. I didn’t wake up until 6:15, which is late for me. YEAH!

You can find tranquility, you can find party, you can find new friends. I’m a cruise convert.  —Guy Fieri