Where We Board The Ship And Everything Goes Alarming Smoothly
We needed to have our bags ready to go by 7:00 a.m., so we got up early. Probably a little too early, because we were all ready by 6:30 a.m. Since we were no longer dealing with airline weight limits, we could cram whatever we needed to into the suitcases in any which way.
We went down to have breakfast, and then hung out in the lobby until it was our time, which was several hours. We ended up having a marvelous conversation with Angelika and Vinny. Angelika was originally from (West) Berlin and Vinny is a former NYPD cop, with an accent that sounded like “home”. They in (West) Berlin when Vinny (Air Force) was stationed there after WWII. Their stories were absolutely marvelous and made the time fly by.
The boarding process back in December 2022 for the Viking Orion was just horrific – long lines, no place to sit, much confusion, and even after going through the effort of completing the “comfort check-in” online ahead of time, the check-in process still took about 10 minutes. Another bad omen – we should have seen it coming!
This time, it was amazingly smooth. We got on the bus on time. We arrived at the dock on time. There was a tent set up outside the terminal with a table full of people waiting for us. Check in took no more than 2 minutes – they took our passports (we get them back in Dublin), gave us our key cards, and off we went! Greenwich is a tender port – i.e., we needed to take a ferry to the ship. One was waiting for us after check-in – each one holds at least 100 people.
A few minutes ride on the tender, followed by a quick walk through the terminal and security, and presto! we were on the ship. Super easy!
After lunch, we tackled Guest Services. I had a list of questions (e.g. can I get a “reserved” seat on the buses towards the front of the bus to make it easier for me to get on and off?), and changes we wanted to make to our reservations. Last time, we encountered a rather unhelpful (let’s say, antagonistic) Guest Services person; we ended up escalating our questions to the chief of excursions – and still got no help. Good news/bad news: last time it turned out it didn’t matter, because we were stuck at sea for 10 days and all excursions were canceled.
This time, Guest Services came up with helpful solutions to all our questions, and we were able to switch around a few of our excursions to better time slots. Amazing! Guest Services did their job!
We had the Thames Cruise that evening, so we ate dinner at 6:00 p.m. to be back at the tender port on time. The boat for the cruise was an “Uber boat” hired by the ship docked right at the tender port.
Our Viking guide, Dominic, did a great job describing the sites up and down the Thames.
Here are some photos from the cruise – you’ll notice that some of them are fuzzy. The reflection from the glass caused the focus to bounce back to the glass instead of what we were seeing in the distance.
Another long day!
Tomorrow: Leeds Castle and the Tower of London
Maryland Meshugas 