#MyVikingStory

It’s been Christmas Market overload this past week, and now it’s time to head briefly back to BC, after trying to solve the puzzle of why re-packing the exact same number of items at the end of a trip is so much harder than packing to go on the trip. Do our clothes expand in sympathy with all the good food we’ve eaten, or do our suitcases shrink?

Our luggage had to be outside our door by 04:30, and we had to be off the ship by 06:30 for our transfer to the airport, so there was not a lot of lingering over the lovely continental breakfast, and Ted barely got more than a single cup of coffee. Our 10-1/2 hour flight to Seattle left Amsterdam at 10:30; after a layover and short flight to Vancouver, plus almost 2 hours on the train and Uber, we reached our Airbnb in Maple Ridge around 6 p.m. PST (the equivalent of 3 a.m. in Amsterdam), ready to drop immediately into a deep sleep.

Our Christmas Market cruise was not exactly everything we expected, but the river Rhine rarely asks people’s opinion about what its water levels should be. It was sad to miss Basel, Breisach, Mannheim, Düsseldorf, and Rüdesheim, but interesting to get to visit Gengenbach and Speier and have extended time in both Strasbourg and Köln. It was a minor inconvenience (for us – a lot of work for the crews) to have to switch ships partway through the trip, but a bonus to meet a second crew of dedicated and consistently cheerful and professional Viking staff.

On each of the 2 days that we had long bus rides and could not return to the ship for lunch, we were given a non-refundable €25 onboard credit as meal compensation. While there was some grousing from people who had already purchased drink packages that the money was “useless”, €100 per couple was enough to buy a really nice Helly Hansen Viking branded fleece, or a double-value $200 future cruise voucher, or have 12-20 pieces (depending what they were) of clothing laundered, eliminating a significant amount of dirty laundry from needing to be packed. I was quite happy to have most of our laundry done, and be able to order a couple of Viking’s quite amazing espresso martinis after dinner.

In our experience, Viking always does its best to have passengers leave their ships happy, even when a cruise’s disappointments are totally beyond their control. Especially on this cruise, our Program Director Emilie was unfailingly cheerful and flexible. We teased her that there must be some Canadian mixed in with her Belgian, just based on the number of times she apologized for river levels and bus rides.

ADDENDUM: A day after getting home,Viking also apologized in a tangible way, a future cruise voucher in the amount of 25% of our cruise fare.

As always, “perfect” or not, we always come home with some great memories, some great photos, and having learned interesting new things and met interesting new people. That fits our definition of a good experience.

Our “home” for the next 14 days is a one bedroom Airbnb in Maple Ridge, a short Uber ride from son #2’s new house. It’s a beautiful brand new space that has only been rented for the past couple of months. It’s so new, if fact, that some of the appliances haven’t even been “unwrapped” yet!

I think we’re the first people who’ve stayed more than just a night or two and actually wanted to cook and do laundry. The landlord has been incredibly receptive in supplying extra glasses, and some baking dishes so that we can use the oven (there were a couple of brand new pots and pans, but nothing that could go in the oven).

Of course, other than coffee there’s no food in the flat. That’s not unexpected, although we have had short term rentals – notably one we’ve returned to a couple of times near son#1 in Toronto – who supplied on-arrival cookies, plus milk, eggs, bread and oatmeal packets for folks arriving after long travel days.

Anyway, no worries. While at SEATAC waiting for that short flight from Seattle to Vancouver I placed a grocery delivery order that will arrive this afternoon.

In the meantime, within a 15 minute walk there is a nice café for breakfast, a NoFrills grocery store where we can pick up today’s lunch ingredients, and a good Italian restaurant. We’re not going to go hungry.

Our bigger issue is sleep, 8 hours of which had us awake for the “morning” at 3 a.m., well before we can venture out to get breakfast. So… taking advantage of the great wifi and catching up on emails it is!

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We’re looking forward to seeing our kids’ new place, and making holiday memories with our grandsons before swapping suitcases and taking off for warmer climes on January 4th.