Viking River Cruises: Day 1 + getting to the ship

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Arrival into Amsterdam.

So if you know me you know that I can’t sit still and always have to be doing something, that, mixed in with 14-hours of flight time is a recipe for disaster. I wound up getting to the JAX airport around 1:00pm for my 2:50 flight up to IAD (Washington DC). The flight left on time, I had about 30-minutes to get to my gate in DC and boarded my Amsterdam flight.

Arrival in Amsterdam was actually the next morning because they’re 5-hours ahead of us. After we picked up our bags, cleared customs, we were greeted by personal. We landed in Amsterdam at 6:30am on Tuesday morning and I was praying that the stateroom was ready when we got to the ship, which was just after 7am. It was! Success. This ship is brand new so there was still last minute details being installed as I was walking to the stateroom, I definitely crashed for about 5-hours since I didn’t sleep on the flight.

After waking up, my first impressions of the ship was small, tiny, and looked like a yacht on steroids but that slowly changed. To give you some type of idea of the size of the long ship, it’s 443’ long, holds 190 passengers, and 95 staterooms.

Stateroom aboard Viking Odin. After making my way around the ship all day it was clear who they cater to and it’s a far cry from an ocean going cruise. Different things make a river cruise a river cruise like: heated floors in the bathroom, the rooms turned a certain way to allow more space on balcony and river views, plenty of open deck space, and an indoor/outdoor terrace to dine or just chill out on.

Venturing into Amsterdam was cool. A bunch of us walked into the city center where before walking to the Anne Frank house (cost 9 Euros). It was so humbling going to the Anne Frank house and think of the holocaust days.

There’s only one dining room and dining time for dinner but with the smaller dining room you get more personalized service.

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Anne Frank house.

Nightlife in Amsterdam is just plain fun. That’s really one of the only words used to describe it. We took an organized tour to the Red Light district, I always thought it was very seedy but boy was I wrong, the history in the whole area really brings you back…. And no, I didn’t get a prostitute.

Tomorrow is the ship christening where Viking River Cruises will christen two ships in Amsterdam and two via satellite from their shipyard in Germany.

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