Viking Pride tulip cruise

My wife, Judy, and I took a “tulip cruise” in the Netherlands in April ’05 aboard the Viking Pride of Viking River Cruises (Woodland Hills, CA; 877/668-4546). We booked it through Covina Hills Travel (Covina, CA; 800/688-8728 or e-mail info@covinahills.com).

The 9-night cruise was listed as $1,402-$2,154 per person, depending on class. For Class C, we paid $1,542 per person, not including air. This reflected a per-person price of $1,872 less an early-booking refund of $328. (Airfare from Los Angeles or San Francisco was offered for about $800 round trip, but we made our own arrangements.) If you follow the cruise line’s published guidelines, the tipping policy is quite generous to the staff and guides and adds somewhat to the price.

The tour was excellent and a very good value. The rooms on the Viking Pride were spacious and well laid out. Meals were good, basic fare with plenty of choices and an occasional gourmet flair.

Meal seating was open, but the three couples in our party ended up sharing the same table, sometimes with other passengers, so we had the same waiter, Atilla, almost all of the time. In spite of the name, he was smiling, charming and accommodating.

The guides on our shore excursions were excellent and spoke English well. Only on one occasion did we have trouble with a guide’s accent.

The excursions themselves covered everything you would wish to see in so short a time: tulips by the thousands as well as daffodils, narcissus and every other kind of flowering bulb; windmills; the major cities of Amsterdam and Brussels, and charming places like Antwerp, Brugge, Hoorn, Edam, Volendam, Middleburg and Dordrecht.

Highlights of the trip were the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (housed in a smaller wing during renovations), Keukenhof Gardens, the Kinderdijk windmills and the Kröller-Müller Museum near Arnhem (optional at extra cost but worth it).

The Delta Works Project to control flooding is massive and impressive. Palace Het Loo was disappointing in that the crowds were slow-moving and there was no way to escape; one just had to go through seemingly endless palace rooms until the end.

Missing from the itinerary was the cheese auction at Alkmaar, which we went to after the cruise was over. There are many interesting things to see in Amsterdam that were not on the tour, including the Rembrandt House, the Netherlands Maritime Museum, the Church in the Attic and the van Gogh Museum, all of which I would recommend.

Unhappily, the Stedelijk Museum (contemporary modern art) was housed temporarily in a renovated office building near the docks, which did not permit a comprehensive showing of the collection.

We had every kind of weather on this trip, from sunshine to rain and even snow one day!

Altogether, this is a good introduction to the Netherlands and Belgium — at a reasonable price.

ROGER ECKER
Alameda, CA