As much as I enjoy cruising, the idea of taking a longer ocean journey – say, 10 or 15 days – never crossed my mind, until some friends took a lengthy cruise around the South Pacific and came home raving. The prospect of exploring several European countries in one visit -- without lugging baggage or having to deal with planes, trains, and automobiles – soon took hold. It was then just a matter of picking an itinerary and deciding how long to cruise.
After a bit of back-and-forth (there were so many options), we decided on a 14-night sailing in mid-to-late September, when, we’d hopefully still have warm enough days to lounge by the pool (we did). Viking’s “Trade Routes of the Middle Ages” itinerary – which indeed does follow the medieval routes of commerce – offered a bit of everything, from the Norse homelands to the beaches of southern Spain. It also was nicely bookended by overnight stays in two wildly diverse cities, Bergen and Barcelona, and made stops at some of Europe’s most picturesque places, including Amsterdam and Bruges, Belgium.
While cruising around Europe is not as immersive as say, a land tour, it makes up for it by providing a grand, floating hotel with fine cuisine and an array of amenities and activities. We loved unpacking once and letting the days unfold with a “tasting menu” of several magical destinations. And we got a good “taste” of each place we visited — enough to decide if we’d want to return someday (Hello, Bruges!).
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