I extended my Viking cruise with a multiday land tour — here's why you should, too
Editor's Note
Quick summary
It just might be the most beautiful train ride in the world.
For the past four hours, I have been watching, mesmerized, as one stunningly scenic tableau after another fills the picture window next to my seat on the Bergensbanen — the famed teal-colored train that winds through the mountains of Norway.
Crystal-clear mountain lakes fringed with evergreens, picture-perfect villages, snowcapped mountains — it's everything that I always imagined the interior of Norway to be. Including, now, sweeping glaciers.
We are just passing the snowy high point of the seven-hour journey between Oslo and Bergen, the Hardangervidda plateau — a wintry wonderland so pristine that George Lucas chose it as a stand-in for the ice planet Hoth in "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back."
It is, hands down, the highlight of a five-day visit to Norway that is taking me from one side of the country to the other.
A highlight that comes with a twist: I didn't get here via a reservation with the train company. Or a train tour company. Or, indeed, even a land tour booking service of any kind.
I am here thanks to Viking, the fast-growing cruise company.
This train ride, along with almost every other element of my visit to Norway, from my pickup at the airport in Oslo to hotel stays, guided tours and museum admissions in each city I am visiting, was arranged by Viking as part of a multiday precruise land tour.
Viking, it turns out, isn't just one of the fastest-growing cruise lines in the world. It's a growing land tour company, too.
With an ever-increasing array of multiday land tours and hotel stays designed to be seamlessly added on to one of its cruise itineraries, the line is making it easier than ever for cruise-loving travelers to custom-design the perfect extended vacation — all while only dealing with a single company that arranges everything from start to finish.
More than 100 precruise and postcruise options
Viking isn't the only cruise line to offer precruise and postcruise land tours and hotel stays, of course. Offering what Viking calls cruise "extensions" is a common practice in the industry. But as Viking has grown bigger in recent years, it has developed an unusually wide array of such trips that can be tacked on to the vast majority of its voyages.
For 2025, Viking is offering 147 of these extensions, up from 91 just six years ago.
In the case of my trip, for instance, there were four precruise extensions and four postcruise extensions available to add on to the core cruise that I had booked — a 14-night "British Isles Explorer" sailing from Bergen to London that included stops at nearly a dozen ports along the coasts of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England.
The precruise extensions included everything from a short two-night hotel stay in Bergen paired with a pickup at the airport — perfect for someone who just wanted to arrive at the departure port a little early to acclimatize — to the four-night "Best of Norway & Scenic Train" tour that I added to my sailing. The latter offered a full cross-Norway tour experience with a two-night hotel stay and guided tour in Oslo, the train trip over the mountains, and a two-night hotel stay and guided tour in Bergen.
Among the other precruise options that I could have picked was a three-night hotel stay with guided tours in Iceland — an add-on that lets North American passengers like me break up their transit to Norway with a stop in that country.
Among postcruise extensions available, the options were similarly diverse, ranging from a two-night hotel stay in London without tours to a five-night "Churchill's Britain" add-on that brought extensive touring.
The latter was one I would have loved to do — if only I had the extra days free. The history lover in me was eager to see the many iconic and sometimes hard-to-get-into sites that Viking had lined up for a visit, including Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill's birthplace and the current home of the 12th Duke of Marlborough and his family; Chartwell, where Churchill lived much of his life; and Bletchley Park, home of the World War II code breakers.
The wide variety of options meant that I could have created a Viking-organized vacation around my cruise that ranged anywhere from 16 nights (with a single two-night hotel extension) to 23 nights (if I signed on for both of the longest precruise and postcruise tours).
Such flexibility is one of the big appeals of the extensions.
Among classic Viking itineraries that offer a similar array of at least eight precruise and postcruise extensions are the brand's seven-night "Romantic Danube" river cruises, where add-on options include a two-night precruise stay in Budapest, a four-night precruise visit to Croatia and Slovenia, and a three-night postcruise stay in Prague (with or without included touring).
Some sailings, moreover, include truly epic extensions, such as a five-night tour of the Galapagos that can be added on to Viking sailings in South America.
Among Viking's most unusual extensions, the brand offers a four-night tour of sites in England tied to the discovery of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb that can be added to its Nile river cruises in Egypt. The tour includes special access to Tutankhamen-related archives and exhibits in the U.K. not normally accessible to the public. These include a not-normally-open private collection of Egyptian items at Highclere Castle, which was the home of the earl who supported Egyptologist Howard Carter's efforts to find Tutankhamen's tomb (and is also known today as the location for the filming of "Downton Abbey").
The latter tour is designed to take place just before a Nile sailing and ends with a flight to Egypt.
A seamless experience
As I saw during my trip, booking a precruise or postcruise extension with Viking, or one of each, takes away a lot of the pain points of arranging a trip around a cruise.
One of the things that cruise fans love about traveling by cruise ship is that it makes travel easy — at least for the specific days of the sailing. The ship not only provides you with a place to stay while you're traveling but also all of your meals and entertainment. It also serves as transportation for you and your luggage to move between destinations on your itinerary, and it offers guided tours everywhere you go (at some lines, such as Viking, some tours even are included in the fare).
That said, the typical cruise booking doesn't include all of the little (and sometimes big) things that you might need or want to add to your trip in the days leading up to stepping on board a vessel — or just after you disembark.
Do you want to stay a couple of nights in your embarkation port before your cruise to get to know it better, or just to adjust to the time zone of the region if it's far from home? Do you want to add guided tours in that port or other nearby destinations? Do you need transfers from your arrival airport to your hotel?
What about advice from a local on local restaurants or shop hours or attractions?
With its precruise and postcruise extensions, Viking offers to take care of all of this.
My "Best of Norway & Scenic Train" extension included a pickup at the Oslo airport by a Viking representative for a quick drive to the included hotel, the Clarion Hotel The Hub — clearly strategically picked by Viking for its central location (which could not have been better; we were just steps away from Oslo's main shopping street and walking distance to all its main attractions).
Once there, Viking representatives were waiting at a dedicated Viking hospitality desk with my room keys — no need to even approach the front desk to check in. I was up in my room within minutes.
These same Viking representatives, all locals, remained on hand at the desk throughout each of the days that I was there to offer advice on things to do in town — that is, when they weren't leading us on the included tours that were part of the package.
They also personally escorted us on foot to the train station (which was just a block away) at the end of our Oslo stay for the Bergensbanen train journey across the mountains to Bergen and even stayed on board with us for the entire trip to make sure we made it to our next set of Viking guides in the destination city.
At the Bergen train station, those guides and a couple of buses were waiting to whisk us to our Bergen hotel, the Hotel Norge by Scandic — also perfectly located in the heart of the city.
In short, it was a seamless experience — one where we really didn't have to do anything except show up to enjoy our time.
The cost
Viking's precruise and postcruise extensions are not inexpensive. The four-night "Best of Norway & Scenic Train" tour that I added to my "British Isles Explorer" cruise costs $1,999 per person — or about $500 per night. The two-night Bergen hotel add-on costs $899 per person — about $450 per night.
The three-night "Iceland & The Golden Circle" precruise tour costs $3,099 per person — a whopping $1,033 per night.
That said, the fares for these extensions often include quite a few elements, including a hotel room, some meals, tours and transfers. In some cases, such as the Iceland tour noted above, the fares also include flights — in the case of the Iceland tour, a flight from Reykjavik, where the tour ends, to the starting point of the cruise in Bergen.
The cost to book all of these elements separately can add up, too.
Whether or not you can find a less expensive way to have the same tour experience by booking all the elements on your own will depend on several factors, including how savvy you are about making hotel, tour, restaurant and transfer bookings on your own.
Still, the real value in reserving one of these tours through Viking is the way it makes both the booking process and the experience of traveling easy.
With just one call to Viking, or a few clicks online, you can arrange almost every little detail of your cruise vacation — not just the cruise itself but everything you do on the trip before and after you board your vessel — with the greatest of ease.
Once you're on your way to your vacation destination, you hardly have to do anything.
For a certain type of traveler, including me, that's something for which it's worth paying.
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