Vikings’ Further and Post-Irrigation Land Tour: The Perfect Add-on to Create Seamless Travel
This is probably the most beautiful train ride in the world.
I’ve been watching for the past four hours and it’s fascinating that an amazingly scenic image filled the picture window next to my Beganbanning seat – the famous blue blue train that winds through Norway’s mountains.
Crystal mountain lakes have evergreen, perfect villages, snow-capped mountains – it’s everything I’ve always imagined inside Norway. Now, including cleaning the glaciers.
We just passed the snow high point of a seven-hour journey between Oslo and Hardangervidda Plateau – a cold wonderland so primitive that George Lucas chose it as a backup to the hockey planet Hoth of the Empire’s strike.
This is the highlight of a five-day visit to Norway, which takes me from one side of the country to the other.
With a twisted highlight: I did not come here via a train company booking. Or train tour company. Or, in fact, even any form of land travel booking service.
I am here, thanks to this fast-growing cruise company, Viking.
From my pickup trucks at Oslo Airport to hotel accommodation, this train ride and almost every element of my visit to Norway, guides and museum entries in every city I visited were Viking arrangements as part of a multi-date pre-Ruri land tour.
It turns out that the Vikings are more than just one of the fastest growing cruise ships in the world. This is also a growing land tourism company.
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With multi-day land travel and hotels growing, designed to seamlessly add to one of its cruise itineraries, this line makes it easier than ever for loving travelers to customize the perfectly expanded holidays – while only dealing with a single company from start to finish.
More than 100 advanced and validated options
Of course, Viking is not the only cruise ship that offers pre-shrub and post-cut land trips and hotel accommodation. Providing what the Vikings call cruising as “extended” is a common practice in the industry. However, as the Vikings grew bigger in recent years, it has developed unusually extensive travel that can address the vast majority of its voyages.
In 2025, the Vikings offered 147 of these extensions, compared to 91 six years ago.
For example, in terms of my trip, there are four transparent extensions and four irrigation extensions that can join the core cruise I booked, which is the core cruise I booked – a 14-night “British Isles Explorer” sailing from Bergen to London, which includes stops at nearly twelve ports along the coast of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Wales and the UK.
The extension included everything from just two nights hotel accommodation in Bergen paired with the airport pickup truck – perfect for those who just want to arrive early to get to the departure port to fit on my voyage of “Norway and the best trains for scenic trains” tours. The latter offers two nights hotel trips for two nights hotel stays and guides in Oslo, train trips on the mountain and two nights hotel stays and guides in Bergen, and provides a complete cross-Kei Noi tour experience.
The other transparent option I could have chosen was a guided three-night hotel stay in Iceland, an additional trip that allowed North American passengers like me to cease the Norwegian transit in the country.
Among the available library post-extensions, these options are similarly diverse, from two-night hotels without tours to five-night “Churchill’s UK” add-ons that bring an extensive tour.
The latter is the one I want to do – if I have extra days, then. My history lovers long to see many iconic, sometimes hard to get websites that Vikings line up to visit, including Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill and the scene of the twelfth Duke of Marlborough and his family; Chartwell, Churchill, who has been here all his life; and Bletchley Park, the home of World War II code-breakers.
The variety of options meant I could have created a Viking-organized holiday around my cruise, ranging from 16 nights (with a two-night hotel extension) to 23 nights (if I signed up for the longest May and indoctrination tour).
This flexibility is one of the biggest draws of expansion.
In the classic Viking itinerary, similar eight levels and a similar array of indoctrinated posts are offered on the brand’s seven-night “Romantic Danube” river cruise, with additional options including two-night sex reveal treatment in Budapest, two-night sex to-dos maintained in Budapest, four-night sex over-censored visits to Croatia and Slovenia and three-night treatment (not included in three weeks), or not included in trains (not included) (or included in Prague) (or not included in Prague).
Additionally, some voyages include truly epic extensions, such as joining the five-night trip to Galapagos, which can be added to Viking voyages in South America.
In the most unusual expansion of the Vikings, the brand offers a four-night tour in England, associated with the discovery of the tomb of Egypt’s pharaoh Tutanham, which can be added to Egypt’s Nile River cruise. The tour includes special visits to archives related to Tutanhan and exhibitions in the UK and is generally not publicly available for public access. These include an abnormally open collection of private personal belongings at Highclere Castle, the home of the Earl who supported Egyptologist Howard Carter’s efforts to find Tutankhamen’s grave (also known today as the location for filming “Downton Abbey”).
The latter tour was intended to be before the Nile voyage and ended with a flight to Egypt.
Seamless experience
As I saw on the trip, a stretch of over or post-irrigation was booked through Viking, or each took away many painful points of arranging traveling on the cruise.
One thing Cruise fans love to travel on cruises is that it becomes easy to travel at least on specific days of sailing. The boat not only provides you with a place to stay while traveling, but also offers you all the meals and entertainment. It is also a transport for you and your suitcase, moving between destinations on your itinerary, and a guide is provided anywhere you travel (on some lines, such as Viking, even some trips included in the fare).
That said, a typical cruise booking doesn’t include all the small things (sometimes even big) you might need or want to get on board a few days or after getting off the boat.
Do you want to stay at the boarding port for a few nights before cruising to get a better idea of it, or if the area is far from home, adjust to the time zone of the area? Do you want to add a guided tour to this port or other nearby destinations? Do you need a transfer from your arrival at the airport to the hotel?
What about suggestions for local restaurants or shops at the time or attractions?
The Vikings provide care for all of this with their further promotional extension.
My “Norway and Scenic Train Best Train” extension includes Viking pickup and drop-off services at Oslo Airport, a Viking representative quickly drove to the hotel included, the Clarion Hotel, which is the central location of the Vaginians, strategically picked (we could not have been better; we were from the main shopping streets in Oslo and walking to all the major attractions).
Once there, the Vikings representative waited at a dedicated Viking hotel desk with my room keys – without even having to approach the front desk for a check-up. Within minutes, I was in the room.
Every day I was there, these same Viking representatives, all locals stayed on the table to give advice on what the town was going to do – that is, when they didn’t lead us on a tour included in the package.
They also personally escorted us to the train station (only one block away), and on our stop in Oslo, the train trip to Bergsbannen to Bergen, even consistent with us throughout the trip to ensure we entered the next group of Vikings in the destination city.
At the Bergen Railway Station, those guides and several buses were waiting to drive us to our Bergen Hotel, Scandic’s Norge Hotel, which is also located in the heart of the city.
In short, it was a seamless experience – we really didn’t have to do anything other than show up to enjoy our time.
cost
Vikings’ pre-shrub and post-library expansion is not cheap. The four-night “Norway and Scenic Train” tour I added to the British Isles Explorer cruise cost $1,999 per person, or about $500 per night. The add-on at this two-night Bergen hotel costs $899 per person – about $450 per night.
The three-night Five-Lap Tour of Iceland and the Golden Circle is priced at $3,099 per person and up to $1,033 per night.
That said, the fares for these extensions usually include many elements, including hotel rooms, some meals, tours and transfers. In some cases, such as the Iceland tour mentioned above, the fare also includes flights – In the case of an Iceland tour, the flight from Reykjavik arrives at the tour, starting point of the cruise to Bergen.
The cost of booking all of these elements individually may also add up.
Whether you can find a cheaper way to get the same travel experience by booking all the elements yourself depends on several factors, including how smart you can make your own hotel, tour, restaurant and transfer bookings.
Still, the real value of retaining one of these trips through the Vikings is the way it makes the booking process and the experience of traveling easily.
Just call the Vikings, or click a few online, and you can arrange almost every little detail of your cruise vacation – not only the cruise itself, but everything you do before and after boarding the boat – can be easy and easy.
Once you arrive at the resort, you hardly have to do anything.
It’s something worth paying for some type of traveler, including me.
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