Adults Aboard:
A cruise just for the grownups
For those who love laidback luxury, can do without casinos and prefer not to party too hard, a Viking cruise may be just the thing. What’s more, it’s the perfect excuse to leave the children behind: only adults are allowed.
The difference is apparent right from the get-go. Champagne, Guinness and freshly shucked oysters flowed at the St Patrick’s Day-themed sail-away from Sydney harbour. And that was how it continued – no photo opportunities with Donald Duck, no line-dancing with Mickey Mouse, no surf simulators, no deck races and no inter-generational screeching.
Peace and quiet reigned. Throughout the ship are pristine, light-filled Scandinavianstyled interiors for curling up or stretching out with something to read and something to drink. Birdsong plays in the restrooms, gentle classics play in the background. And, except for the Captain’s noonday message, you hardly ever hear the PA system.
The Ship
Viking made its five-star name in cruising the rivers of Europe and elsewhere, and launched the first of its brand-new ocean fleet as recently as 2015. Classified by Cruise Critic as “small ships” – each carries 930 passengers – the Viking Sun and her five identical sister ships are described as “state of the art” and “engineered at a scale that allows direct access into most ports”.
More than two decades in the rivercruise business allowed the company to establish exactly what “discerning travellers” like us are looking for in a cruise. Here’s what they found we really don’t want, apart from being surrounded by other people’s children:
• Casinos. No space is wasted on smoky casinos, or those depressing photo galleries that try to sell you faintly tacky images of embarkation and other events.
• Paying extra for the spa. The LivNordic Spa’s magnificent thermal suite is open to all, yet its big, hot, bubbly mineral pool, the small and even hotter spa pool, the “snow grotto”, the icy plunge pool, the sauna, steam room and the heated recliners never once felt too crowded.
• Forking out for internet. Viking provides free Wi-Fi throughout its ships.
Every stateroom has its own verandah. Considering we’d be at sea for a whole month, we splashed out on a spacious Penthouse Verandah Suite that came with plenty of clever storage.
Fine dining is offered every night in The Restaurant, with an ever-changing choice of dishes from foie gras and fresh lobster to Thai red curry and herb-crusted loin of kangaroo. For buffet-style dining, The World Café did an excellent job, serving up fresh crab and sushi every night. What’s more, you pay no extra for the specialty restaurants – Manfredi’s Italian and The Captain’s Table – nor for 24-hour room service.
Lying around for a month eating and drinking would undoubtedly pack on the pounds. From my treadmill one memorable morning at the well-equipped gym, I viewed through the windows a school of hundreds of dolphins leaping and dancing as they swam along with the ship for well over an hour.
I also generally managed to pitch up for the 7am exercise classes in aquarobics, yoga, Pilates, tai chi, meditation and more, led by friendly and competent instructors.
Guest speakers gave enrichment lectures on various topics – historical, geographical or cultural. A great favourite was the “globe-trotting fashion anthropologist” and couture fashion collector Charlotte Smith, who gave talks on subjects like The Little Black Dress and the History of Resort Wear.
Nightly entertainment in the Star Theater was either a cabaret-style show by the Viking Entertainers, or by a guest artist or comedian. However, with such a good ship’s band, the Torhavn nightclub could have stayed open for longer. You need somewhere to dance off the daiquiris and desserts.
Destination Highlights
Viking prides itself on being “destination-focused”, and provides an included tour in every port. Add-on tours can be an expensive part of the cruise experience, so this was a welcome offering – even if their quality was not always up to scratch. For example, our guide for the Hobart, Tasmania tour was so inept that the driver took over the commentary.
Instead of Melbourne, we stopped at the less-famous Geelong, about 75km from the capital of the state of Victoria. Highlights of the tour were the Bellarine Peninsula and the tranquil seaside resort town of Portarlington.
Adelaide is the sophisticated and cultural capital of South Australia, famous for its history, its wine and its university. During the included panoramic tour, which also took us out to the charming seaside town of Glenelg, we saw enough to make us want to come back for more one day.
Then followed two days of cruising the Great Australian Bight from Adelaide to Albany – less than fun for a bad sailor like me. I could only watch miserably from my bed as we ploughed through enormous swells and spray higher than our Deck 5 verandah – and it didn’t help that the morning news had told of the helicopter evacuation of passengers on our sister ship Viking Sky after she lost power in all four engines off the coast of Norway.
From Albany’s historic port, it was a gentle walk up into the town, where Stirling Indoor Market was open and ready for “Ship Day”. I recommend taking an addon tour to the spectacular coastal rock formations at Torndirrup National Park – Roy and I had been there a couple of years previously.
Western Australia can be relied upon for good summer weather. Predictably, Perth and its historic port, Fremantle, delivered an idyllic day and blue skies that showed them at their best. It’s well worth taking one of the frequent trains from Fremantle Station to central Perth, just 20 minutes away, for a spot of shopping and self-guided sight-seeing. Historic Australia Hotel Fremantle is located directly opposite the cruise passenger terminal, perfect for a swift schooner of Swan Lager before re-embarking.
Cruising for eight continuous days and nights to Mauritius was a mixed experience. Happily, after a couple of days of high swells and wind, the sun came out
and the Indian Ocean smoothed itself out, calmed down and turned the mesmerising shade of blue that it’s supposed to be. They step up the number and variety of activities, and everyone gets on with learning how to dance the tango, play bridge, take better photographs or whatever avenue for selfimprovement floats their boat.
Two African Islands
Docking for a day at the rather seedy capital of Mauritius, Port Louis, is not enough time to get a feel for the previously French-colonial island. Many tourists skip the town and go directly to one of the luxurious beachfront resorts. Our tour, after a quick stop at the city market, headed for the Pamplemousses Botanical Garden – the oldest botanic garden in the southern hemisphere, and one of the most highly regarded in the world. The giant lily-pad pond is a universal favourite.
The Viking Sun nosed into the pretty southern port of D’Ehola one beatific morning, then swung around 180 degrees to reveal a stunning view of waves curling onto miles of pristine beach against a
background of mountains – Madagascar! Fort Dauphin is a 15-minute drive from the port and more than 1,000km from the capital, Antananarivo. Vintage yellow school buses commandeered for the morning’s included tours had no air-conditioning, making it easier to take photographs through the window. Later, I heard several marvelling Americans saying they’d never seen anything remotely like the local market – a long road crammed on either side with all sorts of stalls.
Madagascar is the 8th poorest country in the world, the average person scraping by on under US$500 a year. Tourism is the country’s second biggest earner, and growing. Alighting at the town hall, we were surrounded by mostly child vendors of various tat: postcards of lemurs (“one dollar”), sachets of vanilla or peppercorns (“five dollars”), traditional lamba sarongs (“ten dollars”, which soon became three). This kind of jostling can quickly become threatening; we heard accounts of husbands and wives being separated, children’s fingers going into pockets to look for money. Desperate poverty is never pretty.
Our best bet for seeing lemurs that afternoon was taking a taxi to Nahampoana Reserve – only 7km away, but along one of Africa’s most terrifyingly potholed roads. So my husband chose the oldest, crappiest and least roadworthy vehicle in the whole of Madagascar, a tiny, bright pink 1960s Renault. So utterly shot was the gearbox that the driver stopped en route and used a roadside rock to knock the thing out of the gear in which it was stuck. Next, the back seat succumbed to our combined weight and broke.
In the end, I got my Madagascan adventure, complete with white lemurs, ring-tailed lemurs, and even brown lemurs, plus a lovely little tenrec, a mammal that looks like a hedgehog.