A Few Facts About our France’s Finest Cruise

On May 7, 2023, we will embark on our France’s Finest river cruise. We are finalizing our preparations for our departure, but I’ll write about those in another post. Today, I want to introduce you to a few facts about our first river cruise with Viking.

France’s Finest is a 15-day journey that combines the Lyon & Provence and the Paris & the Heart of Normandy cruises into one “tour de force,” as Viking likes to describe it. We embark in Avignon and spend seven days on the Rhône River, ending in Lyon. From Lyon, we travel by TGV, France’s high-speed train, to Paris, where we board our second ship. From Paris, we travel for seven days on the Seine River as far as Rouen, our jumping-off port for tours to the D-Day beaches of Normandy. We then return to Paris where we disembark.

The Map of Our Cruise - Two Longboats and a Train

The two Viking Longships that we will travel in, the Buri and the Fjorgyn, feature similar design elements, but the Fjorgyn is a bit shorter with customized hulls and engines specifically built to navigate the historic Seine River. This design also allows the ship to dock just a few blocks from the Eifel Tower. The Fjorgyn carries 168 guests, while the Buri carries 190.

Viking Buri - Our Ship from Avignon to Lyon - Our Cabin Is Circled in Black

Viking Fjorgyn - Our Ship from Paris to Paris - Our Cabin Is Circled in Black

Our cabins on both ships are identical and are in similar locations on the middle deck. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are in a Veranda B stateroom. These staterooms are 205 square feet with a small balcony. In comparison, our cabin on our ocean cruise last year was 270 square feet. There is plenty of storage space, although the bathroom is a bit smaller. We think it will work just fine for us, and we even want to check out the smaller cabins to see if we might be happy in one of those on a future cruise. Based on everything I have read, we likely won’t be spending much time in the cabin anyway.

Our Cabin Layout

It's time now to get back to finishing all those last minute tasks before we can fly to France.