Viking Skirnir standard cabin
Viking Skirnir Cabin 118
On our 15-day Grand European Tour on Viking Skirnir we stayed in a standard cabin, which are located on the main deck mostly below water level. Only the little slit window is above the waterline. The rest of the room is below it. The room was very cold when we first got there, and it seemed to take days to get the heat to go up a degree or two. It gradually got slightly warmer when the heat finally rose, but it was still pretty cold in there. The public areas in the rest of the ship weren’t exactly warm either, but not as cold as our room. Whether it was because they keep the ship cold or because of the cold water on the outside of one wall of the room I can’t say. The warmest place was the bathroom because it had a heated floor so we kept the heat on in there. The room had an adjustable thermostat. It just wouldn’t heat up to the temperature it was set for. Too bad the floor heating didn’t extend to the rest of the room. This was a wintertime cruise so the temperature might be better in those rooms in the summer.
window view
Other than being cold and having to stand on the bed to see out the window if you’re shorter than window height, the room did have some good amenities. There was a wide ledge below the window, which was a handy place to put things. The wall under the window was magnetic, where cabins above water level only had the outer bathroom wall for a magnetic surface. We used that wall to hang a clothesline on magnetic hooks for things that were dry well beyond the dripping point so they could leave the bathroom, but not quite dry enough to put away yet. Being a cold wall they didn’t dry real fast there, but it did free up the shower in the bathroom.
bed with nightstands and above them outlets and controls for the room’s lights
The room had a comfortable bed with two pillows provided for each side. Like ocean cruise ships, the bed can be spread apart into two separate beds if needed. Upstairs in the lounge people could get a small blanket, which besides using up there when chilly, if you brought it to the room it stayed there even if left out when the steward cleaned. Quite useful in a cold room. There was a small nightstand on each side of the bed. No drawers, but it did have a cubby for a bit of extra storage and enough surface space for small things like a phone to sit at night. It also had a pull-out shelf if someone needed more surface area for something.
closet, drawers, and TV
Though the room was somewhat small, which is to be expected since the longships aren’t very big, it did have ample storage for 2 people. It had 3 drawers, a closet with half hanging space and half shelves, and space under the bed for suitcase storage. It only had one empty bathroom shelf above the countertop rather than the 3 most ocean ships have, though there was a second shelf there supplied with one tube each of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and hand lotion. If you moved any of those products off of that shelf they were replaced the next time the steward cleaned the room. There was also bar soap provided at the sink.
bathroom
Racks above the toilet held two each of bath and hand towels. Other than when we first boarded and they were at the opposite end of the counter the steward always put the washcloths right next to the sink. That area tended to get a bit wet so we moved them to the towel rack. Towels left hanging were not replaced when the room was cleaned, but those left on the floor were. The bathroom had a small clothesline that could be pulled across the top of the shower, and an additional shelf under the sink.
shelf of products
The room was cleaned twice daily. It had a sign for the door with whatever their version of do not disturb on one side and room available for cleaning on the other. Putting that out with the cleaning side showing makes for faster service as the stewards generally clean the rooms they know are empty first.
Quietvox charger
The room had 4 each of American and European outlets, though one of the European ones was taken by the charger for the Quietvox audio boxes used for the daily tours included with the cruise at each port. There was one of each outlet above the nightstands and one on either end of the long narrow desk that ran from where the closet ended to the outer wall. We found a hair dryer hidden in the closet.
desk
It looked like there were 6 drawers under the desk, but there was actually just one set of 3 and what looked like the other 3 drawers had a refrigerator hiding behind it. There was a skinny little ledge above the desk useful for holding small things. One end of the desk was open underneath with space for a stool and a garbage can. The stool was the only furniture in the room besides the bed. There was a big screen TV above about half of the desk and a mirror over the rest. There were also mirrors on the back of the cabin door and in the bathroom.
view of the Main River from the cabin window
The room had quite a lot of lighting. There was one under the shelf below the sink in bathroom that stayed on all night. Lights in the closet came on automatically whenever it was open. There was also a lamp for each side of the bed as well as low-light wall lighting for each side in addition to the overhead lights. The bathroom and closet lights worked whether the room card was placed in the slot by the door or not, but the others did not. The slot could sometimes be fooled by a business card into working without the room card, but only if the card was undamaged so it’s best to just leave a card in the slot rather than taking it in and out if not using the room card.
Skirnir in a lock
For anyone who can afford it, I’d recommend booking one of the above water cabins. They cost considerably more, but they do come with a great view and are a lot quieter. Sound travels through water so below the water you hear a lot of things that the above water cabins don’t. When underway as the ship often is at night you can hear its engines. The movement of the ship passing through the water is also loud sometimes. Even when it is docked you often hear sounds from passing ships. Some of the smallest boats passing by have the loudest engines. When the ship passes through locks at night you hear the water gurgling and a high-pitched sort of whistle or ringing that may go on for quite some time, then the whooshing sound of water rushing in or out. Occasionally there’s the crunch of the boat bumping a wall in the lock too. Above the waterline unless there’s daylight and you happen to look out the window at the right time it’s easy not to even notice passage through the many locks along the journey, but in the below-the-waterline cabin it doesn’t matter whether you can see anything or not, you will know. These cabins do make the journey more affordable though.
Cruise Stories 