Visiting Strasbourg, France Christmas Markets with Viking River Cruises
While on our amazing Rhine Getaway with Viking River Cruises, we chose to take the Taste of Alsace optional excursion in Strasbourg, France. This post will be all about our experience on this excursion and exploring the city of Strasbourg with Viking.
If you’d rather watch our experience, you can check out our Strasbourg vlog.
Taste of Alsace Excursion - THE BASICS
Okay, so let’s get some basics out of the way first… the Taste of Alsace excursion is an optional tour. This means that it is not included in the price of your cruise.
If you haven’t read our Viking River Cruises experience post, then you may not know how things work on Viking. Let’s recap… when you sail on a Viking Cruise you get one included excursion in every port you visit. These excursions are included in the price you pay for your cruise. They are generally walkings tours or panoramic bus tours. For Strasbourg, the included tour was a walking tour of the city. They generally last anywhere from 2-4 hours.
Also in each port, you have the option of purchasing optional excursions. These are always more in depth and often include privileged access visits to historical homes, breweries, and more. They generally cost between $50 and $300 per person depending on what the excursion is and what is included.
For Taste of Alsace, the cost was about $250-300 per person. Full disclosure, since we were on the Rhine Getaway as bloggers, we did not have to pay for the excursion.
The tour was a total of 8 hours and it included an extensive walking tour of Strasbourg, a sweet bread tasting, lunch, gluhwein tasting, wine (with cheese and meat) tasting, and gingerbread tasting. You can see all of this fun stuff in our video.
Taste of Alsace Excursion - PROS & CONS
We’re going to take a different approach with this and instead of just throwing a bunch of information at you, we’re going to break it down in the pros and cons of this excursion. Let’s start with the pros…
THE PROS:1. You get to see Strasbourg fully and completely (plus you get to enjoy the pretty sunset)
2. You’re able to taste some authentic food + beverages without searching the entire city for the best places to try said food + beverages.
THE CONS:1. You’re quite rushed while you’re walking through the city.
2. You kind of see everything but also nothing (see the next section)
3. If you don’t like the food or beverages then you kind of just wasted $250-300.
4. There is very little freedom and free time (but that’s not generally what you choose an excursion for so this may not be a con for some)
The beautiful Strasbourg Christmas market at the base of the cathedral.
Taste of Alsace Excursion - IS IT WORTH IT?
Short answer… no. Let us explain.
Our excursion started out pretty rough. Since the boat docks in Germany and not actually in Strasbourg, France, we had to take a taxi to a bus and then the bus drove us into France. Our excursion was split into two groups. The first group took the taxi to the bus, no problems. Our group (group 2) stood on the sidewalk outside of the boat waiting for the taxi to return to take us to the same bus.
We waited.
We waited.
Oh, and we waited.
About twenty minutes passed and the taxi didn’t show up. Our guide assured us that the taxi was coming and to just wait where we were. Most of our group got tired of waiting, so we started walking to where the bus was supposed to be waiting for us.
We were walking for about 3-5 minutes when a taxi showed up. Four people from our group hopped in and the rest of us kept walking. Eventually another taxi showed up and took the rest of us to the bus. Turns out, we were already pretty close and we could’ve just walked the rest of the way.
So, what happened? So glad you asked.
It turns out when the taxis dropped off the first group, instead of coming back for our group, they went back to their home base. I guess they just thought they were done for the day. Fun stuff.
After that 30-45 minute set-back, we were on the bus and on our way to Strasbourg.
From that moment on things were pretty downhill. We rushed around the city for about half an hour so that we could make it to lunch on time. We zoomed passed the Christmas markets we were supposed to be meandering through. One of our group members walked with a cane, and although she was a serious trooper, she was often left behind. We stayed back with her quite often and watched our guide zoom around the corner of the next street. Our guide really didn’t pay attention to the group and made no attempts to make sure everyone was okay (until the very end when a bunch of people were exhausted).
We made it to lunch, which was authentic flambée. It wasn’t our favorite, but it was an authentic experience, so there are no real complaints about that.
Then we had some free time where we were actually able to enjoy the city. After about 1.5 hours we were back with the group rushing around some more. There was a gluhwein tasting. Then there was some more rushing to get to a wine tasting. After that things slowed down a bit as we strolled to Petit France to taste some gingerbread and chocolate. Finally we walked back to the bus and enjoyed the absolutely stunning Strasbourg sunset.
Since our excursion got off to a rocky start, we really can’t say whether or not the rushing around is normal or if it was just a product of the time we lost. Regardless, it was frustrating to be practically running through this gorgeous city, seeing all the sights but not enjoying a single one.
After talking with other people in our group, the consensus was pretty much the same. What we all experienced was not worth the $250-300.
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
Overall, we’d recommend taking the included excursion, which takes you to the same area of Strasbourg. Use the short walking tour to get yourself acquainted and then explore on your own.
There are so many amazing Christmas markets, adorable cafés and beautiful buildings to see. The included tour will show you the basics and then you can spend several more hours just wandering around on your own.
Our free time was honestly the best part of the tour. We had a great time exploring with two of our awesome new friends (hi Liz and Bob!). Jenni even fell flat on her back by the cathedral and got a thumbs up from a French policeman. Fun stuff. And don’t worry, she wasn’t hurt. Her TravelOn backpack broke
her fall.
If you want to book your own Viking cruise, just click this link and find the perfect one for you. Don’t forget to tell them that Joanie and Jenni B. sent you!
A very special thank you to Viking for allowing us to adventure with you!
If you’d like to support this wild ride, become a Patron, we have some awesome reward tiers. Sometimes we even pick up little gifts for you along our travels. Also don’t forget to check out our last post all about the Black Forest.
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