Why I love Viking Cruises' thermal spa
It's part of the experience on a Viking Cruises ship and it's an included part of your cruise.
Relaxing on a cruise for me usually means sitting in a pool, or better yet, a hot tub.
On some occasions, I have paid extra (usually at least $50 per day) for access to a thermal spa. Most of these have some version of a sauna (often an infrared sauna), a steam room, a salt room, and many some relaxing chairs.
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I've generally found these underwhelming and not worth the price. In many cases, they lack a true water feature, often having a rain shower, but no hot tubs, cold plunge, or any sort of therapy pool.
That's not the case on Viking Cruises which offers an included thermal spa that's truly an immersive experience. It's included in the price of your cruise and as I head from London across the Arctic Circle on Jupiter Viking as part of its "Into the Midnight Sun" voyage, it has become a daily ritual.
In addition, while I have not done this, the cruise line offers classes in the Norwegian tradition of alternating hot and cold experiences.
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Viking Cruises offers an included thermal spa
Transcript:
Hey there all, I am Dan Kline, Executive Editor of Come Cruise With Me, that is comecruisewith.com, soon to be part of Travel Host, we're really excited about that. I'm on a 14 day adventure on the Viking Jupiter. Now first of all, I'm going to talk a little bit about the fact that today, the sun, and I'm pointing to my balcony, will not go down.
We are going to have 24 hours of sunlight, makes it hard to know when to switch from drinking light beverages to darker beverages. I usually have a gin and tonic in the afternoon if it's a Sunday like it is, not a work day, and switch to bourbon at night, but there is no night, it is perpetual sun, but one of the ways I'm dealing with that is something that's my favorite thing on the ship. There is a thermal spa here that is in the men's room, there's a sauna, so you can sit in the sauna, you can then go into the plunge pool.
I have not been daring enough to go into the plunge pool. In the communal area, there is a thalassotherapy tub, got that one out, with bubbles and you sit in the thing and it's warm but not hot. There's a hot tub next to that, there's also a steam room, and there is a snow room.
You can go and, can't quite make a snowman, but play with snowballs, get yourself good and cold, go back into the steam room. There's also classes you can do, they cost a little extra, that'll show you sort of the Norwegian ritual of doing this. I haven't done that yet, but it is a beautifully appointed spa, and it is all included.
On many cruise lines, I've done these sort of thermal suites, and they're not as nice as this, and they're not included. So this is a really big perk if you're on Viking, and it's something I'm going to be doing probably every day to try to keep my sanity, as I do not sleep much, given that the sun, as I said, is not going down.
I am Dan Kline, come cruise with me soon.
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