Viking’s Luxurious Mississippi River Journey from New Orleans to Memphis

Mention a river cruise and you might think of European cathedrals and castles perched on vineyard-dotted hilltops. But this is a story about a cruise through the heart and maritime Main Street of America along what is arguably the most famous river in the United States. The Mississippi, of course.

It’s the second-longest river in the U.S., flowing about 2,300 miles from its headwaters in Minnesota to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it crosses or borders 10 states in America’s heartland. Writer Mark Twain, who grew up near the river in Hannibal, Mo., had a deep connection to the river, using it as a backdrop or even the key setting for some of his most celebrated work.

It’s a one-day car drive from New Orleans to Memphis, but my husband and I crossed that distance on a week-long journey by ship along the meandering corkscrew course of the lower Mississippi River and four centuries’ worth of the past remembered.

Itinerary Begins In New Orleans

In the year celebrating America’s 250th, the cruise felt like the ultimate immersion in all things Americana.

Along the way we strolled the streets of the French Quarter in the “Big Easy,” stood on the hallowed ground of the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg, toured the antebellum grace of Natchez on foot and the swamps and bayous of Louisiana on a roaring, zooming airboat.

The river cruise routine of engaging shore excursions and shipboard relaxation is always welcome, no matter the location. But this trip, Viking’s only route completely inside the U.S., is especially relaxing for U.S. travelers as there are no transatlantic flights, currency conversions or language barriers beyond “y’all are welcome.”

Read More: On the Roads Where It Happened: A Revolutionary Road Trip for America’s 250th

Viking Mississippi Was Purpose-Built

Our ship, the aptly named Viking Mississippi, is taller and longer than the typical European cruise ship, with five decks for passengers. It can accommodate 386 passengers in 193 staterooms, and 147 crew members. Launched in 2022, it was purpose-built for the Mississippi.

We’ve been on multiple Viking cruises in Asia, Europe and North America, on river ships, ocean ships and expedition vessels, and have come to understand that Viking has a consistent style and system for presenting the cruise experience.

Boarding and disembarkation are organized with military precision. Your luggage will be taken from you on shore and magically reappear in your cabin. The typical cabin is not expansive but is ingeniously designed to make best use of every square inch of space.

On the Mississippi, our cabin stewards were friendly Southern people, attentive but easygoing, an added treat. Fellow passengers agreed that the staff on the Mississippi seemed less formal than those we met on more far-flung Viking cruises.

Common areas are large and full of light, in typical Scandinavian design with blond wood and neutral colors. The main gathering area known as the living room features full wooden bookcases and clusters of soft chairs and sofas that provide any number of places to read a book, have a drink, puzzle over a puzzle or daydream at the scene on shore.

Viking always has a collection of books on board available to passengers, and this ship was no exception. The living room area would be a particularly good place to dig into some Mark Twain. The ship also has a mural backing a staircase with printed excerpts from some of his works that relate to the river.

Musical entertainment in the evening was apropos of the itinerary: a tribute to Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, lively R&B as we approached Memphis, blues in between.

There’s a small pool on Deck 5’s sun terrace, which a few guests used, but the December temperatures kept us out of the water.

Dining Incorporates Local Specialties

Chefs on cruise ships must try to accommodate a tremendous range of tastes and dietary needs. And this voyage met the usual marks but was especially good at incorporating local cuisine into the menus.

One night, the dinner menu offered a terrific Atchafalaya snapper with crawfish cream sauce. Another evening, it was barbecue at the outside grill, steak and lobster, both included.

While the ship and cruise have much in common with Viking itineraries elsewhere in the world, some aspects are tailored to the Mississippi.

Ports Along The Mississippi

Most of the ship’s docking places are at the foot of levees, linear dams built to protect inland areas from the river’s periodic floods. Climbing up the levees might be challenging for passengers with even modest mobility issues. But Viking provides a squad of golf carts that are trucked from one port of call to the next, so passengers who need a lift up the levee can get one.

At our first stop, in Darrow, Louisiana, we were offered a chance to walk a few hundred yards from the pier to Houmas House, a grand Southern mansion with an imposing colonnade unchanged since it was built in 1829.

Or we could opt for a tour and tasting at Sugarfields Distillery. That’s where we heard the personal story of its founder, Dr. Thomas Soltau, a neonatologist who became fascinated by the science of distilling and went on to learn most of what there is to know about distilling rum from the sugar cane that grows abundantly in Louisiana. Who knew there was so much to know? And it was a good thing that someone else was driving us back to the ship from this excursion, which was also a tasting.

Exploring The Atchafalaya Basin

On a brisk, overcast day we explored the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation’s largest swamp, by airboat. Picture a flat-bottom boat 15 feet wide and twice as long, with bench seats ahead of what looks like an enormous oscillating fan in a metal cage.

We were grateful for warm blankets to ward off the December chill and sound-dampening earmuffs to protect us from the roar of the engine mounted just behind us.

Our driver-guides steered the boats across broad open waters and threaded their way down bayous (which are just creeks) while explaining the swamp environment.

Here and there we saw old-growth cypress trees, once prized for durable lumber but now protected from logging, and a wide variety of aquatic birds. But the kings of the swamp, the alligators, were nowhere to be seen; when it’s cold they go into a kind of hibernation at the muddy bottom of the waterways.

Music In The Mississippi Delta

In Greenville, Mississippi, we enjoyed a barbecue and a rousing concert by Mississippi-born country music performer Steve Azar. Between sets, Azar talked about the history of the Delta and all the blues performers who were nurtured in the region. He also noted that Viking had provided a big economic boost to the sleepy river town by making it a destination for its cruises.

Civil War At Vicksburg

The Civil War battlefield of Vicksburg was probably the best-known stop on the itinerary, certainly the most solemn.

Here Gen. Ulysses Grant’s army broke the Confederacy’s stranglehold on the Mississippi, but at a terrible cost in lives. More than 17,000 Union soldiers are buried at Vicksburg, most of them unknown, making it the largest cemetery of Union dead in the United States.

The green hills and valleys, winding roads and soaring monuments to the soldiers of Union and Confederate belie the bloody foot-by-foot fighting that took place here in 1863. And we were told that more soldiers died of disease here than from combat.

Make time to visit the USS Cairo, a Union gunboat that was sunk in the Mississippi in 1862 and raised from the mud a century later. Years of restoration have married crumbling timbers of the hull, original iron work and a superstructure of treated wood to give visitors an idea of what the ship looked like when it fought. The reconstructed ship, named for the river town in Illinois, not the city in Egypt, was the first ship ever sunk by a torpedo. It fought along the Mississippi, though not at Vicksburg.

B.B. King Museum

The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center is undoubtedly the shiniest and most impressive thing in the threadbare Mississippi Delta town of Indianola. It’s the first place where the future guitar legend made money playing the blues.

We drove for close to an hour across the dead-flat cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta to reach the museum, housed partly in a building that was once home to a cotton gin where King worked as a young man.

You don’t have to be a blues fan to appreciate the story told here and gain respect for the man who is buried just outside the museum. You’ll learn what it was like for a Black musician playing music rooted in the Black experience to gain the adulation of audiences around the world.

Last Stop In Memphis

Our cruise ended on a Saturday morning in Memphis. If any Mississippi port can rival New Orleans for a rich array of historic and cultural treasures, it’s Memphis.

Here, Elvis Presley made his home at Graceland, now a sprawling museum and shrine. Elvis and other recording artists, such as Johnny Cash, made some of their first recordings here at Sun Studios, while the Stax recording studio can lay claim to being an incubator of rhythm and blues.

All kinds of music ring out on Beale Street, home of a host of performing venues. And a different path of history is traced at the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.

The cruise had taken us through centuries of history, but at its end point there was so much more to see.

If You Go

Viking runs various segments along the Mississippi covering the entire river from Louisiana in the south to Minnesota in the north. The segments in the northern half only operate during warmer weather months.

Our cruise from New Orleans to Memphis was in December, and we needed a light jacket on many, though not all, of the days.

I wished we had had more time both in New Orleans and in Memphis, so consider an extra day or so on either end if you want to extend the experience.

If you want to do the whole route, 22-day cruises reaching both Louisiana and Minnesota are offered during the summer.

For booking information, visit www.Vikingcruises.com.

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Author Bio: Terri Colby spent decades as a journalist reporting on hard news before she wised up and started roaming the world as a travel writer. Her favorite travel stories always seem to involve natural wonders. But cruises, fine dining, and boutique hotels are always on her radar. Her award-winning writing and photography can be found in print and online outlets, including AAA Extra Mile, Chicago Tribune, Porthole Cruise & Travel and more. Find her at https://www.facebook.com/terricolby or follow her on Instagram.

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