Viking Prestige Review

Grand European Tour - Amsterdam to Budapest

Review for Europe River Cruise on Viking Prestige
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jane1244
2-5 Cruises • Age 70s

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Sail Date: May 2012
Cabin: Deluxe Stateroom with French Balcony

We started off our adventures by spending 2 days in Amsterdam prior to the cruise. I found a wonderful hotel, Hotel Larende, in the museum district and it was the perfect headquarters for all our fun in Amsterdam! The hotel was very clean, quiet, had an elevator, great food and a well-stocked bar! The manager was fantastic - because we arrived there at 10:00 am, he stored our luggage for us and guided us on our sightseeing trip! The tram stopped right out front and he sold discount tickets... it was a good choice!

We have cruised before with our traveling companions but this was the first river cruise for them also. We did a little more sightseeing on Sunday before heading to the ship - Amsterdam is a fascinating city, we had such a good time! The hotel manager arranged our transportation to the dock for us. The cruise documents said that we could board at 3 pm but actually we could have gone aboard earlier.... lots of folks did. Embarkation consisted of going to the desk and checking in - no lines or waiting! Easy, peasy! We had a nice lunch in the Aqua Vit lounge and then joined our luggage in our rooms! The rooms were surprisingly spacious.. we had a place for everything! The bed was very comfy, the bathroom nicely appointed and the French balcony was great. We met up for a drink before dinner and did some exploring - and knew we would love being up on the Sun Deck as much as possible. Dinner was very nice.... all the wine you cared to drink was poured, beer also. It was this way for all lunches and dinners. No need to purchase the drink packages unless you want top shelf liquor all the time.... the ship sailed at 11:30 that evening with us cheering from the Sun Deck!

The next morning found us in Kinderdijk.... it was a real treat! This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site - one of the many we visited on this trip. I won't list all the ports-of-call as there were about 16 of them... you can check out the Grand European Tour itinerary at vikingrivercruises.com to see the complete list. I will say that on a few occasions we skipped the included tour and went off on our own. We like to stop and try the local fare and poke about on less-likely traveled side streets... the only optional tour we took was to the Schonbrunn Palace tour in Vienna - and it was awesome! The tours that we did take had great guides and were very informative. Our Program Director, Andrew, was very knowledgeable also. I could have had more narrative from him regarding the points-of-interest along our river travels... he did talk about the 'big name' castles tho' but there was a lot more that we tried to figure out on our own! Viking provides a couple of river guides that you can follow along in by matching the kilo markers on the shore.... they help a lot!!

Cabin Review

Deluxe Stateroom with French Balcony

Cabin B

Very spacious cabin... lots of storage, adequate closet, lots of drawers. It was about mid-ship in location and very quiet. It was on the second deck and we agreed that we did not have to spend another $400 pp to go one deck up - this was just fine! The French Balcony was great - no need to have a balcony suite when there's a Sun Deck!

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