We booked our family river cruise through Viking and it started to unravel from day one.

The cruise was due to depart from Chalon-sur-Saone, I suspected something was wrong when the taxi driver and hotel receptionist (all locals) said Viking have trouble starting from this port at this time of the year as the river is high and they expected we would be bussed to Lyon (where I had paid the day before EUR 250 to transfer from), they were right. After a monty-python type transfer back to Lyon arranged by Viking that at one stage had a group of passengers standing with bags in some far flung Lyon tennis club we were eventually transferred to the boat after close to 3 hours in a bus. We were stuck on the boat in Lyon for around 3.5 days staring at a graffiti decorated dock with teenagers urinating around us on what turned out to be a concert site over a bank holiday weekend. The rest of the Lyon experience was one of a bus vacationers dream (not a river cruise). Some five hours total time on a bus to visit Beaune for instance. The crew point to disclaimers in the ticket, however, given that high water on the Rhone is usual for this time of year the cruise line could have foreseen this, interestingly they have taken Chalon-sur-Saone out of their 2016 destination list.

On day 6 we were due to sail to Tarascon for a visit to Arles, this did not happen so another port struck from the experience. We missed out on this port because of "too many vessels in the port"!!!!, so back on the bus for more shuttle misery. Read more