My husband and I came straight off a Rick Steve tour along the Adriatic to Budapest where we started our 11 day Eastern Europe cruise with Viking on the Aegir. We stayed for two nights at the Le Meridien hotel in Budapest which is elegant and wonderful. It was very hot but the walking city tour was interesting and our bus tour the next day also. Our ship was delayed getting into Budapest due to mechanical problems, but Viking made the decision not to tell anyone until everyone had arrived in Budapest. Our embarkation was delayed by about 6 hours but we had a large room at the hotel where everyone had lunch and where we could stay in the air conditioning if we didn't want to be out walking around. Everyone had to check out of their rooms by 10 am but we did not get on the ship until around 6 pm. So that was not ideal, but not awful.

After boarding the ship, we were pleasantly surprised by the clean ship, the nice cabin, pleasant crew and good food. We enjoyed every meal, the crew was really great and we liked walking around on the sun deck. Everything went as planned for most of the week. Some of the daily tours were better than others, but for the most part, were what we expected. On the second to the last day on the river, we were told that the river was too low and we would be getting off the boat at a different location. We still had the same bus tour that day, but it was two hours each direction instead of one hour. So that was a lot of driving.

We were among the youngest people on our cruise; our ages are 55 and 61. Most people were older than that but it was not a problem. Almost everyone we met on the tour was interesting and very nice. Our tour ended in Bucharest, where again we stayed at a great hotel, Radisson Blu and enjoyed the city tours. I'm not sure if we will do another Viking tour but we may.