I chose this itinerary - Viking Homelands - as it went to 6 countries I had never visited before. Viking does a great job of focusing on each destination so I thought they would be the best company for me as someone unfamiliar with this part of the world.

Embarkation was ridiculously easy. My sister and I took a cab from a hotel where we had stayed for a couple nights prior to the cruise. We were greeted, needed to turn over our passports temporarily, and our luggage was brought to our cabin. Our housekeeping guys went over each feature of our cabin with us in an almost amusing level of detail!

We tried all of the restaurants on the ship and had good experiences in them all but settled on The Restaurant as our favorite. Supposedly the head of Viking thinks the best food should be in the main restaurant and for us it was and we liked the service there too. Read more