My husband and I decided in July that we wanted to try and squeeze another cruise vacation in this year and August, 2016 was wide open for us. Viking had availability on the Elegant Elbe tour, leaving from Berlin and going to Prague. Because we booked so last minute, we got a great deal on our flight from Seattle to Berlin returning from Prague to Seattle for only $200!! The pre and post extensions were booked so we flew into Berlin three days early and toured the city ourselves. We stayed at the same hotel the viking pre-cruise patrons stayed at. We had no trouble hooking into Vikings program director, who gave us tips for touring Berlin.

The river cruise, like our two previous ones was just plain wonderful. The Viking service, food, daily tours and onboard entertainment were terrific. However, The Elbe River was very shallow and the ship was unable to get into the last port of call. The cruise director was a seasoned veteran and obviously "knew his stuff", but he kept reminding us of the shallow river situation and it tended to put a negative spin on the cruise. Also the average age of passengers was quite a bit older than the last two Viking cruises we were on. And the program director being older as well, just wasnt as much fun as the other two program directors we experienced. The only other thing, I'd like to note is that the cruise covered a lot of Eastern Germany and the history of WWII and the Cold War. The history of Hitler's regime isnt exactly uplifting and a lot of the information gained was quite sobering. But I cant believe how much I didnt know and was grateful for the knowledge and expertise of our tour guides.