We chose this cruise to see some parts of the world we never visited. We were particularly looking for ward to visiting Tunisia and Algeria. What we were not told is that we could not leave the ship unaccompanied in either port. On tour, we were heavily guarded by police with rifles. A bit unsettling to say the least. The tour buses in these are not close to Western standards. In fact, our bus broke down in Tunisia, which cut our touring time considerably. Viking did provide a partial refund, but hey, we traveled this far to see the sights!! Algeria is essentially a military state and we witnessed an encounter between our tour guide and a self important military lackey at a visitor site. It was embarrassing for our guide and telling to us as visitors.

The food on this ship was very good. We were able to book a couple of nights in Manfredi's and one at the Chef Table. Skip the Chef Table. My wife has a food allergy to shellfish. Despite making this known to the restaurant manager, three of the four courses served at the Chef's Table had shellfish!! It would have been easy to inform us of this issue ahead of time. Didn't happen. The chef even tried to convince her that oyster sauce has no real oyster in it. We were not taking the chance.

We had ship board credit which we used for the Tunis trip. As earlier mentioned, we we refunded a part of the Tunis trip, but there was no time to use the credit as we were unable to get into port in Valencia due to 50 MPH winds and 20 foot seas. Viking refused to reimburse this credit. Read more