Partially due to inclined weather conditions, the cruising part of this trip has been dramatically reduced. Majority of the excursions fall under the side of 'a bit boring' category. Fortunately, we booked the pre-cruise excursion that highlighted the whole experience, otherwise, the river cruise part alone would not earn my praise at all.
While the executive chef made the daily dinner ...
We recently completed the Bordeaux river cruise with Viking. The overall experience was good, but a couple aspects of the cruise were disappointing.
Firstly, the staff were generally very courteous, professional and well trained. A couple exceptions, but overall excellent service.
The Forseti is a beautiful boat, but the ship was missing a gym, hot tub and bikes. I noticed the Uniworld ...
We chose a river cruise that included Bordeaux as its main attraction. The problem was that the only wine we tasted was white wine--The tasting included less than an ounce of WHITE wine (no RED)!! A woman requested a little extra wine because she did not have enough in her glass to taste the wine. The hostess said no!!
We drove in a bus over two hours and passed MULTIPLE wineries only to stop ...
Travel agent convinced us it was the best even though it was most expensive. Although ship was fine and we had a great time with people on board cruise was a let down. Hotels were amazing but greeting dinner at a sports bar was terrible. About half the excursions were good the others very touristy and tacky. The headphone system for guides never worked and delayed every tour as they tried to sort ...
A distressing outward journey to reach this cruise is still colouring our view of the trip. Our verdict on whether Scenic goes on to a "never, ever again" list awaits a ruling from their Customer Service Department on whether we will be refunded for additional tickets we were forced to by en route to be able to reach Bordeaux.
This was our first cruise with Scenic. We were interested in the ...
Neither of us had been in that region of France before. We like wine so it seemed like a good choice. It was less than expected. This was our first time on Viking, though we have taken other river cruises with other companies. Viking has a reputation of being more "top of the line" but we did not experience anything overly special about the cruise, the ship or the crew. The food was excellent. ...
This was the second Scenic cruise we were on. The first was so much better than the second. There were about 20 Americans and over 100 Brits, with the balance from Canada and one Australian couple. Before I get to the particulars of the cruise, I would like to bring up one important point, The Price. When we got to talking with the other cruisers, we found out that the Brits paid from one fourth ...
We chose this cruise because of the itinerary and because we’ve travelled before on an “R” class ship (one of Oceania’s). We travelled from New Zealand to London to see friends after 3 years of covid lockdown separation. Having been caught out by travelling to the port on embarkation day in the past we built a day into our itinerary to get from London to Bordeaux. This worked in our favour as the ...
The sail-in to Sevilla, Spain alone was worth the trip. We were so very lucky with the weather too, not a drop of rain the entire time.
Unfortunately, Azamara's service has declined and no longer offers what once was a family and familiar atmosphere. The familiar "Welcome aboard/Home" greetings are gone. Most staff (wait and bar staff being the exception) just go through the motions. Hard to ...
My wife and I took our first Viking river cruise in 2019, primarily because we kept hearing how wonderful Viking was from friends and neighbors. In fact, the trip was as good as we hoped it would be.
This time, not so much.
I don't know to what extent Covid made an impact on staffing issues at cruise lines, but the service in the dining room on our second river cruise wasn't nearly as good ...