Viking maintained its expected excellent level of service in its Portugal's River of Gold cruise. The itinerary provided wonderful opportunities to learn about and explore the Duoro River region and to venture into Salamanca, Spain (and Santiago de Compostela, Spain on the post-trip). We visited cities, small towns, many wineries, markets and beautiful churches. We enjoyed and learned in all ...
We chose this cruise only because friends we met on Uniworld had booked and we wanted to do a Douro River cruise. They had done a Scenic River cruise before and thought it was better than Uniworld. In our opinion, not the case at all, except perhaps the tour guides and evening entertainment. We never received final paperwork and fllow up by our TA had 0 responses.
The ship design and decor ...
Where to start? We opted for a couple of extra days in Lisbon - what a fun city. Our visit coincided with Portugals Independence Day and St Antony’s Day. The place was buzzing. I think Lisbon would be fun at any time. It was so nice to be reminded of Portugals prominent place in world history and that we are their oldest ally. That came through very strongly.
We headed to Porto to join ...
The Douro River is famous port and wine country. Unfortunately Viking has a very poor provider of Portuguese wine to complement the fabulous food they serve. This is a wine country cruise and we expected to be treated with excellent Portuguese wine. We were a party of eight who all had the silver wine package--the included wines in the package were either undrinkable or mediocre. We opened ...
We chose this cruise because we were wanting to see Portugal and had planned a trip on both ends of the cruise. we have only been on mostly ocean cruises, but have been to China and Vietnam on their river cruises and land tours. Those ships are totally different from a normal river cruise ship. This was one of the smallest ships due to the size of the river and small locks. It was a bare ...
Had not been to Portugal. Met at airport in LIsbon and comfortable drive to the hotel. Viking again provides a superior hotel product: The Tivoli on Avenida da Liberdade a 5 star stay, spacious and well decorated lobby and restaurant, excellent room and bathroom. Viking worked with the hotel chef and produced 3 different prix fix menus for Viking guests if we did not want to order from the main ...
Portugal and Spain are the only two countries I haven't been to in Europe and I heard both were worth visiting. Truly loved Portugal, especially the people who know how to enjoy food and wine. Our Cruise Director was very informative and did a great job. Same with the Chef, Captain and all the staff and tour guides. I like how we visited with locals on our excursions which helped give us a real ...
We wanted to sail on the Douro for the scenery. We also wanted to visit Porto.
The scenery was stunning, particularly the terraces of vines, both from the ship and from higher up on the coach trips.
The food and wines were excellent. We had the silver spirits beverage package, which was very good value.
We did the extension: two days in Lisbon before the cruise, and Santiago de Compostela ...
Booked this cruise as a fill in while on board the Viking star. Portugal is a gem to visit. Lisbon is a wonderful city. Our cruise director
PATRICIA was absolutely amazing. Her knowledge and energy rubbed off on all the crew and passengers and without her I dare say the cruise would have been more mundane. She was down one tour guide and was doing double duty as cruise director and tour ...
Our first big trip since covid. (We were doing a cruise supposedly from Singapore to Hong Kong in February 2020. I say supposedly because Hong Kong closed down its port the day we got on the ship, our stops in Vietnam closed their ports as we were sailing). We started touring Portugal on our own, and then met up with Viking in Lisbon. My husband got food poisoning our 2nd night with Viking ...