The mechanics of the trip were good - everything was well planned out and the hotels that we had were great. We had a wonderful guide in Tingting. That being said, China was a bit of a disappointment due to the massive upgrading to "new" and the loss of the "old" China. They were a few really great sites and a lot of blah!

Our room on the Viking Emerald was too hot and we couldn't control the heat at all. Others told us their room was too cold. We also thought too much time was spent trying to sell us stuff and too much time was spent at places that were designed to get us to buy. We would have rather been given the option of seeing other sites vs. just waiting around looking at stuff we had no intention of buying,

Non-chinese food was excellent - didn't like the lazy susan meals (more of a personal choice). One of the worst parts of the cruise and land package was the air and water pollution - we luckiy just missed the red alert in Beijing - but the pollution was evident everwhere. Its pretty bad when you can't see more that a couple hundred meters before all was grey. Read more