We love the relaxed and intimate atmosphere of river cruising, making new friends, meeting old friends with normally faultless service and excellent food and wine. We enjoy visiting new places, seeing new vistas and experiencing new cultures without the formality of the grand cruise liners. Scenic Jasper is a beautiful river boat, only two years old and carrying up to 163 passengers. Our panoramic suite was large and the balcony superb. Room service is normally excellent. This is our third cruise with scenic, but for some reason things never gelled from the start. The hotel staff seemed under pressure, understaffed and unhappy. Having to continually ask for coffee at breakfast, or wine for dinner is just no longer up to standards we look forward to with other cruise companies we have travelled with. Many of the meals were self service buffet creating a scrum with a full boat. On several occasions there was no food left and we had to ask and wait for more. We have eaten as well at motorway service stations. The wines were variable, some excellent some poor. The bar staff however were superb with cocktails to die for. The Rhine itself is of course a busy commercial river, so some areas are picturesque while others are industrial. Offshore visits were not wildly memorable and one tour guide was positively rude. The hotel manager was sadly very aloof and offhand. Maybe this filtered down to the staff. Sadly, I feel this may be the last time we cruise with Scenic.