We chose the Viking line because we had heard such good things about them. We chose the end of May because we thought it would be reasonably warm, and we picked this cruise because of the two-for-one with free-air offer. We decided to do the two days in Lucerne (it was actually three, since the driver elected to give us to the end of the day before driving to Basel). We did not do the post-cruise in Amsterdam. We were very concerned that we were staying in the Radisson Blu in Lucerne and not the old hotel in the downtown. None of the pre-trip info from Viking addressed our concerns. At best, the Radisson Blu is blah. Blah decorations, blah room, blah food and blah service. But the one thing that had us most concerned was its proximity away from everything, or so we thought. Once there, we found a nearby park with two snack and beverage coaches and tables put out each evening, where we faced the setting sun overlooking beautiful Lake Lucerne and the Alps. There was a nearby massive underground of restaurants and shops under the train terminal, there was half the city on our side of the bridge, and we were given bus passes for our time there in case we were too tired to walk. We made sure to not be out after dark because the lights for the last 2 blocks were covered by leaves, and the dark streets were very unsettling. We did visit the old hotel, and would stay there if we could.

Back to the riverboat, we thought the choice of included tours by Viking was excellent because the Guides were so knowledgeable about the history of the various regions as well as the political and social events that resulted in the current scene. We're glad that we signed-up for all we could, plus just about every one of the optional tours we could fit into the schedule. From the Oompah dinner to the optional pub crawl, the Guides made them great. The hour plus bus ride into the Black Forest to have a 15-minute demo on how to build a cuckoo clock, with little time for anything else, was a little too much, but they can't all be perfect.

On board our floating hotel, we were treated to magnificent meals and attentive wait staff, and the opportunity to meet a lot of people from everywhere on the planet. Most of them were retirees, which we expected, with just a few under 30. One disappointment that kept popping up was the lack of wine from the regions we were visiting. Maybe we read it wrong, but we were certain that having local wine was one of the advertised items. The wait staff were unaware of this promise, thus continued to serve the same red and white wines at each meal, with few exceptions, although they did manage to find a local wine once. The local beers, which we expected to be dark, were all light beers more like light lagers, and that was a good thing. Our on-board entertainment was mostly the excellent piano player and the tour director, but once we had a local accordion player who gave us a marvelous solo performance when we were the only ones on deck at the moment. The Viking service before the cruise was top notch, because they were all striving to get an excellent on the two-question review at the end of each call. They appeared to take a genuine interest in making sure we had every concern covered.