My wife and I had never done an ocean cruise, but had done 2 river cruises with Viking, so we were curious to see how we thought they would compare. We chose the cruise we did, because, frankly, it wasn't exotic. We started in NYC and ended up in Montreal, so it was sort of familiar territory, although we got to see more of Canada than I had seen before. Per usual, the most trying part of the cruise was getting to the ship. It wasn't much fun from the landing at Kennedy until we finally got on the ship. That wasn't Viking's fault. It was just typical air travel nowadays and typical NYC traffic. Once on the ship, it's really hard for me to imagine how it could have been nicer. The ship was pretty much brand new, well designed, and beautiful. The people were always helpful and smiling. The cabin was comparable to what you would encounter on the river cruises, but the ship had so much space and lots of things to do if you were cruising. There were half a dozen places to eat, and the food and service in each place was outstanding. The excursions were interesting, but I liked the excursion experiences on the river cruises better. I think that's primarily a matter of scale, because the group for an ocean cruise excursion would be many times the size of a group for a river cruise excursion, so we spent more time on a bus than we did for the river cruise excursions. My favorite ports were Halifax and Quebec, the former because it was a medium-sized and accessible city, but one with lots of history and points of interest and we had a great excursion guide, and the latter because it is truly unique. It really is like going to a European city, but you're in Canada. My least favorite ports: NYC and Boston, the 2 American stops. We enjoyed ourselves immensely and shortly after getting home booked another one from Barcelona, Spain, to Norway. Can't wait.