We had never seen this part of Europe and wanted to see it. We were met at the airport in Zurich by the Viking representative and had a nice drive to Lucerne, where we stayed for 3 days prior to embarking in Basel. Lucerne was delightful, we stayed at the Hotel Schweizerhof, a deluxe hotel by the lake and by the chapel bridge. Viking guides there were excellent, Jacqueline showed us Lucerne and kept us up to date on Viking, and she was excellent. Her tour of Lucerne did a marvelous job of covering the most notable features, and she was very informative about Switzerland. The next day we took a trip up the Stanserhorn, which was spectacular (we had good weather). You got incredible views of the countryside and Switzerland, and our guide, Jim was very knowledgeable about the area and gave us a lot of interesting background on Switzerland. Some walking is involved but it was moderate, and the trails were excellent. At the end of this, Jim took us to the ship in Basel and gave us an extremely interesting and informative account of how Switzerland handles many government functions, such as health car. Between Jim and Jacqueline I felt we got a superb tour of Lucerne and the area, and acquired a lot of current information about Switzerland.

The rest of the cruise went well. Due to low water on the Rhine, we had to get off at Breisach take a bus to Heidelberg, where we had a nice tour and then we got on the Ksavir at Koblenz (they used a sister ship, the Idi from Basel to Breisach). This was accomplished smoothly and the next day we saw the part of the Rhine we missed on a shallow draft sightseeing boat. While this was a nuisance, since the Rhine was at the lowest level ever recorded, Viking's problems were understandable. The rest of the tour went well, the guides were excellent, the areas visited were interesting and enjoyable (Cologne cathedral was especially notable) and I would definitely give the cruise high ratings. But, as I said at the start, the beginning excursion in Switzerland was what really set it apart.