We wanted a cruise over the holidays for our family, including our son and daughter in their mid twenties. We chose this as we had never been to Athens and our son had never been to Rome. We wanted a family trip over the hoiidays to interesting places and not just beaches. We got off to a bad start with travel complications and rather than arriving at 1:00 PM we did not arrive until close to midnight.

Once on board the rooms were very nice and the food was great. We had only done river cruises before and liked the small size of those ships so wondered a bit about being on a larger ship with 900 plus people. It was surprisingly uncrowded, there were several bar areas and food options and it never seemed crowded. Unlike the river cruises, you did not see the same people repeatedly. There were several times where I met interesting people and hoped to see them again and did not. You needed to get names and contact information if you wanted to see them again, it usually did not happen by chance.

December 24 the sea was quite rough and it was a bit of a challenge walking around the ship. We did have a lot of family meals together which was nice. We enjoyed most of the shore excursions, the first day walking the Acropolis with a great guide was nice. At Ephasis the guide gave the impression Viking had endorsed the carpet market we were taken to and there was huge pressure to buy a carpet as we were the last ship of the season. Viking should have made it clear in advance about this situation.