We had nothing to compare our cruise to as it was our first time on one, but we were not disappointed. It was great fun to be catered to and have every day essentially planned for us.

Because our style of travel is much more casual than I think most cruises are we made the deliberate decision to not bring dress clothes based on reading lots of social media posts, and I’m glad we didn’t. Traveling on a river boat in the winter simply didn’t lend itself to bringing lots of different clothes, especially since we only wanted to travel with a carry-on and backpack. Nobody was dresses in formal attire, which I felt lended itself to a much friendlier atmosphere.

The only thing I wish Viking had offered was an alternate way to get to Cologne in order to spend more time there. The cruise time from the morning stop was about 4 hours, with not a lot to do on the ship. We found, however, that we could take a train to Cologne and it would get us there in 30 minutes, giving us a LOT more time in the city, including being able to see the Cathedral. If we’d stayed on the boat we would have missed being able to go inside the Cathedral and see the outside, as they aren’t lighting it at nighttime anymore. It was only $20 to take the train, and we were also able to see ALL of the Christmas markets instead of just the 2 closest to the ship.