My wife and I have never been on a cruise before. In 2023 we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, and were looking to take a trip. When initial ideas didn't work with our timeframe, we ended up looking at other options that ended up with us finding Viking's Christmas Market cruise along the Rhine. We somewhat impulsively booked it in July of 2023. At the time it accounted for the sixth ...
The three of us - my husband, I and our son - took a Danube River cruise on Viking Baldur from Budapest to Passau the week before Christmas. It was cold and raining or pouring most of the days. However, despite the miserable weather, our overall experience with Viking was fairly good and I would give it 4 stars if not an extremely unpleasant event that took place the last night and a return ...
My husband and I chose this cruise almost a year in advance in anticipation of coming months of recovery from surgeries we both needed. We thought (rightly it turns out) that having something wonderful to look forward to would help us to focus on getting better. In particular, we chose the Danube River Cruise at Christmas because we wanted to see the many beautiful, glittering Christmas markets ...
1) almost no restaurants in the United States serve robusta coffee--the savings isn't that great, and the coffee is just pathetic.... If for no other reason, that is sufficient for my not cruising again on Viking. Moreover I couldn't even drown it out with cream because the cruise only had skim milk (ultimately, the maître d' did purchase some half-and-half--kudos).
2) I have wine with dinner ...
I wanted a special Christmas gift for my wife and she loves all things Christmas. The draw of magical Christmas markets in beautiful historic settings is what drew me to join this cruise.
We allowed Viking to do our flight arrangements. Most all were great. More on that later.
The arrival and checkin in Paris was very smooth as has always been our experience with Viking. We enjoyed the ...
The restaurant meals aboard the ship were perfect! We loved having so many choices for starters, salads, entrees, and desserts -- both daily offerings and regional specialties. The service was equally perfect -- all of the staff were so attentive to us and we could not have asked for better! They learned our names and were eager to serve us. After a couple of days, they often knew what ...
I went on this cruise as part of a travel group of 20. There were some hiccups at the outset due to high water levels on the Rhine. Avalon did an amazing job to make sure their guests were well cared for and accommodated and still provided all the tours. The local guides provided were top notch and the food provided by Avalon delicious and plentiful. The staff worked incredibly hard and ...
I did a lot of research before we chose to sail with Avalon and I am so glad we did.
We opted for the 2 days in Lucerne before the cruise and that was a great choice.
I can't say enough about how wonderful the entire trip was from beginning to end. Starting with our hotels in Lucerne and Basel to the ease of the airport transfer from the boat in Amsterdam to the airport.
The boat was ...
I cruise about 2x/year. Over the past few years, half of my cruises have been on Viking. The Christmas market cruise was my first Viking river cruise. While the Christmas markets were interesting, the cruise was hampered by the high river levels that prevented ships from travelling under bridges. (Last year when I considered a river cruise I passed since at the time the rivers in Europe were too ...
This was our first cruise of any sort and we wanted to experience the Swiss, German, and French Christmas Markets while being pampered on the beautiful Viking River ship Idi. However high water on the Rhine River due to previous heavy rains and snow melt caused flooding and prevented our ship from passing under bridges on the Rhine River. Instead we were bused to Strasbourg, France where our ship ...