We spent a little more than five weeks in Europe in August, September and October 2023. We enjoyed two cruises with a few days in Switzerland in between.  

We began with a Viking River Cruise called Cities of Light with our friends Warren and Connie.

We had a few days in Switzerland on our own.

Then Randy and I continued with a Holland America cruise called Ancient Mysteries and Egypt. We do love to travel!

We had a very nice time on our Viking cruise with our friends. We are so glad they had a wonderful time!   Viking is great, excellent, exceptional, at what they do – but river cruising just isn’t a good fit for us. 

The crew and our fellow guests were great! 

The tours were mostly excellent. Viking has an included tour for every port, which we always did. They also offer optional tours and we added those whenever the schedule allowed.

The “issue” with our Viking River Cruise, and why it wasn’t a good fit for us, is the design of the ship and how it operates. 

There are basically three large common areas- one a dining room used only for meals at designated times.  

A second is the lounge that serves for relaxing, lectures, entertainment and everything else.  

The third is the sun deck that is available, or not, depending on upcoming bridges, time of day etc. 

There really wasn’t any quiet place to gather or sit with another couple, or alone, other than our cabin or balcony.  The lounge area gets busy and loud with activities and people gathered there.

Meals are at designated times and you are almost always eating with others whether you want to be social or not.

We missed the flexibility and options for eating, relaxing, and entertainment on a larger ship.  Ironically, part of what we like about being on a larger, mid-size ship is the opportunity to be alone as a couple or an individual.

All that being said, I’m very glad we went on our Viking river cruise and glad we had an itinerary that allowed us to see the castles along the Rhine.

We felt like we were coming home when we boarded the Nieuw Statendam.  Not only because we had sailed on her three times before but because this style of cruising is what we know and know we will enjoy.

The Neptune Suite was awesome and we’ll take one anytime it is offered to us steeply discounted! It is way too expensive to be part of our norm. The cabin and balcony were great but the upgrade added a few more perks we enjoyed.  The first would be the Neptune Lounge, a dedicated space and services for approximately 20 cabins.  It came with a small buffet changed out a few times during the day.  We had a self serve honor bar if we wanted something quick to take to our balcony without going upstairs or downstairs to a real bar. The Neptune Lounge also came with Lorraine and Claire, our concierge duo.  They knew our names the first time we walked in the lounge. They were wonderful at taking care of so many details including dining reservations, shore excursions, random questions and money exchanges. I never stood in line at guest services one time on this cruise thanks to them! It was a level of service we had not experienced before. 

Maybe someday we can get a Neptune Suite again.

The Neptune Suite also gave us the opportunity to have our meals in the Club Orange dining room.  We usually did so just because it was part of the benefit, but didn’t find anything particularly remarkable about it except that it was quieter than the main dining room.  

Although, they did know it was my birthday.  I don’t know if that would have happened in the main dining room without us telling them.

And for our Ancient Mysteries Itinerary….

The ports of Ephesus and Istanbul, Turkey were my reasons to book this itinerary and both were great!  We have no need to go to Ephesus again but if we do, touring with a faith based guide would be a different perspective.  

If Istanbul came up again, that would be most welcome but we have no intention to specifically book it again. There are too many places we haven’t been to repeat places very often.

After Italy last year and then continuing with this trip, we were “DONE” with ruins in our brains before we were done with ruins on our itinerary. 

We did go out with a bang though spending our last day of ruins with a private guide at the Acropolis in Athens. 

So here is an oddity – one of my favorite things we did on this trip was go to the top of the Eiffel Tower but Paris didn’t do it for us at all.  We found it loud and dirty and getting transportation was very challenging.  It also didn’t help that Paris was in a heatwave and air conditioning is not common.

Another item of note…I just recently wrote about one of the women statue- columns from the Acropolis being taken and on display at the British Museum.  We heard that dozens of times on this trip everywhere we went from Egypt to Greece to Turkey. “ _____  is part of our heritage and history but it is on display at the British Museum.” That seems sad to me although I have also heard that some things may not have “survived” if not taken to the British Museum. 

These were the countries we added to our list: England,  Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg,  Greece, Egypt and Turkey.

And transitioning to the real world….

Our ship, Nieuw Statendam, was in Jerusalem when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.  This was one week after we left the ship.  

Passengers were called back from shore excursions and the ship went out to sea as quickly as possible.  We belong to several Holland America Facebook groups and were watching posts in real time.  After all the Holland sponsored tours had returned, the captain chose to wait a bit longer for a few passengers who had gone on private tours.  I’m sure that would have been a difficult call – especially if the delay was lengthy.  All passengers and crew were on board before departing.

On October 8 we read reports that Israeli tourists were killed in Alexandria.  We had been there on September 22 with our guide talking about the tolerance of Alexandria citizens.

Hindsight….We stayed in Alexandria, and did not go to the pyramids, because we had an upcoming trip in January and February 2024 to Israel, Egypt and Jordan.  Israel was canceled and then we chose to cancel Egypt and Jordan.  We now wish we had taken the opportunity to go to the pyramids when we were relatively close. We will have to keep that lesson in mind going forward.  Take the opportunity at hand when you can, because you never know. 

Going forward…We have a Viking Ocean cruise coming up so it will be interesting to see how it fits for us.  Our travel agent, who was so, so valuable for us in planning and dealing with mishaps while we were on this trip, thinks it may be our sweet spot.  We’ll see!