Viking River Cruises

They arranged our flights so we flew from Charlotte South Carolina to Atlanta and then an international flight from Atlanta to New Amsterdam. That's a long flight. When we got off, we got off our carry on and we went and got our suitcase and we got to meet, they met us at the airport. We met other people in Charlotte that were going on the same flight and more people in Atlanta that were going to the same ship. Then when we got off, everyone was getting off and getting their stuff and we were in different parts of the plane. We got to the point where we met the Viking people at the airport and my wife says, where's this bag? Oh I left it under the seat on the plane. And we are outside of security. Viking took us to the counter and talked to the people from the airline. They made arrangements for someone to go check, found the bag under the seat, brought it to somebody who had the right to go through security and brought the bag out. Meanwhile, we missed the tour bus to the ship. They put us in a private limo and took us to the ship. When we got to the ship, you couldn't necessarily get to your state room right away so they took all of the suitcases and carry ons and put them in one area and said you can go wander around the ship, you can go get something to eat. There's coffee and cookies available almost all the time. Then at lunch, after lunch we got a call that the room was ready. When we got to the room, all of our luggage was in the room already. I mentioned to the lady who's in charge of the dining room that I'm on a low carb diet and my wife does not tolerate spice. Every morning she brought a menu to us and discussed menus for the rest of the day to make sure there was stuff that we would be able to eat.  By the third day, all of the crew that had contact with people, knew all of us by name. I couldn't believe they learned names that fast. And it's open seating for meals so you just sit where ever you feel like it. Or if you don't want to, you can go up in the front bow, there's a sort of like a deli and you can get food there. We went into dinner and I said to the waiter, wow, this appetizer looks really good and he said, oh it is. I said, but the soup looks interesting too. He said, not as good as the appetizer and he walked away. I got the appetizer and soup. One night my wife was vasilating between 2 dinners and he said, no problem and walked away. She got 2 dinners. Very commonly people got multiple desserts and the desserts were to die for. Every day before dinner they had a review of what we did that day, what we were going to do the next day and the chef would come in and discuss the dinners tonight. For breakfast you could sit down and order breakfast or you could go up to a bar. There was one guy that did smoked fish and vegetables and he also maintained the fruit salads and vegetable salads. There was one guy that did omelets. They also did hot cereal. One day they took us on a trip to, and you had a choice of a couple of places, but we opted for an industrial food area and they took us to a greenhouse. We were in a 48 acre greenhouse, one building under glass. 48 acres. They grow orange peppers in that greenhouse. Nothing but orange peppers. Before we went in they said, it's been a long bus trip to get here so come on in we'll have coffee, tea and there was a ceramic orange pepper on the table that was so perfect and so beautiful I had to take a picture of it. And then the lady that was talking to us took a knife out and cut it up and gave it to us. It was real. They had a 24 acre greenhouse full of red peppers and a 10 acre greenhouse for cherry tomatoes. They shipped 1500 kilo of peppers everyday. Each of us came home with a pepper. I brought my orange pepper to breakfast the next day and I said to the guy that was making omelets, can I have a pepper and onion omelet? And he cut up part of my pepper and made me a pepper and onion omelet. 2 days later he said, you going to finish the rest of your pepper? I still got it here. He remembered it was my pepper, he remembered I did it, they remembered everything. One night, they had a Viking explorer pre-dinner meeting and cocktail hour. You had to have gone on at least 2 Viking cruises to be a member of the club. I could not believe the number of people that were in that meeting and when I talked to a number of people I said, you've been on a Viking cruise before they said, oh yeah, this is our 5th one. Everybody gives them the same kind of marks. They had entertainment at night.