Tag: Cruising

TRAVEL THERE: MEAL BY MEAL ON THE VIKING TOR

Every meal is a treat on Viking River Cruises!

Breakfast

From 6 – 11 AM a Cafe Breakfast was available at a coffee station next to the Lounge.  In fact, food and beverages were always available there.  The food ranged from croissants and danish in the morning to cookies mid-afternoon, but there was always something.  The liquid libations offered even more variety:  coffee drinks both hot and cold; hot tea and hot chocolate; both bubbly and still water; even juices in the morning.  The Cafe Breakfast service satisfied the needs of both the early risers and late sleepers, while the coffee station itself kept the rest of us from getting peckish throughout the day.  There was at least one day we visited it for a second breakfast and on most days we took advantage of it for an afternoon break.  At 7 the Aquivit Terrace served a Continental Breakfast.

At 7:30 the Restaurant opened up for a Full Breakfast and I do mean full.  There was a lovely buffet where you could get anything from a made-to-order omelette  to a bagel with lox.  A list of all the things available would take up more word count than I want to spend on it.  I was particularly fond of the mushrooms sauteed in butter, not something I usually eat for breakfast, but once I tried them I ate them every morning.  Healthy things like fresh fruit and yogurt were available as well as diet-busters like bacon and breads of every sort.  I’m not very experimental in the morning, so I had no interest in things like pickled herring and other local “delicacies” they offered up, but you might be.

Were you able to visit all the stations on the buffet and still not find something you were interested in, a menu was available for other selections.  My husband chose to order from the menu on several mornings, but that wouldn’t keep him from enjoying the buffet too.  The menu included all those taboo treats like French Toast, Pancakes and Waffles.

Of course, coffee, tea and a variety of juices were available, but should you have an interest in it, champagne was also being poured.  Many of the passengers enjoyed mimosas, but I can’t start the day drinking.  I’m a wimp!

Lunch

Most of the shore excursions were planned to get you back to the boat for lunch at 12:30.  Lunch was served in the Restaurant in much the same way as breakfast, but with different selections.  Instead of a chef preparing fresh egg dishes, the lunchtime chef offered made-to-order pasta.  There were a wide variety of casual foods offered around the buffet, but you could also order off the menu.  The Aquavit Terrace was also available.

Most days we’d order off the menu and then graze the buffet for tidbits until our meal arrived.  The menu items were served in European proportions.  You could get as many as you wanted, but a three course meal could be eaten without feeling as if you’d just ingested half the boat.  Well, perhaps the desserts were overly indulgent, but the other two courses were very reasonable.

The items on the menu offered a wide variety.  There was usually a regional specialty, something for the meat-and -potatoes sort and something else for the vegetarian.  The vegetarian choices were delightful, even if you weren’t vegetarian.  I would usually opt for the regional specialty, unless it was pickled something or other.

The wine started flowing at lunch, but that’s when I got my caffeine fix.  I’ve already complained mentioned the fact that Diet Dr Pepper was not an option, so I’d have a bottle of Coke Light, Europe’s answer to Diet Coke.  Pretty much any other non-alcoholic beverage you were interested was available at lunch.

Dinner

If you liked the idea of a buffet, then you could go to the Aquivit Terrace for dinner, but in the Restaurant dinner was off the menu.

Passengers generally dressed up a little for dinner, but if you happened to stroll in from enjoying free time at the port and were still wearing your sneakers, you wouldn’t be turned away.  For the most part Viking passengers dressed up the scale from your average ocean cruiser, but there was no formality.  There was no pool or beaches, so folks weren’t running around in swimwear.  The chilly weather discouraged shorts, tank tops and the like.  I liked dressing up for dinner and you could tell other women did, too.  My husband usually wore nice trousers and a long sleeved shirt.  Jackets and ties were not worn.

Each evening before dinner there was a briefing of some sort up in the lounge.  The cruise director would ask if we enjoyed our day and then give us the lowdown on what would be happening next.  Some evenings this event would be accompanied by a glass of free champagne.  We always took advantage of that, but we never ordered drinks.  The bar was always open, but unlike the wine with meals, alcoholic beverages in the bar were not free.  With so much wine flowing at dinner, we saw no reason to invest in cocktails.  That was not true for all the passengers though.  We saw the bartender mix a lot of martinis.

Most evenings we’d find our cruise buddies, Deb, Mike, Gwynne and John at the briefing and then take a table with them for dinner.  The fun we had around the table made dinner one of the best parts of the day.  The food was to die for and as I’ve mentioned the wine never stopped.

At both lunch and dinner the menu was divided into two parts, but different things were offered for each meal.  The left side had the chef’s daily menu and the right side was labeled “Always Available.”  I usually ordered from the day’s selection, but Deb was all about the Grilled Salmon on the Always Available side of things.  The dinner choices on either side were divided into three courses, but you could order it anyway you wanted.  Also, like lunch, they provided a variety of things to please the adventurous, the meat-and-potatoes sorts and the picky (for whatever reason).

I’ve chatted for too long about food, but it is an important part of a cruise.  Next week I’ll start sharing our exciting stops along the Danube.

TRAVEL THERE: THREE SQUARES A DAY & ALL THE WINE YOU CAN DRINK ON THE VIKING TOR

From first meal to last, Viking River Cruises does everything right.  Everything I loved about meals on other cruises they incorporated into their food service and what I hated they left out.

Single Seating Service

The overriding difference between river and ocean cruising is size.  For me that was good news.  Everything I wanted was either on the same floor as my stateroom or one floor down.  I could be in my room one minute and in the next I could be sitting in the dining room.

Each meal was served in one seating and you sat wherever you wanted.  One thing I had really liked about assigned seating on ocean cruises was that your server really got to know you and within a day or two they had all your preferences down.  It also narrowed down the thousands of possible table mates to a table-full of people to have dinner with and I’d always been lucky enough to really like the people we sat with.  Well, on the riverboat, we got to know all the servers and by the end of the cruise each of them knew us well enough to provide incredibly individualized service.  The small number of passengers also made cruise friends a lot easier to find.

Two Dining Venues

We chose to eat all our meals in the Restaurant.  The spacious room had tables of various sizes spread comfortably around the room.  On both sides were large windows looking out onto the river, sometimes at a city where we were docked and at other times at changing scenery, as the boat made its way to the next destination.  In the center of the room was a three-sided buffet for breakfast and lunch.  Dinner was usually from the menu, except for a special regional buffet one evening.

The other venue was the Aqauvit Terrace.  Had the weather been a tad warmer, we would probably have been all over this, especially at lunch.  The Terrace was at the bow of the boat, offering a view of the scenery ahead.  Half of the seating is actually outside on the deck, but some is inside a glass-encased section at the end of the lounge.  That’s where the buffet is and all the meals in the Terrace are served buffet style.  Rumor had it that the Terrace menu focused more on sandwiches, salads and small plates, many of which were included on the Restaurant’s menu.  Perhaps I should have checked it all out for you, but I was on vacation after all.

All the Wine You Can Drink

This was one of my favorite things about the cruise.  The battle of the bottle on the other ships was a confrontation we could not win.  On Viking we couldn’t lose, because there was no battle.  Each evening they had a small selection of wines, both red and white, which were included in the price of the cruise.  Most nights it seems there were only two (one red, one white) but on some of the evenings regional specialties were included which expanded the selection.

My husband, who is a little more picky about wine than me, was always quite pleased with the red choice.  I adored the white wines, especially the regional specialties.  If you are a wine snob, there is a package you can buy that affords you premium wines, but we didn’t need it and we didn’t meet anyone who did.

It really is all the wine you can drink.  Once the wait person finds out which color you prefer for the evening, they’ll keep pouring it for you until you tell them to stop.  If mid-meal you want to change colors, that’s fine too.  I don’t exactly know how they afford to be so generous, but this single act of generosity endeared me to them forever.

I’ve still got a lot more to say about food, but I’ve run out of words today, so come back next week for a description of the meals.