We normally cruise with Silversea, but with all the positive hype surrounding Viking Ocean and River cruising we decided it would be worth further investigation and financial commitment to cruise with this line. We joined this cruise on Viking Orion in Tokyo Bay, Japan.

Embarkation went fairly smoothly although there was a snaking embarkation line, which is something we are not used to. Furthermore, despite adding our credit card details prior to embarkation we were asked to produce the card. The staff then proceeded to try and add it to our shipboard account which was already populated with our credit card detail. So much for the statement in the ‘My Viking” Cruise app, ‘Registering your credit card details will save time at embarkation’ Clearly it doesn’t.

We eventually made it to our stateroom, PV1 category, which to be fair was a pleasant enough environment, but we couldn’t help but compare to our previous Silversea staterooms, a No contest decision was made in favour of Silversea. Never the less we settled in, with the expectation that it would be a fabulous cruise. Read more