We chose this Ocean Cruise because we had never cruised with Viking Oceans and specifically because we wanted to revisit Florence, Monte Carlo, and Barcelona. As we began planning for and talking about the cruise, friends from our (American) city who had never traveled with Viking decided to join us and friends from Britain whom we had met on a prior river cruise also decided to join us. That is one of the joys of Viking cruises: we have always met new friends with whom we keep in touch. The Jupiter was beautiful: the lower deck bar, the specialty restaurants, and even the main dining room were elegant, more elegant than some of the other, larger cruise ships that we have traveled on, and several steps above the sleek Viking Longboats on which we had done river travel--and I think the Longboats are beautiful! The food, as always, was spectacular--I prefer the main dining room with it's varied menu, but others in our group liked the intimacy of smaller settings. Viking had notified us of a change in French ports along the French Riviera early in the planning stages of the trip. Ultimately, we did not get a French Riviera port, but stopped at Sete, instead. That excursion was the few low points of the trip. Because we and another couple in our group had planned a post cruise stay in Barcelona, the four of us chose the "Best of Barcelona & Our Lady of Montserrat" as our shore excursion in Barcelona. This worked to our advantage as we got an overview of the city and a wonderful tour of fabulous Montserrat, outside the city. We were able to spend most of our extra days in the city visiting all the sites we had seen in passing during the excursion. We chose not to use the Viking post cruise package, but Viking worked with us on air travel arrangements for a modest "deviation fee." It was fabulous!