This ship has a surprising spaciousness for a smaller ship, and it took me almost a week to figure out why: every cabin is an exterior room with balcony, so there's lots of extra space inside. The decor is lovely - lots of Viking stuff - and the staff is great.

Even though the weather out of New York started out very wet with rocky seas (it was a transition cruise and very low priced) everything calmed down after a couple of days. There's a retracting roof over the pool, and a big plus is the movie screen, where they play films under the stars (or roof, weather depending). Everyone gets Bose wireless headphones, so there's no extraneous noise.

My three favorite things were the included wifi (so civilized), the sheer number of books around the ship available to read, and the seafood buffet every night up in the world cafe. Usually, we use the buffet for breakfast and lunch, and dine in a nicer restaurant, but it was hard to beat the dinner buffet. So we mixed it up between all the restaurants. We got a drink package, which was very reasonable, but even if you don't there's plenty of wine & beer at lunch & dinner. Read more