So gorgeous. I wish I thought of that.....
PS: I know you tried to make some pasta @ home. Nothing tastes as good as it does in Italy.....Such a shame. Went to my first Italian restaurant last week...sigh....
DH is always breaking the rules!
Definitely not as good as the pasta in Italy, but it put off the ache to get back to Italy ASAP...at least for a little while. We still haven't gone out to eat Italian, but it's definitely just not the same.
We weren't impressed with the Chef's Table either. We did the Venetian menu. The Amuse Bouche was exactly like cold pizza sauce! I couldn't eat the beef carpaccio. It was like cat food. A few days later I had beef carpaccio in one of the ports and it was very good. So, Viking's was just bad. I don't remember the cod. So, it was just forgettable to me. A few days later we did a group dinner there and the menu was basically this tour through dishes in ancient history. Something from the Roman Times, Medieval, Renaissance, etc. Overall, it was disappointing. It's really a shame, because I liked the concept of the Chef's Table. Execution was poor. Even service wasn't good.
Manfredi's on the other hand I felt was outstanding.
We also enjoyed the Explorer's Lounge. That was a fun place to hang out in the evening.
Okay, I'm a pretty picky eater so I figured it was just my boring palate, but it looks like that menu was not a hit from reading your response and others. I have never had carpaccio before, so I had nothing to compare it to, and after that meal I certainly wasn't clamoring to try it again. I guess I missed out on trying something good! I totally agree with you that the concept is really great, but it was a disappointment for me. I enjoyed Manfredi's and The Restaurant a lot more.
I totally remember the van naps!
You got some great overview pictures of the rooms - I really liked the style of the rooms - simple, but still very welcoming and comfortable. And we liked the heated floors in the bathroom so much that we are actually in the middle of redoing our bathroom and decided to put in heated floors! (we found an electric system that actually isn't too expensive nor hard to install)
That reservation process for the specialty restaurants was such a disaster - i was really getting upset by the end about Manfredi's (finally had to get someone else to help out find a time for us and it worked out in the end, but frustrating at the time!)
Oh, and it has nothing to do with your palate - that beef carpacio at the Chef's Table was just *bad*!! We wound up doing the Asian menu as well and it was definitely better, but still not amazing (the other dining options turned out to be much better in our opinion) - definitely think the Chefs table was one of the very few disappointments for me on the cruise overall
I don't think there was a single long car/bus ride on this vacation that I didn't fall asleep on! lol
So nice that you will have the heated floors at home!! Wouldn't be worth adding to our house as we'd only get to use it for a couple months out of the year.
But if I lived in your neck of the woods, I can see the benefit of having them!
I'm really glad it ended up working out for you for Manfredi's. Such a disappointing and frustrating booking process! We asked several times about splitting from the shared 4-top we had booked and kept being told no, but then the night we went for our reservation, they seated us at a 2-top, no questions asked. It made no sense!!
Lol I was so self conscious during that meal! I really tried to choke down that carpaccio so I didn't look like a kid who doesn't eat anything different, but it was just terrible. DH finally muttered to me, "Just stop eating it."
I'm glad the Asian menu was better. Definitely found the food better at Manfredi's and The Restaurant.
Thank you so much for TR! I am really enjoying everything.
We arrived early at the port and it was just as empty as the pictures above. I was actually standing there a little bewildered and we did the same thing and went in the wrong doors. There were way more employees and porters than guests. Such a huge striking difference between the zoo Port Canaveral has always been in the mornings. I know, I know, I should arrive after 1PM to avoid that but I'm always too excited to wait.
ETA It wasn't very good Beef Carpaccio. I order it all the time and it wasn't very good at all.
Thanks for following along, Beth!
That's great that you got to experience a quick embarkation as well. I guess with such a small ship and with it not leaving until so late in the night, it made it easy to spread out people arriving. I bet a lot of people arrived that morning, spent the day in Rome, then went to the ship. This makes me a bit worried to experience Port Canaveral in March on our first
DCL sailing.
Really enjoyed these installments! Loved seeing your pictures of the cruise ship! Wonderful that they all have verandas. The reservation process seems very un-customer friendly. I can see why it was frustrating. I hope you eventually got over your jet lag. That's one of my worries for our trip in Sept. Looking forward to your time in Naples!
It was really nice that we automatically had a veranda, no matter what level we packed! It was so nice to wake up each morning and go out to check out our latest port.
The dining was the most frustrating thing about this cruise. I really didn't think it would be that difficult to get at least one meal at the specialty restaurants! I wonder if it would have been any different had we not forgotten to do it right when our window.
For some reason, this trip took a lot longer to get over the jet lag than our ABD trip. I think it was maybe because we arrived so early on our first day and had a loooooong day to keep ourselves awake. It did get a little better once we got on the ship though, so that was good. Hopefully it's not too bad for you to adjust on your trip!
Your room looks really nice! The dining situation sounds so frustrating! I'm glad that you were able to get into Chef's Table with Phil & Judi! And despite the rocky start, I'm glad it turned into a good meal! Ending the night chatting with other DIS-ers sounds like it was a lot of fun!
The rooms were really nice, and surprisingly roomy for a cruise stateroom. I know with other lines you are usually fitting more people in the rooms, so I'm sure that makes a difference. But it was a nice way to spend a week cruising Italy's coast.
I was glad that the Chef's Table meal ended up working out so well and we were able to join Phil & Judi. We would have enjoyed the meal a lot less without the pleasant dinner company and conversation.
I've never seen any photos of the Viking ships, so I had no idea what to expect, but it looks like everything was very elegant and relaxed. Your room looked pretty nice and geothermal flooring is the best thing ever.
Yikes, sorry about all the dining drama. It sounds like a complicates setup, there had to be an easier way to put two sets of couples at a 4 top together! Yeesh.
The daylight savings time not happening on the same day can get confusing! I was in the states when the U.S. did it, then had to go through it AGAIN when I got back to Germany a few weeks later. I didn't know what time it was!
I really didn't look into it much before we left for our trip, so it was mostly a surprise to me as well! There were so many comfy and homey corners to curl up and read a book, if that was your thing. It was really beautiful and elegant, but also very comfortable all around.
The dining process was NOT GREAT when you have a bunch of DISers who are used to the 180 day ADR drop for their Disney trips. lol Definitely very frustrating, but overall it ended up okay in the end.
Ugh, the DST change was a killer. We were already so messed up from the jet lag, then we had to turn around and lose yet another hour! Luckily, if it had to happen during our cruise, it happened the best possible night since we were able to sleep in a bit the next morning. That had to be awful for you and the kids having to do it twice so close together too! At least it was just the two of us and we could suck it up. Time changes are awful with little kids!!
I think Viking just guaranteed too many reservations for the cruise length. They guaranteed 1,2, or 3 reservations per specialty restaurant depending on the level of cabin you booked, and those that booked a higher level made their reservations first. This probably works out on a cruise longer than 7 days (of which Viking has many), but on a 7 day cruise there just aren't enough time slots to accommodate that many guaranteed reservations. It seems an easy problem to fix. Count up the number of reservations in a given restaurant on a 7 night cruise and that's the total number that you can possibly guarantee. Lower the guaranteed reservation perks accordingly.
The ship was gorgeous though. I really liked the Scandinavian minimalist esthetic. It had beautiful wood tones and clean lines. I also loved the black & white travel photos that were everywhere.
That's a great point about the cruise. I really didn't think about this being one of their shorter sailings, but that makes a lot of sense. It was incredibly frustrating to think we had booked a level that would give us a guaranteed reservation at each restaurant, but then it turned into such a headache both before and during the cruise. Viking definitely wasn't ready for such a big group of planners like us!
The ship was really beautiful. I loved that there were so many comfortable places to sit and relax.
Definitely makes sense - and would be more of an incentive to pick higher end accommodations ... we were in the 2nd cheapest and still guaranteed one.
I do still think they should be able to book tables other than just 2-tops ahead of time. We had four of us that were all fully on board with sitting together they should be able to book that ahead of time
I absolutely agree. There had to be a better way of doing it when you had people who WANTED to share tables. DH was about to explode that day when the agent kept telling him Kevin had to make the changes for dining since he was our TA, but when we emailed Kevin he said they wouldn't let him make any changes either.
And oh yeah - slobbering looking at the food photos. Again.
