M/S Nile Story

I took a seven night cruise on the Viking Aton. It was truly excellent. The ship was less than one year old and everything aboard was pristine. The crew really take good care of you. Since I have dietary requirements, each morning the Maitre D', Gabor, would come to me at breakfast to make sure I had appropriate foods for lunch and dinner. My server, Alex, would see me enter the restaurant and know what to bring me for breakfast. My tour guide, Yomna, was excellent and provided a wealth of information. She and the other tour guides were enthusiastic about their jobs and that made it a pleasure to have them show me the country. We boarded the ship in Luxor and sailed to Aswan before returning to Luxor. I highly recommend Viking River Cruises.

Booked 7 day cruise through Cyplon via Co op travel and flew direct to Luxor to join boat the Emilio Prestige. The boat was very Egyptian and immaculate clean and staff were wonderful. The food was very good and entertainment ok. Our tour guide Mish was amazing and because of the high temperatures he arranged early tours to all the places and we avoided the crowds and the intense heat. It was a great experience regarding the history we saw and the boat and staff but unfortunately there was a negative we did not expect. There are less sail days than moored days and when you are moored you cannot see out of your window as other boats are crammed in around you. All boats continue to tick over when docked and this creates an overwhelming stench of diesel and thick black smoke that covers the sunbeds on top deck of boat and inside the boat. You cannot open your room window without the diesel smell coming in. This did spoil the trip as we had nowhere to go when the boat was moored without breathing in diesel fumes. I asked the staff about this and they accepted it is a problem. It wasn’t our boat but other boats causing the issue. I’m glad we did experience the wonderful history of Egypt and fortunately we had an extra week in Hurghada by the beach and pool in a hotel.

To immerse ourselves in experiencing the Nile River, we hopped on board MS Medea from Luxor to Aswan. There's much of human activities and wildlife to savour on both sides of the Nile. The meals on board the boat were wonderful and the quality of the buffet spread was high. Most of all, we enjoyed the great service at the restaurant; The ever so attentive staff actually remembered each guest by name and preferences! During one dinner, we casually uttered that the sesame seed-coated Egyptian cracker was so delicious. They actually packed a box of it and hand it to us on our final day on the boat, saying with a broad smile, "Please enjoy!"