coconut mango cake
Some of the food on our European river cruise on Viking Skirnir was quite good, but some not so much. Partly that’s the food, but sometimes it’s a matter of opinion. For example, the veggie burgers that were on the daily lunch menu – we thought they were great, but a friend we were traveling with thought they were awful. The sweet potato fries that came with the veggie burger were good too, but we didn’t like their version of coleslaw.
does not look like what we expect from bread pudding
Names of some dishes on the menu were in German or other languages and what you get is not always what you expect from the menu description. Sometimes the unexpected things were quite tasty and other times just odd which is of course a matter of opinion. People who actually knew what to expect would probably be happy with it. Sometimes even things with easy names did not look like the dish we associate with the name.
pumpkin soup
They did very well on soups. Most of their soups were very good. Some of the other foods could have been better, but others we liked quite a lot. It’s a good thing their every night chicken dinner was one of the good ones because there were several nights that everything else on the menu was either beef or fish, neither of which I wanted, though other people like them.
banana pancakes with extra syrup
Breakfast was always the same menu every day. First came pastries by the coffee machines at 6:00am, Then a small continental buffet at Aquavit Terrace which has seating outside, in the atrium where the buffet is, and in the lounge. Last to open was the main breakfast in the dining room. It had a bigger buffet than upstairs that includes an omelette/made to order eggs station, and a menu for ordering made-to-order options like pancakes, French toast, oatmeal, or eggs benedict. Their pastries were good and some of the made-to-order stuff like the banana pancakes were delicious, but most of the buffet part was somewhat lacking in quality as well as quantity of options.
grilled sandwich
Lunch time varied depending on day’s schedule, but was usually 12 or 12:30. One day at 11:30. The every day menu had hot dogs, hamburgers, veggie burger, salad, and chocolate mousse. There were also always some additional items served for only one day that would include soup, sandwiches, other desserts, and sometimes pasta or other things. Occasionally they had a lunch option like lamb or steak that came out looking more like a dinner than a lunch. Some of the choices were very good, others could have been better.
spinach ravioli
Dinner was served at 7:pm, which just about everyone thought was too late. It was mainly a ship full of old people and a lot of old people eat dinner early. Plus it generally took an hour and a half to get 3 courses done so it was usually between 8:30 and 9pm by the time dinner finished. With such a time gap between lunch and dinner people tended to spend afternoons snacking on the cookies that were left out by the coffee machines for most of the day. In the morning there were breakfast pastries there instead of cookies. They had really good coffee machines that made a variety of fancy coffees as well as hot chocolate. The machines didn’t make tea, but there was hot water and several different options of tea bags available.
chicken dinner
Like the lunch there was an everyday menu at dinner. This one had steak, chicken, and salmon. There was also a one night only menu that would have different dishes each night. In addition to that there would be one each of starter, main, and dessert of a regional dish to wherever the ship happened to be that night. Mostly German dishes since the majority of the ports were in Germany. Most of these items had unpronounceable foreign names. Some of the one night only dishes did as well. Overall about 4 starters, 6 mains, and 6 desserts to choose from, though 2 of the dessert selections would be the nightly options of ice cream or cheese plate. The other every night dessert was crème brûlée.
afternoon tea
One day there was afternoon tea served in the lounge. Little tea trays with sandwiches and goodies accompanied by scones and tea. Similar to what some of the ocean ships have.
potato pancakes with an unpronounceable foreign name
One night there was a special German dinner where the male door greeters wore lederhosen and the females wore dirndl dresses. The waitstaff had shirts that matched the red checkered tablecloths and napkins that adorned the tables that night only.
table set for the German dinner
They had a selection of breads on the table and the option of either having a sampling plate of all sorts of things served to you or going to a buffet to select your own options of those items and more. There was also a desert selection with petty-four size cake bites of 5 different types of cake as well as an ice cream sundae station.
little cake bites
Since a good part of the cruise was through Germany everyone expected black forest cake to show up on the menu, but it never did. The closest thing was black forest cake ice cream sundae.
Black Forest ice cream
On Thanksgiving they served turkey with all the trimmings even though that’s not a holiday in Europe. A majority of the passengers were from the USA though so that’s probably why they had it.
breakfast buffet
Overall the food was pretty good, though not quite the high degree of excellence expected from a premium cruise line like Viking.
chocolate mousse
Cruise Stories 