This was our 21st river cruise since 2012; we’ve previously cruised with Viking 15 times, three with Scenic, once with Riviera and once on a narrow boat along England’s canals and rivers when Covid prevented us travelling abroad. We’ve cruised the Douro (aka The River of Gold) once with Viking in 2014 and once with Scenic in 2024.
Viking offer two cruises of the Douro: actually it’s only one featuring a boat. Douro’s Valleys & Vineyards starts and ends in Porto, Portugal’s River Of Gold is the same river cruise preceded with two nights in a Lisbon hotel. In 2025 Viking introduced Iberian Odyssey in which Portugal's River of Gold is preceded by an ocean cruise from Barcelona to Lisbon.
I’d rather avoid the Lisbon pre-extension as two nights doesn’t offer enough time to see Lisbon and a day is spent coaching from Lisbon to Porto.
We’d already taken two river cruises this year, but Viking offered us such a huge discount that, after a lot of dithering, we booked on the last day of the offer and got the last cabin.
Day 1 – Monday 17 November 2025
As we are not early morning people we got Viking to book us a later flight than the one they would have which would also see us trying to get to the airport through the peak of Monday’s rush hour traffic. So we boarded our 11:55 flight scheduled to land at 14:50. When everyone had boarded and were strapped in their seats, the pilot announced that Lisbon wasn’t allowing us to depart for another 1 hour 20 minutes because of storms over Lisbon, so we moved off stand and parked awaiting take-off approval. Eventually we were on our way and as we came into land at Lisbon my attention was captured by the colour of the huge Portuguese flag flying below.
By the time we’d collected our luggage, waited for everyone, got to the coach and taken the long journey to the hotel and checked-in it was around 17:00 and there was a welcome talk at 18:00.
The Corinthia Lisbon Hotel has 5 stars, 5 dining places, large well equipped bed rooms and a weird lift system. It is unfortunately a long way out from the city centre sights. To use the lift to your floor, your room key has to be placed by the reader under a lift control panel. Your floor number is then shown on the panel and the screen for you to select upon which it indicates which of the four lifts should be taken. There are no buttons inside the lift car.
Only floor 0 (Reception), Floor 1 (Meeting Rooms), and Floor 2 (Spa) didn’t need a room key but could be selected from the screen which then identified the lift to take. So after a brief freshen–up time in our room, we went down to Floor 1 for our Welcome Meeting, at which we were given a most welcome large glass of wine.
The Cruise Director, Lidia Leal, who would accompany us throughout our time in Lisbon and aboard the boat, gave the presentation. It took an hour but I can’t remember anything of note.
At 19:00 we didn’t feel like finding a neighbourhood restaurant and ate in the hotels ERVA Restaurant (https://www.erva-restaurante.pt/) and jolly good it was.
We each had a Tenderloin steak, potato wedges and side salad. We also shared bread, butter, olives and olive oil. From the extensive wine list we chose a Portuguese red Quinta Da Devesa 2021 which is a blend of Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo), Touriga Nacional and Tinta Barocca. The wine was gorgeous.
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