This year for Thanksgiving we wanted to visit Sue’s son and family in the south of France, and Grandpa Charlie’s first time to meet 7 month old Eva.  So what wonderful vacation can we add to this visit to Europe?  We decided on a river boat cruise on the Danube. 

We started out at the Boscolo hotel in Prague. What a great city! What a great hotel! We loved the size, character, and feel of this city. Virtually every street was cobblestone. It was the perfect size for walking and we never took a cab or any other transportation. The Christmas markets were just getting started, the weather was cool, but comfortable. Goulash, dumplings, sausage and beer were plentiful. The shopping was great.

We then took a relaxing train ride to Budapest to meet up with our riverboat, the Ama Prima.. We spent two days in Budapest, shopping, doing a local tour bus of the region, and getting to explore this great city before boarding our riverboat.

Once onboard, we were happy to be able to unpack, relax, and get situated for our one week cruise. If you are going to do a riverboat cruise, it makes a lot of sense to arrive a day or two early so you can explore the city and get acclimated to the time change. It also assures that any travel snafu's that come up won't cause any issues. Trying to arrive on the same day a cruise is departing can sometimes be stressful if there are any delays.

We had our welcome dinner which started off with a champagne cocktail party that everyone enjoyed. We then made our way to Bratislava. Each day we were offered an included city tour, so we could get off the boat and get some local background from the tour guides. They provided us with wireless vox headsets that allowed everyone to clearly hear exactly what the guide was explaining. They had three different paced groups depending on how quickly you wanted to tour. Bratislava offered some more Christmas market shops and good local shopping.

On to Vienna! We did the city tour making sure we stopped for a Latte at the Mozart Cafe. That evening we attended an optional concert performance of Mozart songs performed by ten musicians along with two opera singers. A very nice event!

The next day we made our way to Durnstein and sat up top on the deck as we saw the countryside go by in the middle of wine country. Once we arrived, we once again did the walking tour, followed by a wine tasting of a local wine producer. I remember seeing the year on the front of one of the houses - 1437!! Durnstein is also known for its wonderful Apricots, and we bought some delicious apricot jams and liquors. Later, we made our way to Melk, Austria to go on the Benedictine Abbey tour. It is one of the most impressive structures still being used as a working school. I've seen my share of churches, but this was an amazingly beautiful structure built between 1702 and 1736.

The next day we made our way to Linz, and took the optional excursion to Salzburg, where the Sound of Music was filmed. Our bus tour took us through the mountainous countryside dotted with beautiful chalet homes along the way. Salzburg itself was quite charming decorated for the coming holiday season. We were given a tour of many of the spots they filmed the movie. On the way back to the boat we met up in Passau, as the boat continued on from Linz. Our next stop would be Regensburg. I made the decision to go on the Audi factory tour in Ingolstadt. Sue did the walking tour. We both enjoyed our day even though we signed up for different tours.

The last stop on our cruise was Nuremberg. We decided to do the World War II tour and they bused us around to several important WW II sites, including the courthouse that held the Nuremberg trials. Interesting tour. We finished up checking out the Christmas Market there.

Our cruise ended here, although many of our fellow passengers went on an extension to Prague while we made our way to our family Thanksgiving in France.

Ama Waterways did a very nice job of making our trip a special experience. The crew was especially friendly and attentive, the food was excellent, and we had several nights of wonderful local entertainers from classical violinists to vocalists, everyone agreed we were thoroughly entertained. We met several couples and exchanged e-mails. This is our second riverboat experience and I can only hope we are lucky enough to experience another. What a great trip!

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