Danube river cruise
 

looking into taking a river cruise down the danube river. does anyone have any suggestions on what time of year is the best time to go, what cruise lines to use, etc.. thank you for your help.

Peter Deilmann has a great reputation with my colleagues.
Early autumn is when I'm traveling.

I second Peter Deilmann. We had a lovely experience with them. (Tho I believe they are a little more expensive than other river cruises.) We did a Danube cruise in Sept. that was almost perfect weather... except for some rain. It was a year when there were no heatwaves, etc. in that month. -:)

DH and I cruised on the Avalon Tranquility last July from Budapest to Amsterdam for 16 days. This was an absolutely fantastic vacation. We chose Avalon because we had traveled with Globus on several tours in the past and Avalon is owned by Globus. The passenger mix consisted of Americans,Aussies,Brits and Canadians.The cabins are 172 sq ft with lovely French Balconies.The city tours are included as is wine with dinner.I would cruise again with Avalon in a heartbeat.
Deilman is an excellent German company that caters mostly to the German market.I understand that German is the main language spoken on the ships and that the English speaking passengers have their own CD and dining areas.All of the announcements are made in German and English.The food is supposed to be excellent but the cost of wine and beer is separate as are tours.The dress is much more formal on Deilman than it is on the ships who cater mostly to the American market.Dress is very casual on those ships with no formal or semiformal evenings at all.
There are several other companies that cruise on the Danube that you might be interested in. They are Avalon,Amadeus,Vantage,Viking and Uniworld.For more info you can go to the cruisecritic web site and go the the rivercruise forums. You will find many reviews of the many rivercruise companies on there so that you can make an informed decision.

We went on a Danube cruise with Viking in late May/early June from Nurenurg to Budapest and it poured the whole trip. The sun finally came out in Budapest. Viking does a good job and has nice cabins, good food and guides.

My Danube Christmas Markets cruise with Grand Circle Tours was as good as it gets.

Were there any language barriers. I guess I am asking were the guides,crew, tours, etc in English on the Peter Deilmann cruise. This will be our first river cruise and I want it to be just as wonderful as it sounds..

I can't speak for other cruise lines, but on the GCT tour everything was in English, including the visits with local guides. Our ship's captain spoke 5 languages.

The Deilmann staff is multilingual. Our "person" was fluent in English, French and German. (Making me feel like the language slug I am.) All public announcements etc. were in English as well as German. Waiters were from the former Eastern bloc but were also well versed in English.

English was used on our Viking cruise as they divide their ships by languages spoken.