Planning a river cruise....any reccomendations?
 

Our family is planning a trip through Netherlands,Germany,Swizerland or Austria (exact location not decided yet) next year. We are thinking about taking a river cruise down the Rhine River, but are open to suggestions.

Can anyone reccommend a dependable river cruise line that would take us through all or some of these countries? We will be traveling with my parents (both 77 years old) so we thought a river cruise would make it easy on them. We would like to stop and visit towns and cities along the way.

thanks for your suggestions!

Rather than posting the same question twice, just click on your first question and put in something like TTT (To the top) which will bring your question to the top of the questions. You should eventually receive some responses.

You might want to do a Google search on something like "european river cruises" and get an idea of cruise providers. Then come back to this board with specific questions. You can do a whole lot of research with Google to narrow down choices.

Curious

Hi bd,

Try the Viking people

http://www.rivercruises.com/

PS,

One day I might do the Rhine-Mainz-Danube.

Check VANTAGE- I get a lot of info in the mail from them. Latest was on a Rhine Cruise (#1 over Thanksgiving and #2 over Christmas and New Year's) Maybe your family would enjoy the holidays on the Rhine with visits to many Kriskindlmarkts?

Grand Circle Travel has many river cruises that are very popular and am hoping to take one this fall, having taken many other trips with Grand Circle. If you call them at 800-321-2835 I am sure they can send you many free catalogs to give you an idea. Am sure you might find something to like. Happy planning. Halfpint

I have taken two Viking River Cruises(www.vikingrivercruises.com) and was pleased with the rooms, food, guides.

We took the MV MOZART cruise from Passau to Budapest and back in 1999. I can recommend the ship. The rooms were nice and the service was very good. It was an enjoyable trip. I cannot remember who owned the MV MOZART, but they did a good job.

Hi,
I'm also planning a river cruise next year and so far I gotten tips on several companies - some from this site. They are Grand Circle, Viking, Avalon, Uniworld and Tauck.
Good luck.

A couple of years ago we took a Rhone river cruiose with Peter Deilman Reederei. Their prospectus shows several Rhein - Main - Danube cruises. It is a well known and highly recommended German company. We were very pleased with all aspects of shipboard life and facilities. Their tours were excellent. The company being German, you can expect to have a large German contingent among its passengers. This was to our advantage, because the English speaking tours were never more that 15 peopple. All announcements, menus etc. are both in German and English.

As to tour segments: The pretty part of the Rhein is a stretch of about 40km from Koblenz to Bingen. Then, parts of the Main river ( from Bingen or Mainz to about Kitzingen) are nice, too.

The Main-Danube canal is a bit boring. The stretch from Passau (Germany) to Vienna (Austria) is very scenic.

The Rhein sections above Koblenz and south of Bingen to the Swiss border is quite industrial.