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Dec. 13-23, 2009All About the Ship...
Once the decision was made that a Christmas time River Cruise was my idea of the next perfect vacation, the next step was to decide what tour and Ship to take. After many months of research I decided on AMA Waterways, the Christmas Time Cruise; cruising the Danube River which entailed 7 nights cruising and visiting the Fascinating Christmas Markets between Budapest and Nuremberg and then spending 2 nights in Prague.
I was very excited about this ship, for many reasons. One being it was brand new in 2009. They had a stellar reputation and all the luxuries we were looking for. Competitively priced we booked our cruise and decided to upgrade to mid-ship and the rooms with the French Balconies. You do pay more for this but it was well worth it. The rooms on the bottom of the ship were no different, except for the windows/views. They have large port hole type windows and you are at sea-level, so you do not see much in passing. The French Balcony awards you with floor to ceiling views. The doors do slide open, however they do not have"balconies" where you can sit outside, but they do have seating right by the doors where you can sit with a warm cappuccino or a relaxing glass of wine and enjoy the views. You also have the option to view all the gorgeous scenery in the common areas as well as on the Sun Deck, which I am sure is phenomenal at the right time of the year. A little too cold in December for that! :)
As I mentioned, the ship The Amalyra was beautiful, the rooms were large approx 178 sq ft. and the common areas were elegant, but not over done. Inside your exquisitely decorated stateroom, we found all the amenities of a fine hotel with white-on-white plush bedding, a cozy sitting area, Infotainment System, hair dryer, safe, terry bathrobes, individually controlled air-conditioning and ample closet space. Another feature I like was each ship has plenty of bicycles on board which can be used by passengers, free of charge, to explore the small towns. Most regions offer well-maintained bicycle paths along the river. Unfortunately being December we did not get to use them, but on my next River Cruise I will take advantage of that. Each ship has an elevator, which very few river cruise ships feature.
The service on the ship was great, the food was fantastic (especially the soups, a different homemade local soup every lunch and dinner) and each night they served (free of charge) a different wine from each region we were cruising to. The entertainment was also very good and I liked that at each port we had local entertainers come on board: from Gypsy's in Budapest, Lectures on German Christmas Traditions and a Bavarian Oberpfalz Duo Classical music by La Strada (They were fantastic by the way). We got to decorate 4 Christmas trees, Santa came on Board and gave out presents, we followed some of the German traditions and left our shoes out over night and by morning they were filled with sweets and treats. Really, they did a great job!
When we reached the Continental Divide, the crew prepare some blue "Champagne" know as the Blue Danube Drink and then proceeded to make the crossing a big event. (See photos on next page).
The scenery was so beautiful, but you do not have non stop views, sometimes it was just the river and the snow, not much to see, but other times, we saw Roman ruins, small storybook villages, castles, mountains, we even saw Reindeer! I can not say enough about the cruise and being VERY DIFFERENT from Ocean Cruising (which was what I liked) I never found myself bored.
See the following pages below with more photos, video from Vienna and reviews of the numerous Countries visited.
