Robert Torte

This was my first river cruise, and I had no idea what to expect. We spent a few days in Vienna first, before boarding our beautiful ship the MS Ravel. My "Danube" picture gallery has a bunch of pictures.

The thing that always gets me is how small the rooms feel in regards to the published sq footage. 200 sq ft feels much larger on an ocean ship. Having said that, I enjoy river cruising quite a bit.

The best part of the experience is the excursions. They are included..so there's no paying extra to have champagne with a Princess, or visit a winery (with wine tasting), or any of the other city tours, etc.

Let me tell you about the Princess and Artstetten in Austria. We had toured the castle and were supposed to meet Princess Anita von Hohenberg for champagne. Her great great grandfather was Archduke Franz Ferdinand. My travel companion is a huge germophobe. As it happens, Princess Anita is very warm and friendly. So she comes in, stands right next to him, starts talking, turns to him and as she's saying something touches his arm. J immediately says "she touched me!" and everyone just kind of looked at him like he was nuts. I was a few feet away, and sank back further into the wood panelled walls and pretended like I didn't know him. So thus is our first encounter with royalty. Hopefully it goes a bit smoother next time!

In regards to the attached photo, that was taken from our room and gives you an idea of what docking these locations is like. Now, I should point out that you may be docked next to another ship, or facing the land. But if you're lucky, you'll end up with a view like that right out of your room.

The Danube itself is absolutely gorgeous. The Budapest end has these big, classical European cities like Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna. As you go into the upper regions, there you get into the Alps and have options to go to places like Salzburg. Which we did. It's a very "The Sound of Music" kind of place, but we did enjoy it overall. The scenery on the drive there was amazing.