As you get to a certain age..... your thoughts turn to cruises. At least mine have - and based on the company I kept on the VIking cruise last week, I am not alone! My husband and I had a great time on the Viking cruise from Budapest to Regensburg up the Danube River on one of the longboats with about 190 people plus crew. We booked the trip about 10 months ago after my daughter's wedding.
We flew from Dulles to Budapest through Vienna on Austrian Air. I booked our flights myself because I wasn't sure when I was going to feel comfortable leaving the fall market behind. My husband and I have had lots of international travel so I was comfortable with navigating the trip ourselves. We checked into our hotel (a Marriott) and proceeded to enjoy Budapest. We went to the New York Cafe - reputed to be the prettiest cafe in the world. While I was there I sent this picture to Endre Barath, Jr.! 
The next day we boarded our ship in time for lunch. We didn't do the transfer that Viking offered or the pre-trip excursion in Budapest. Our time in Budapest was great - and the city was easy to navigate. The only hiccup was on our way to the boat. We found the one Uber driver in Budapest who didn't speak English and didn't know how to get to the ship. She wanted to drop us with out luggage a half mile from the ship's location. A quick detour to the Hotel Intercontinental revealed a Viking tour desk in the lobby and directions to the ship's location. That one experience made me question my determination to do it all on my own. Having Viking take care of lots of the details clearly has its value!
We found the ship after that. The tour director was dockside greeting everyone - and there were crew members to unload our luggage and take it to our cabin. Big sigh of relaxation.
The Viking longships do not have spas, casinos or Las Vegas styled shows in the evening. There is one seating for dinner and you are not assigned to a table. The first few nights are a little bit like junior high school if you are traveling by yourself or as a couple. You walk into the dining room and look for empty places at a table for six or eight and evaluate the people already there - then you ask if the seats are being saved and if the answer is no, then you pull up a chair, introduce yourselves and make new friends.
And yes- the food was delicious! There were always some standards that you could have like a hamburger, hot dog or salad for lunch in addition to regional treats that changed daily. Dinner was similar - always the standards of a Caesar salad, roast chicken, steak and salmon plus ice cream, a pie of some kind and a cheese plate. The tasting menu changed nightly to reflect the location of the ship and then there were other choices that you could order a la carte. One night I was tired and just ordered the salad and a cheese plate while the woman next to me ordered the Arctic char AND the eggplant roulade! 2 main courses and no one blinked. Some times we ordered an extra dessert for the table with 6 spoons! Again, the staff just smiled and delivered. 
In the evenings after dinner, there was some kind of entertainment upstairs in the lounge - One night it was trivia. Another night it was name that tune from old tv shows. That was HARD! The last night brought 3 opera singers who performed for us.
As I said, we started in Budapest on Sunday and then sailed mid afternoon on Monday to Vienna. We arrived in Vienna in the morning and had two full days there. We did the walking/bus tour of Vienna the first morning and then were on our own. Since I had been to Vienna for meetings in my previous Government life, there were lots of places that I wanted to show my husband. In addition, there was a huge Rembrandt show at the Kunsthistoriches that was a once in a lifetime opportunity. We also got tickets on our own to the Spanish Riding School to see the horses exercised the second morning.
Thursday morning was spent in Krems, a small town on the Danube with an excursion to the Gottweig monastery. The afternoon was on the Danube, admiring the Wachau Valley. We sailed past the Melk monastery and the castle in Durnstein where Richard the Lion Hearted was held prisoner! (That was very cool!)
Friday was in the town of Passau - another charming German town. We had a coffee and pastry near the cathedral and then listened to an organ concert there.
Saturday found us in Regensburg. Every stop included a bus and walking tour of the town in which we were docked. These tours left enough time for a snack or some shopping (although with the global economy we have, there was very little need to do any shopping!) The only time we chose to do an optional excursion was in Regensburg because we had the chance to go to Nurnberg, a lovely medieval town and the site of Hitler's big rallies in the 1930s and the location of the war crimes trials after the war. That was definitely worth the extra cost!
BOTTOM LINE
I loved the Viking cruise up the Danube and I already have my eye on the Rhine cruise next December that hits the Christmas markets in places like Cologne and Strasburg. If you have thought about a Viking cruise - stop thinking and just sign up! Apparently there is a Viking referral program s0 please give them my name!! LOL
The crew and staff on our cruise was incredible. The wait staff in the dining room knew our names and were always helpful and accommodating with lots of wine, extra desserts and general graciousness. The crew were great - and the tour director, Taylor, was always helpful and thoughtful.
We brought our own wheel chair because my husband is not good walking long distances - although he was fine on the ship (which has an elevator between floors.) Places like Budapest and Vienna were easy since the places that we wanted to visit were well paved and pretty level. (I did learn all over again that you need to cross tram tracks perpendicularly - I got the wheel chair stuck in a track with the tram in sight!) Passau was manageable even though hilly because a recent flood meant that they had filled in all the spaces between the cobblestones with fresh sand. Krems was pretty good because we took a bus straight to the monastery. The biggest challenge was the old town in Nuremburg which has VERY steep paths but even that was manageable with the help of other very kind people on our tour.
We chose a cabin with a veranda that was wide enough for two small chairs. It was fun to sit there and watch the countryside pass by. There are smaller cabins with a full window and a juliet balcony and then cabins on the lower deck with a small window high on the wall. These are the least expensive. There are suites at the stern of the ship with big verandas and smaller suites with a separate sitting area but I didn't feel that I was missing out by not having the extra space. During the day you are either off the ship or in the lounge upstairs or on the sun deck on top of the ship - or eating - and boy, did we eat!
I felt comfortable skipping the pre-board and post board excursions - 2 or 3 days in another city. We arrived a day early to Budapest so we weren't stressed about possible flight delays and we went to Munich on our own after the cruise, but I did pay extra for economy plus on Austrian Air on the way over and Saga premium on Iceland Air on the return trip so that we were not exhausted at the end of the flight. I think that was money well spent for us and made the whole trip feel celebratory rather than a hard slog.
I feel like the Viking cruise up the Danube was exactly what I expected from watching ads and videos. If you have a Viking cruise on your bucket list, don't wait. It lived up to my expectations and I am already planning my next trip next year! If you want to do the Christmas market trip on the Rhine, lets talk!
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