AmaWaterways Danube River Cruise: 7 Days Through Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic

Unlike most of our cruise stories, this one began with a flight, the trade off for trying a river cruise for the first time after 107 nights at sea the year before. We left England in the snow and arrived in Budapest to meet AMAMagna, one of only two double wide ships on the Danube. Stepping on board, the scale was immediately obvious. The ship felt huge, looked beautiful, and unlike an ocean ship docked out at an industrial port, we were moored metres from castles and ancient buildings at the edge of the city.

We were staying in a balcony stateroom, and the first impression was less cruise cabin, more boutique hotel room, plenty of space, a real bathroom, a proper balcony.

As the sun began to set, the ship's crew, Captain, Hotel Manager, Restaurant Manager, and Cruise Manager Luis, introduced themselves and their colleagues in the main lounge, and it felt intimate rather than corporate. As the engines started, we headed outside to watch Budapest's Parliament building, one of the most stunning cruise backdrops in the world, fade into the darkness as we departed.

Dinner that first night was in the main restaurant, Journeys, joined by Kevin and John, two Canadians we had met earlier that day. AMAMagna is a member of La Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, a prestigious gastronomic society, and the food matched the billing.

We woke to passing villages and lock walls close enough to touch, light snow drifting in as we approached Bratislava. In the next 48 hours we would visit two countries that, forty years earlier, had been one. Czechoslovakia's strictly enforced communist borders gave way after the fall of the Berlin Wall to what became known as the Velvet Divorce, a peaceful 1993 split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

After a quick lunch on board, we headed out for a guided walking tour of Bratislava, cold but fascinating, modern stores beside historic courtyards, five star hotels next to Soviet era statues. All excursions on this cruise are included in the price, a real difference from most ocean cruises.

Back on the ship, dinner was local cuisine, an expertly prepared goulash.

Waking up on a river cruise means pulling back the curtains to something new every morning, castles, villages, forests, vineyards drifting past the balcony window without a word said. Our route through the Wachau Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site, began at the small historic town of Dürnstein.

King Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned in Dürnstein more than 800 years ago, and the 65,000 pounds of silver England paid for his release nearly bankrupted the crown. These days the town is better known for local wine and its Rabbitshit chocolates.

From there we reached Melk Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded almost a thousand years ago, its library filled with handwritten books predating the printing press, though the library itself was under renovation during our visit. The Abbey church, an example of full Baroque extravagance, was worth the visit alone.

That evening, back on board and further down the Danube at Weißenkirchen, dinner was at The Chef's Table, the first specialty restaurant of the voyage, finished with a shared shot of Dürnstein liquor with our Canadian friends.

An early start for our third full day, with a quick stop in Linz before crossing into our fourth country. Linz is where Mozart composed a symphony in just four days, and also where a young Adolf Hitler spent his youth, buildings he designed later reclaimed by the city's university.

We continued through the Bavarian Forest into the Czech Republic, once a heavily fortified, forbidden border zone during the Iron Curtain era, arriving at Český Krumlov, another UNESCO World Heritage site. The castle here, overlooking the Vltava river, was genuinely spectacular, drawing more than 2 million visitors a year to a town of just 16,000 people. We walked the gothic and baroque streets, the wooden bridges and cobblestones, and stopped for ribs, stew, and dumplings with a pilsner before one last loop of the town and a coffee.

We met AMAMagna further along the river at Grein before arriving in Vienna for an overnight stay, our biggest city of the trip. After a quick lunch on board, our first day began with a horse drawn carriage ride, a Fiaker, along the Herrengasse, once Vienna's most prestigious street.

Walking the city with our guide, the scale of Habsburg influence became clear. Budapest, Bratislava, Český Krumlov, Linz, Dürnstein, all had been ruled from Vienna, an empire built more through marriage and political alliance than war, spanning 50 million people at its height.

We visited St. Stephen's Cathedral, the meeting point of the city for centuries, then wandered without an agenda into the falling snow. As darkness fell we reached the Votive Church for a light installation projected across its spires, then re-walked the same streets we had seen earlier by carriage, now snowy and quiet. It happened to be Thursday, the one night the Museum of Fine Arts stays open late, home to the world's largest collection of Pieter Bruegel paintings, work by Rembrandt and Raphael, and frescoes by a young Gustav Klimt on the grand staircase. A last local beer through steamed up glasses closed the day before the shuttle back to the ship.

Snow again the next morning as we returned to Vienna for the Habsburgs' summer palace, Schönbrunn, the Austrian answer to Versailles. A 1,441 room, 400 acre retreat, its trademark yellow exterior giving way to gold interiors and ceiling frescoes throughout.

Back on board that evening, the captain and crew invited us for a farewell drink, a chance to thank the people who had made the whole week feel effortless. Even five days in, the food was still excellent, the staff just as attentive as on day one, and the daily surprise of opening the curtains hadn't worn off.

Our final full day on board took us back to where the voyage began, Budapest, this time arriving in morning light rather than darkness, the Parliament building the undisputed star of the approach.

Our final excursion was billed as a 5 out of 5 difficulty hike on the Pest side of the river. In the 1800s, crossing between Buda and Pest meant waiting for a ferry in summer or a frozen river in winter, until Count István Széchenyi, who once missed his own father's funeral because the Danube was impassable, drove the building of the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, opened in 1849 and the reason the two cities eventually merged into one.

We crossed via the Elizabeth Bridge, named for Empress Sisi, toward the castle district, skipping the funicular built by Count Széchenyi's son in favour of the stairs, in keeping with the hike's billing. The views from the top, back across the Danube to Pest, were worth every step, followed by one more church visit before heading back down to the river.

Not far from the Parliament building stands the Shoes on the Danube memorial, marking the site where Hungarian fascists allied with the Nazis shot Jewish victims into the river during the Second World War, having first ordered them to remove their shoes. Candles, flowers, and pebbles left at the water's edge serve as an ongoing reminder.

We took the tram back to the ship as the sun set, AMAMagna in full Budapest mode, local flavours on the menu and music in the main lounge. Our final dinner on board was at the Al Fresco restaurant, a fitting close to a week where every meal, without exception, had been excellent.

Flight timings meant one more day in Budapest after leaving the ship, this time based in Pest rather than Buda. We visited the Hungarian National Museum, including a special exhibition on Attila the Hun, before wandering the city centre. Dinner was Japanese BBQ, followed later by McDonald's fries eaten in the street at 11pm, whether a sign we had gone fully local or simply that it was time to go home.

Looking down at the Danube from 15,000 feet on the flight back, the questions we had left with a week earlier, whether we would enjoy river cruising at all, whether AMAWaterways could rival Cunard, what this unfamiliar region would even be like, all had answers. We were sold.