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North to Black Sea River Cruise

6th April 2009, Travel

In June 2009, I travelled on the MS Johann Strauss from Amsterdam to the Black Sea transiting the Marne, Rhine, Main and Danube rivers together with the Main-Rhine-Danube Canal through nine mainly eastern European countries, a journey of some 3700 kilometres. Leaving Amsterdam late afternoon and reaching the Rhine overnight, I arrived at Cologne for an afternoon's visit to the city centre and magnificent cathedral.

The next day brought visits to

Koblenz and Rudesheim as well as viewing castles down the Rhine valley.The Rhine was very busy with much commercial traffic of many nationalities. Having visited Mannheim we moved into the River Main in the afternoon of the fourth day. Later that day we went through the first of 70 locks we transited. half up and half down. The next two days were a mixture of locks and short visits to various German towns passing many villages and much agriculture including many vineyards.

On day 7 we entered the Main-Rhine-Danube Canal (built in 1992), visiting Bamburg Old Town shortly after. The day after took us to Nuremberg where a city tour showed us among other sights the buildings where the famous trials were held. That afternoon we reached the summit of the Canal, at 1331 feet, the highest canal in Europe. Thereafter it was all downhill! The next two days took us further down the canal entering the Danube and then Austria late on day 10.Visits to Melk Abbey and Vienna followed and early on day 13 we briefly went through Slovakia including the Gabcikovo Lock. Later that day we passed into Hungary arriving in the magnificent city of Budapest after lunch.

We were in Budapest for a futher two days, having an impressive city tour on the first day.Made up of two cities Buda and Pest on either side of the Danube, the city is full of great buildings and bridges. Next day we moved to Kalacsa where the visit included the cathedral and an Hungarian Horse Show on a Puszta.

After lunch we called at Mohacs in Hungary for the usual tour.The next day we left the EU briefly (although the customs clearance took two hours) and entered Serbia and briefly Croatia. Early on day 18 we glided into Belgrade, capital of Serbia. On a hot day with blue sky we had a very good city tour seeing, amongst many buildings, sites of the NATO 1999 bombings, a little sobering.

The following day brought us to Serbia on one bank and Romania on the other.We entered the famous Kazan Gorges which are a series of narrow passages through which the Danube flows

with magnificent scenery on either side with occasional castles and churches. The area is also known as the Iron Gates and there are two sets of huge locks with over 80 foot drops, the first set has a hydro electric power station which provides much of Serbia and Romania's power. Day 20 brought us to Bulgaria and the small port of Svistov to drop a tour off, we then moved on to Rousse, also in Bulgaria.

The next day we were fully in Romania and made stops at small towns for some town tours, ending up at at Cernavoda from where we travelled to Constanta on the Black Sea. Constanta is a mix of old city withe usual cathedral, mosque and museum as well as a beach type area full of holiday makers and tourists. It was very hot and very busy but I've now been on the Black Sea!

Life on board was very comfortable with only 138 passengers with very friendly staff who were very hard working. The advantage of a river cruise over the sea cruises I'm used to is that there is always something to look at. There is a tremendous variety of topography and different scenery for all of the journey. The last day took us on a small boat tour of the Danube Delta to see some wildlife; it was very restful with many birds including the Heron and Egret shown. In the afternoon, cruising towarsd our final port, we passed through the waters of Ukraine and Moldova. The final day was a drive to the airport in a thunderstorm, it was time to go home. The drive took us through Bucharest which was still showing evidence of its

Ceausescu days. The 23 day voyage was one of the best I have been on with great fellow passengers, good food and good staff.