A little about our ship: This river cruiser is on of literally hundreds on the river systems in Europe. This happens to be a Swiss Owned ship, the Ama Prima.
This ship holds around 150 people and a crew of about 50. It is extremely clean and well run. The food is excellent, up to the highest standards of any ocean cruise ship we have been on. The officers are of course English speaking as is the cabin and serving staff. Some of the sailors have little English skills but other than nods and good mornings we have little communication with them.
The captain is Dutch, very nice and is a sailor, as opposed to a socializer, having served on river tankers for over 20 years, joining this cruise line three years ago.
The cabins are nice enough, excellent actually, but I would prefer more clothes storage space and a little more counter top space so I could have my stuff at hand. I suppose I have too much stuff eh?
We arrived in Vienna at 5:00 am this morning and two tours took off by bus at 8:00 and 9:00. One went to Salzburg the other to Durnstein. Both are scheduled to join the ship in Melk at 7:00 tonight. Half of the passengers chose to stay on board and enjoy the scenery and have an on-board day of leisure. The two tours are 10 and 11 hours days, too much bus time for many. This is in an effort to catch up for the time lost when we were parked for two days because of lock issues.
Fellette, Moe and I decided to stay on and enjoy a day of sightseeing from the comfort of the ship. Fellette still has a cough and Moe was concerned about the length of the tour and did not know how much walking was involved. I was happy to do either but stayed onboard with them. It was delightful day on a half empty ship and the passing scenery was spectacular.
There are locks along the river, every so often. They have dammed the river for power generation and as a result beside every dam there has to be a lock, plain and simple. By my calculations we have 69 locks to go through on this trip. At this writing we will have been through six. Each lock takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.
Life aboard is very laid back, smart casual for dinner and there is a very liberal interpretation of the word. The passengers are broken down roughly as follows. 40% Canadian, 45% American and the rest Brits etc. All are English speaking, including a few French Canadians. All are also passed middle age, or more!
At this writing, before we moor in Melk, I am not sure if we are back on course regarding our original schedule or not. Time will tell.
Great relaxing day!
Our day in Vienna was two days ago, by coach, but on passing through by boat we stopped for
1/2 hour for a technical stop.
The other side of 'Vienna'.
There we are moored for a few minutes. We should have had a full day in this wonderful city.
A bit rainy out so we stayed inside.
Nice scenery for sure.
Imagine living in this little settlement. It must be full of old people because what is there for a youth?
Making the best of a rainy sail day.
Fellette on deck in Austria going trough a lock.
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