Daisi

Welcome to Cruise Critic, and congratulations on booking your first cruise. I suggest you read the "stickies" at the top of the main page to familiarise yourself with river cruises, as there is a lot of differences with ocean cruises. As to your questions: 1) You can board at almost any time, but it's nicer for the crew to wait until at least 10:30, in order to allow the departing passengers to clear out. Your cabin will not be ready, but they will take your suitcases and store them for you, and you can wander around town until you are ready to board. Our first cruise had a tour at 1:00, so we arrived at the boat at around 12:00. We were invited to have a light lunch in the lounge and a drink while we waited for the tour. They were very warm & welcoming, even though we were early. They had our luggage in our room by the time we got back from our tour. 2) Included excursions are usually also available on the MyAvalon site to book, as well as the optional ones. You don't have to book ahead, but it will give them a rough idea as to how many to prepare for. During the free Happy Hour, they will have a port talk for the next day, and you can let the CD know then which excursion you would like. I would suggest however, if you are looking at the cycling excursions, to pre-book them on the MyAvalon site, as they bring in bikes for the passengers to use, and it will ensure that enough are there for you. 3) Disembarking can take place at anytime once you dock. If you have an early flight out, speak with your CD a couple of days ahead, and they can help you out to know what time. If you are doing the post stay with Avalon, they will have it all organised. We took a "milk-run train back along the river when we disembarked, and just had to let our CD know the night before (they will go over this in the final port talk so you have lots of time), and she had a taxi waiting for us for when out train left in the morning. I've only sailed on Avalon, but they will spoil you by doing whatever they can to make your trip a fantastic experience.

@Croooser, docking positions are set by the harbour master, so sometimes up until 24 hrs ahead, they don't know where they will dock. I recognise Intercontinental as one of the hotels that Avalon uses for their extensions, but not sure where the Crowne Plaza is. Your hotel front desk will easily arrange a taxi for you no matter where you are.

There are several more cruise lines than the two you mention, and some have more inclusions than others. I would suggest talking to a TA who has river cruise experience (or someone in their office who does, if the one you use doesn't), and they could sit down with you and go through what lines would suit both you and your budget. River cruising sounds expensive, but it's your hotel, food (3 meals a day), usually wine or beer with lunch & dinner, and at least 1 tour of the area included. Yes, you could do it yourself probably a bit less, but then you have to do all the work. Read the stickies on the top of the main page, and they will give you a better idea as to what is involved in cruising. It's a great holiday, if you know what to expect.

You can usually drop your bags off anytime after 10:00. It's really only curtesy, as they will be busy before then clearing out the previous passengers, so you wouldn't want your bags mixed up with theirs. 🙂 When we took our Rhine cruise, we had a tour that afternoon at 1:00, so were at the ship at 12:00. We didn't know what would be required, so figured better be early to make sure. They checked us in, and invited us to have lunch & a drink in the lounge. They kept our bags at the front until the room was ready (we were already on tour then, so they were in the cabin when we got back). As for trains, we pre-booked ours direct through the site : https://www.bahn.de/ You can also check out a site called The man in seat 61, he gives examples of train routes, and it is full of great information. We went 1st class (it's not that expensive, but you can see prices when you go to the site). When we did the train in Amsterdam, it was just regular class, which was fine as well. Trains are great, we have already started planning for a 6 week trip to Germany by train....once all our river & coach tours are done. 🙂 So many plans...to little time......

Welcome to River Cruising. As a new adventure, I would suggest reading the "stickies" pinned at the top of the first page, there is lots of information there for new cruisers, and the more you know, the better prepared you are. If you have ever done ocean cruises, river cruising is a lot different. As for flights to/from Deggendorf, you may wish to look at Munich for your main airport. You will probably find better connections there. Prague has one if you are ending your cruise (or starting) there, and if you book air with Avalon, they will include the transfer to the airport. Trains are really easy to use and on time. As for booking air with Avalon, we have our TA mention our interest when booking, so they have it on file. When it comes time to book our air, our TA will compare rates and let me know the best ones...because Avalon is connected with Globus, they usually have really good prices (and the transfer, which can be nice after a long flight). We are fussy as to whom we fly with, and Avalon lets us choose our airline, route (which airports we do or do not want to transfer through) and flights at no extra charge. Once they are ticketed, I can go online to the airline's site and upgrade and book our seats myself. We will be doing the Budapest to Prague in Sept, so unfortunately, I can't offer much about the river yet, but we did the Rhine a few years back and loved it so much, we were planning this one on the flight home. We have a couple more planned as well. Avalon is one of those lines that are comfortable - nice decor, not fussy, good food, wine & beer included with lunch & dinner, as well as free cocktail hour daily. They treat you special, but like family, and go above board to make sure you have the trip of a lifetime.

Enjoy your evening @notamermaid. Our snow is fading fast, it's been raining since last evening. Our creek is open, the ducks are back, and our poor little red squirrel that lives in our tree is having to move out as all his stashed pine cones are wet. We've been having lots of fun watching him going back and forth with pine cones longer than he is cross ways in his mouth taking them from the tree to the wood pile that is covered under a tarp. I guess between him and our Pileated Woodpeckers, the tree has to many holes in it and no longer keeps food dry. Oh well, we are babysitting my Sister's cat while she is off on a cruise (Panama Canal), so it's helping to keep her entertained. Happy New Year to all, may 2023 bring new adventures to all, no matter how you travel.

Hoping to finally get our Avalon Budapest -Prague cruise in....it's been a while since we booked, so I'll have to go back and make sure everything I picked out to visit is still open. 🙂 Happy New Year all, here's to safe, happy adventures!

You can search SNFC-Connect, very easy and looks like lots of trains (I just tried Arles to Aix-en-Province). Looks like ti will be a 2 hr trip. Lucky you actually, you will get to see some sights you wouldn't have probably if your embarkment hadn't been changed. 🙂

Avalon will be offering two cruises on the Douro for the first time this year. One Porto - Porto (8 days), and another that adds in 3 days in Lisbon. Both include a trip to Salamanca. The ship is not "online" yet, but looks like they are having it built to include the beds facing the windows like the other European ships, but it will be quite a bit smaller.

Just a suggestion to make things easier, is it possible to add your own post cruise visit, and take a train from Basel or Amsterdam to whatever town you wist to spend overnight at? We took a train from Basel to Amsterdam, we stayed right along the river until we hit Cologne, passing through all the towns we had stopped at. Trains are an easy way to travel around. This way you could probably spend as long as you wish visiting.

Wow @notamermaid, I hope things get sorted soon. Seems like things like that always happen over holidays. We were talking the other night about past storms at Christmas time, and both of us decided that the best one was when we woke up with no power due to an ice storm. My B-i-L had just built a house in a new neighbourhood over the summer so the kids had spent all summer playing together. They were also smart enough to decide to use a wood stove as their main heat source, so we drove up to their place with our "breakfast" only to find they were hosting several neighbours and kids. It was fantastic, as everyone brought the gifts for the kids to open (they were all about the same age around 6-9 yrs old), and we got to play parents and set up all the toys while the parents got a break to enjoy Christmas.. My poor sister was like you @Host Jazzbeau, she had a couple hours notice that she was hosting Christmas dinner as she was the only one in the family who did have power. Hope everyone is safe, and enjoying their day.

We are still having high winds, blowing snow and our temps dropped quite a bit. Yes, it's a typical Canadian winter. Plows have been pulled from the main roads (side roads are usually "take a chance") so hopefully emergency vehicles can get through. Several serious accidents on the main highway across the province from one end near Montreal to the other at Sarnia. I think this is the first time I remember that road being closed almost it's whole length. Most people who didn't travel to families by Wednesday may not make it home for Christmas. We're hoping that by today, the winds will die down, and are very grateful to our local Hydro (power) crews for quickly re-connecting our services. It must have been wicked with the winds and sudden drop in temp. Wishing all a safe & Happy Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate. May you have tables full of those who are special to you, and lots of laughs.

Most lines do have a slow walker tour on their included tours, not always on the optional ones. You may lose out on the "shopping/wandering" time after the tour, but you normally will see everything the other tours do. Most also now use devices that work wirelessly with ear buds so you don't have to be close to the guide or your fellow travellers. If you've never done a river cruise, i suggest reading the stickies on the top of the main page, and consulting a Travel Advisor to find what line suits your needs and budget. Most choose the river first, then look at the stops with various lines so you can see what areas you wish, although most lines stop in the same towns. Budget and what you wish to be included are also important, and something to be looked at. Planning is only 1/2 the adventure, but it's worth it to know what to expect before going, so you don't get disappointed.

We have lots of squirrels, and they are pretty good at sharing. 🙂

Glad you got your heating fixed, that's important! We ended up with 40cm of snow from early Friday morning to Saturday morning, and very heavy & wet. Many branches down to pick up next spring once the snow is gone. Pics of our front & back yards. The squirrel is sitting outside our bedroom window looking for us to finish clearing up so we can feed her. 🙂

Yeah, I heard from a friend down that way that there was a fair amount of freezing rain before the rain. Hopefully with just the snow, your rush hour will be better. They are now calling for closer to 30 - 35 cm here, so I guess we'll be blowing out the laneway instead of shovelling it. At least being rural we don't have to worry about sidewalks, just the plows sealing off our laneways.

@Canal archive, I'll admit I'm not up on my weather for the UK, but that seems cold for a daytime temp. I hope you have a nice fire going. I'll think of you as we are sitting at 2C, and watching the snow melt.....

@notamermaid, they are calling for between 25-35 cm starting Thursday night and ending Saturday. I am happy, love the snow ( as long as I don't have to shovel it 🙂). Now come New Years, I'll be happy for it to go away, but somehow that never seems to happen. Enjoy the snow, throw a snowball, build a snowman and have fun.

I just went into the Canadian Scenic site, only "warning" I got on the bottom of the page is that they use cookies. Maybe if you just want to view cruises, you can try Scenic dot ca? Our prices will be in Cdn $$, so not the same, but at least you can view what's up.

Well, looks like a white Christmas for us, our 3cm turned into 11! Managed to get a couple of shots out before all the animals got going and made to many tracks. The two little red squirrels were very happy we shoveled the balcony off before feeding them! 🙂

Yeah, we used to say we were going "south" for holidays, and head down your way - Burlington & Niagara Falls. 🙂 I hear there is rain coming your way, but for us, looks like temps mostly below 0, and just snow until Christmas. Crossing fingers! Hopefully it will be 1/2 way nice some night to take a tour to go view the lights now we have snow.

We're getting our first bit today as well...expecting about 3cm. Hopefully it sticks around, just doesn't feel like Christmas without snow.

Working fine on the Canadian site...maybe clearing your cache might work?

Glad to hear she is on the mend, I know what it's like having a bad cough with damaged ribs. I badly bruised mine once then ended up with pneumonia. It wasn't fun at all. Hope she gets better soon.

Thanks for an excellent write up. River boating is one thing we would like to add to our bucket list after friends of mine purchased a narrow boat & we have been living through their adventures. I hope Krisie is OK, and the pain passed quickly.