AmaWaterways AmaVerde, Bucharest to Budapest Questions

[bleacher04]

Greetings all!  My wife and I will be taking our second river cruise next month (April), on the AmaVerde from Bucharest (Giurgiu) Romania to Budapest ("Gems of Southeast Europe").  Our first river cruise was on the Mekong in December (fantastic and highly recommended), and so realizing that things might be a little different on the Danube, we have a few questions for you more experienced river cruisers:

 

1) Tour Guides:  On the Mekong, we kept the same three Vietnamese guides for the first 5 days (land+river), swapping for three new Cambodian guides for the second half (again, land+river).  Will that be true on this cruise, or will we have new local guides each day for each different country?  We are doing a 4-day pre-cruise land tour with Ama in Romania, so this questions extends to this portion & these guides too.

 

2) Currencies:  Ama's tipping guidelines for this cruise are in euros, but only one of the five countries we will be visiting actually uses the euro as official currency.  I'm not about to get currencies for countries we will only visit for one day, but four days in Romania suggests it might be wise to acquire some leu (or lei?).  Any thoughts/comments?

 

3) It looks like our itinerary is a lot less "packed" then on the Mekong -- there are some days when we only have a morning excursion, or only an afternoon tour.  Are we sailing during these non-tour mornings & afternoons?  Or are we docked and can go explore / shop on our own?  On our first cruise we could only disembark on our own when docked overnight in Phnom Penh.

 

Thanks in advance for everyone's assistance!

[RobInMN]

We did the Grand Danube on AmaMagna. This could actually be booked as 2 B2B cruises, with one leg being the Gems of Southeast Europe that you are on. My review of that week is here:

@CastleCritic did the one you are on a couple weeks later, the same direction you are going, and his review is here:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2934524-amawaterways-gems-of-southeast-europe-430-on-amamagna-with-romania-extension/

 

We both did the Romania extension.

 

1) Ama has an on-board Cruise Manager that arranges all the tours. All tours are led by local tour guides. For our Romania extension, our ship CM came with us and we had the same local guide and bus driver from the ship, through Brasov, and to Bucharest. Once we were at that hotel, they left us, but we still had our Ama Cruise Manager.

2) Crew wants Euros. We tipped tour guides and bus drivers in Euros also. This seemed standard. We never got any local currencies. I don't know if it's policy or just a good CM, but on the post-cruise, anywhere we had a bathroom stop that needed paid for, she would give everyone the necessary local currency.

3) I believe sailing? I don't recall ever being docked for any extended period of time where there wasn't an excursion option. Possibly some late afternoon or evenings, but unless you skipped dinner onboard, I don't know that there would be time there either. I could be wrong as this wasn't anything we were concerned with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Host Jazzbeau]

8 hours ago, bleacher04 said:

3) It looks like our itinerary is a lot less "packed" then on the Mekong -- there are some days when we only have a morning excursion, or only an afternoon tour.  Are we sailing during these non-tour mornings & afternoons?  Or are we docked and can go explore / shop on our own? 

On a European river cruise it will be one or the other.  And frankly, as the cruise progresses and you are worn down by an early excursion, an after lunch excursion, and a lovely but lengthy dinner with your new friends – a little 'down time' becomes a really welcome thing!

[CastleCritic]

Actually I did it Budapest to Bucharest too which makes any guess about daily itinerary somewhat moot.  But here goes how it was scheduled

 

day1, ship is in Budapest all day, other than safety meeting do whatever you want, left about midnight

 

day2 (Mohacs). sailing until 1pm when excursions start, they end by 5:30 at latest, ship sails at 9pm

 

Day3 ship arrives in vukovar, we're off by 8:30 ship leaves without us, we meet it downriver at 11 to do customs out of the eu and then it leaves and we get to Nova Sad about 5 once Serbian customs completes we do excursions, several rounds last one finishes 10:45, ship stays until 1am.

 

Day4 Belgrade 8am arrival, several excursion rounds, ship leaves 10:15 that night

 

Day5 wake up at Golubac fortress, do that, ship leaves about 11, we're on the ship all day (iron gates there are a few things to see along the way)

 

Day6 ship arrives in Vidin at 6am leaves at 1:45pm

 

Day7 ship arrives in Rousse Bulgaria, 6am you can see Girgiu on the opposite bank, excursion leave for both Romania and Bulgaria by 10, after picking up the Bulgaria excursions, ship repositions to Girgiu at 5pm (picking up the Romania excursion when it gets there)

 

Day8 sad times...everyone leaves

 

In general as long as the ship isn't leaving or doing customs processes you are free to come and go as you please. (customs happens a lot on this route, other than Hungary and Croatia, every time you cross a border, the ship will meet. with the authorities to have your passport stamped in and out...there will be several days they are holding onto it for you just for this reason (though in Serbia you are supposed to have it on you so they will give it back for those days).

 

If you are doing the land pre in Brasov as RobInMN said you will meet your cruise director for the entire trip on arrival and I would expect the same tour guides and bus drivers at least for that segment, I had the same one in Bucharest as well (another AMA cruise directory actually) but that was a special request from the cruise director and wasnt originally arranged that way.  Once you join the ship in Girgiu the guides and bus drivers will be different each day.

 

I never took out any local currency until I got to Romania and honestly I could have just paid for everything on the card.  In fact most place I went to were not interested in breaking my 400lei (its about a 5:1 conversion to dollars) into smaller notes so I really had no choice.  The only time I was tempted was in Bulgaria to pay a local street artist for a painting.

 

 

Edited March 17 by CastleCritic

[bleacher04]

On 3/16/2024 at 9:46 PM, Host Jazzbeau said:

On a European river cruise it will be one or the other.  And frankly, as the cruise progresses and you are worn down by an early excursion, an after lunch excursion, and a lovely but lengthy dinner with your new friends – a little 'down time' becomes a really welcome thing!

 

Thanks @Host Jazzbeau  And I already know you are correct on your comments; on our first river cruise we started looking forward to any down time that came our way (including the very exciting "getting stuck on a sandbar").  And we met and connected with more great people on that cruise than we ever have on a larger sea-going cruise ship.

[bleacher04]

Thanks @RobInMN and @CastleCritic for your helpful comments!  I will read your reviews to double-check the excursions that we've selected.

[CastleCritic]

No problem, the only issue is that I think both of us think a lot alike and there was a good bit of overlap in excursion choice too,

 

If you have any further questions feel free to ask.

 

 

[pontac]

I did this journey the other way from Budapest to Bucharest with Viking in 2019 and really enjoyed it. As one travels from the Western sophistication of Budapest through increasingly poor countries, some showing signs of recent warfare.

 

You'll be seeing greater riches as you travel.  I wouldn't expect to have the same guides throughout, but a local who speaks the local language and knows their region.