We took this Viking Var Romantic Danube River Cruise for my husband's birthday and our 25th wedding anniversary, from Nuremberg (well actually Erlangen) to Budapest. Having seen the beautiful Viking commercials on television for years, we were enticed. It was our first ever cruise and we wanted an 8 day river cruise due to the fact that we are both easily sea sick. However, the ads do NOT show the whole picture and the experience was also spoiled by no air conditioning for 3 days on our side of the boat, because they could not get the right part. No A/c in August meant 2 sleepless nights, as they could not provide us with a fan. One night we left the balcony door open for cool air but ended up with a cabin ceiling covered in black gnats! We went to the front desk as we did not know what to do with them and they brought a vacuum to suck them up expertly-obviously they had done this before!

Our Romantic Danube cruise actually starts out on the Main Am Danube canal which is not very attractive (although interesting when you go through the 27 locks) -certainly not the vine-covered hills we were expecting to be looking at as we sat on our balcony. The first day we were tied up at an industrial dock opposite a recycling plant-see pics at Erlangen-half an hour from the pretty city of Nuremberg. We had paid extra for the balcony room, but did not use it that day as we did not want to sit looking at a corrugated iron fence for a whole day. It soon became apparent that the balcony was a waste of money as we could not use it 4/7days due to being tied up next to another boat which were exactly aligned so you could see into each other boat's cabins and no doubt touch hands on the balcony-hardly private and certainly not Romantic!

The cabin was cosy but well appointed, with plenty of storage so that we could get our things put away. The bathroom was very compact, but again had good storage and sufficed for us, though we are not sure how large or tall men got into the shower! Although it was described in the brochures that wifi was available-it really was only available when docked and pretty sketchy at other times, although we did find one corner of the lounge (beneath the captain's bridge!) with better reception. Other indoor areas of the ship were attractive, which was fortunate as we were unable to sit on the sun deck for most of the trip due to the high water and the inability to get under bridges, unless they laid everything flat, which took the crew 3-4 hours to do apparently. Again something not really described in the brochure. Read more