European Waterways

Last year I offered an explanation as to why we chose Viking for our first river cruise. So it seems appropriate that I explain why the choice this year was European Waterways.

Probably the main reason was that we wanted somewhere warm. So we looked at Mediterranean cruises and they were all on really huge ships.  The small ones had almost 1,000 passengers. The 180 people on board the Viking Grand European Cruise was fine but we didn't want to go any bigger. So we started looking at southern European cruises.

European Waterways had a number of options in France and one in Italy. The French versions were exclusively repurposed Dutch barges that served 4 to 8 people while the Italian version was La Bella Vita with rooms for 20. I don't know yet what she was in her previous life but her name was Mery, which she still carries on her bow. She was refurbished in 2010 so she should still look pretty good.

Welcome!

Welcome! We are less than a week from departing Phoenix and we think we are ready.  That means we aren't ready and just don't know what we are missing. I hope they are minor items or that we think of them in the next week.

We fly United Airlines out of Sky Harbor to Chicago O'Hare and then Lufthansa to Frankfurt. We picked Lufthansa at least partly because they operate direct flights into Marco Polo Airport which is the airport on the mainland that serves Venice. The flights are about 13 and a half hours in the air and 5 and a half hours of layovers, mostly in Frankfurt.

Occasionally I've had a flight time changed between when I bought the tickets and the flight actually departed. Since January when we bought these tickets, there have been four changes. While most were only changing the departure time by a few minutes, one change actually changed the airport from Munich to Frankfurt.  I'm not sure that we care but it was a surprise.