Trip Report! ABD Danube River Cruise w/Prague Add-on !!UPDATED!! 9/17/17 Re-posted all the Photos!!

.......then that experience must have been very frustrating. Relaxed is one thing but chaos is annoying. By the way Sayhello I would like to hire you to travel with us as our private photographer if we ever hit the lottery. Love the pictures ( as always).
:blush: Aw, gee whiz!! :) Thanks! I work really cheap!

I agree with Carpenta! So happy we are traveling with you to China--planning to take advantage of those camera skills :) loving the report (as usual too).
Wait! You mean I'm supposed to bring a camera to China?? :rotfl: Looking forward to traveling with you guys, too.

Sayhello
 


Salzburg is a wonderful small city. There is a funicular you can take up to the castle where you get a wonderful view of the Alps and a great little cafe which serves cold cold beer and great sausage. WE did get to see the gazeebo from the movie but it was O.K. but getting to enjoy the walking and history of the city is higher on our list. Still loved our tour.
 
I have to agree, Salzburg is such a neat little city; I enjoyed it more than Vienna, actually.
 
Oh I am SO enjoying this!! I don't usually come to the ABD forum, but did last night, I'm so glad! So in 2015, my husband and I, did a River cruise with Grand Circle travel, from Boston (husband works for them). It started in Amsterdam, then all thru Germany (Passau was one of my favorite stops, oh that cathedral!!), then ending in Austria (and we did the Melk Abbey too, but because it was an all adult tour, we enjoyed a beautiful wine tasting in their basement, with music, oh so much fun!). So, I am seeing so many familiar scenes here, its really taking me back. Its interesting to see the differences with your tour vs. ours too. I can't wait to see your Passau report. This is so well done, thank you for taking the time to share everything with us!!
 


Oh I am SO enjoying this!! I don't usually come to the ABD forum, but did last night, I'm so glad! So in 2015, my husband and I, did a River cruise with Grand Circle travel, from Boston (husband works for them). It started in Amsterdam, then all thru Germany (Passau was one of my favorite stops, oh that cathedral!!), then ending in Austria (and we did the Melk Abbey too, but because it was an all adult tour, we enjoyed a beautiful wine tasting in their basement, with music, oh so much fun!). So, I am seeing so many familiar scenes here, its really taking me back. Its interesting to see the differences with your tour vs. ours too. I can't wait to see your Passau report. This is so well done, thank you for taking the time to share everything with us!!
Aw, thanks! :) I'm so glad you're enjoying my Trip Report. It really was a lovely vacation. I'm hoping to have Day 7 (Passau) up in the next couple of weeks!

Sayehllo
 
Salzburg is still a must do for us. I'd love to do a Sound of Music tour.

We did a day in Salzburg after our Germany ABD a few years ago. We booked a tour with "Bob's Special Tours" after seeing some great reviews on Trip Advisor. It was a great experience! The tour was around 4 hours and cost around $40 per person. We met right in central Salzburg and they used small vans so there were only 8 of us on the tour. There was a short city tour, and we visited the church at Mondsee, went down a toboggan run, saw the Mirabel gardens, the gazebo at Hellbrunn palace and the grounds of the mansion that served as the back of the Von Trapp home where the children fell into the lake. We stopped for coffee and pastries at a lovely ship in a village up in the mountains near Mondsee. Highly recommend.

Tobi - we had read some poor reviews of that restaurant so we didn't visit it. We were kind of schnitzeled out at that point, and we found a lovely little Italian restaurant that was delicious!

Laurie
 
We did a day in Salzburg after our Germany ABD a few years ago. We booked a tour with "Bob's Special Tours" after seeing some great reviews on Trip Advisor. It was a great experience! The tour was around 4 hours and cost around $40 per person. We met right in central Salzburg and they used small vans so there were only 8 of us on the tour. There was a short city tour, and we visited the church at Mondsee, went down a toboggan run, saw the Mirabel gardens, the gazebo at Hellbrunn palace and the grounds of the mansion that served as the back of the Von Trapp home where the children fell into the lake. We stopped for coffee and pastries at a lovely ship in a village up in the mountains near Mondsee. Highly recommend.

Tobi - we had read some poor reviews of that restaurant so we didn't visit it. We were kind of schnitzeled out at that point, and we found a lovely little Italian restaurant that was delicious!

Laurie
Laurie, sounds like you guys had a great Sound of Music experience! Glad it worked out so well. I could see getting a bit schnitzeled out! :) But I do love me a good schnitzel!

Sayhello
 
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this. I am enjoying it tremendously.
 
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this. I am enjoying it tremendously.
You are so welcome! :D I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'm hoping to have the next installment up this weekend!

Sayhello
 
So, so, so glad I found this trip report....it was wonderful!!! So excited for our upcoming Danube River Cruise in July!!!! Loved all the pics and I am sending it to my friend to read as well!!!

MJ
 
So, so, so glad I found this trip report....it was wonderful!!! So excited for our upcoming Danube River Cruise in July!!!! Loved all the pics and I am sending it to my friend to read as well!!!

MJ
So glad you enjoyed it, MJ! OK, I really, really need to update this and I will, *SOON*!! :)

Sayhello
 
Day 7 – Passau and Tree Path Kopfing

Today we started our day in what has become one of the things I love about river cruising – walking out to the pier and meeting our Tour Guides for the morning walking tour of Passau, Germany. No bus, no fuss, just off the boat you go, and you’re right where you want to be! We were met by our costumed Guide, Baron Phillip Wilhelm of Hernick (I think, couldn’t quite catch the place name. Check out the video below, and see if you can tell me!)

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Click! It's a video!



He gave us a bit of an historic overview, and started walking around, pointing out sites of interest.

Believe it or not, this says 1499. The second digit is “half an 8”.

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I liked how the supports for the bridge were actually anchored into the hillside.

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This artwork was on the side of the City Hall for Passau.

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Baron Phillip pulled some adults & kids out of the group to do some play acting to illustrate the politics of the time that led to the building of the City Hall. It was learning disguised as fun.

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There were a lot of interesting details on the buildings.

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This object was one of several interesting pieces of “art” suspended across the walkway in the artists’ section of town.

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They had painted colorful pathways in that section of town to lead you from one artist’s shop to another.

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The little rectangular plaque on the rounded tower, below the windows showed the water level during one of the floods that Passau had. (Three rivers, including the Danube, go through this town). He said one enterprising man got his boat out & would row from building to building selling bread to the occupants via their second story windows.

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As you can see, they were pretty close to the river.

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We weren’t quite sure what this bright yellow cart was until we saw this woman fish some envelopes out from it. She’s the mail delivery person, and had to lug that thing up & down the hills to deliver the mail! She had to have been in pretty spectacular shape to do that day after day!

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We paused at this home for a while as Baron Phillip gave us a fascinating explanation about when the plague was in Passau, and the use of the little grated window in the door to get things in to folks.

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Honestly, Baron Phillip was just a fantastic Guide and storyteller. Everybody seemed to really enjoy his tour.

We were then given some time to go inside and enjoy the gorgeous St. Stephen’s Cathedral of Passau.

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Relatively plain on the outside, it’s amazingly and gorgeously ornate on the inside.

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And the organ there is apparently the largest pipe organ in Europe. This is only the main part of it. While we were there, they were tuning the organ, so while we didn’t get to hear *music* from the organ, we did get to hear its magnificent tones. It was quite amazing!

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Walking across Passau to our next destination

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At our next destination we met up with another of the ABD tour groups at a bakery, where we were to have some fun molding marzipan. We were given blocks of the stuff, and a stick, and instructions on how to construct a face out of the candy. Everyone’s faces looked quite different!

Our instructor

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Mine didn’t look too horrid! It was challenging but fun!

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Baron Phillip, our instructor, and the Tour Guide for the other ABD group.

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We then had some free time to explore Passau, and eventually make our way back to the ship.

Passau was very charming, and there were a lot of small shops right in that area. I bought a few small things, and then headed the long way back to the ship. On the way, I met up with @pandw, and we made our way together back towards the AmaViola. The main difficulty we had was that you couldn’t do like we’d done in other towns, and use the river as your guide as to which direction led back to where the ship was docked. That was because there were *3* rivers that converged in the town, so you had to make sure you were using the *correct* river to guide you.

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We were mostly sure we knew where we were going, and only asked for directions a couple of times, but I think we were all glad when we got back to where we could see the City Hall and knew the AmaViola was nearby.

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A lovely towel animal was awaiting me in my cabin, along with my pin for this, my 7th ABD!

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We relaxed for a bit and had some lunch.

A bit later, we re-grouped for our afternoon excursion, the trip to see the Tree Path Kopfing. I was very curious about this one, and had been looking forward to it.

We did have a bit of a hike this time to get to where they had the motorcoaches parked, but a few of the Jr Adventurers led us on our way.

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We had a bit of an orientation before we entered from the folks who ran the place. Loved the hats!

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First we stopped on our way in, and had a very cheesy but cute photo taken. Yes, of course I bought it!

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We started up the climb to get up above the trees. As I was climbing up, the man in red, who was one of the owners, paced me & asked me some questions. Apparently, ABD is the very first English speaking people they’ve ever had at their attraction! They had made up brochures in English, but all the signage was in German. I don’t know how ABD came across this place, but it certainly wasn’t because it was a well-known tourist spot! It’s the kind of unique ABD activity that I really adore ABD for!

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Continued in next post!
 
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Continued

They had a tower that you could climb up (the staircase wound around the outside of the tower for the most part - you can see it in the background of the cheesy photo). You didn’t have to go up there, but they said the views were great. They were right!

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It was actually pretty high up when you looked back!

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Unfortunately, on the way down from the tower, I had a bit of a boo-boo – I got a splinter stuck in my palm. It seemed like the Guide that was there (I think it was Birte) had *everything* in her bag except for a pair of tweezers! She did finally manage to nudge it out with a needle, and patched me up, but *damn*!! those things hurt!

They had a few little obstacle areas you could walk through (or you could totally bypass them if you wanted to. They were way harder than they looked like!

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They had this great observation area with this magnificent wooden swing. I could have stayed there for a while! The views were spectacular!

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I had a nice conversation with this young woman. Very sweet girl. But I did forget to put this photo on my Instagram…

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This is the slide that @calypso726 wrote about almost dying on (well, maybe not *that* bad!) They had it “Closed for Maintenance” while we were there, so I don’t know if they or ABD decided it wasn’t a good idea to let us slide down it. Not that I was even vaguely interested after hearing the descriptions…

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At the bottom after we were done, they had a play area for the kids, and a cafeteria. The Guides let us order drinks and a treat (they had great ice cream there!)

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After we’d refreshed & rested ourselves, they finally managed to start herding folks back down to the parking lot. It was a beautiful walk. As much as I’d loved the cities we’d visited as a part of this trip, it was *really* nice and rejuvenating to spend this afternoon out in Nature.

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Then it was time to clean ourselves up and get ready for – Waaaa! – the farewell dinner! I wore the embroidered shirt I’d purchased at the Market in Hungary. And even though it was from the wrong country, I think it still fit nicely (although not as nicely as the girl who’d purchased an entire Dirndl outfit in Passau!!)

Our Captain with me & Hanne

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See what I mean?

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All the Guides were dressed up in absolutely gorgeous local outfits. I ran around photographing them all. And sniffling just a bit as you do when you’re saying goodbye to many of these folks.

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After our lovely dinner, they took us out to a tent that was set up on the dock, and had a bit of an Octoberfest like party, with pretzels, beer, a band and dancing.

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It was loads of fun, but unfortunately, a) I was totally, completely pooped and b) I had a REALLY early call the next morning to be all packed and get out & catch the bus for the Prague Extension. (8am! ACK!!) So I called it a night, said my farewells, and headed back to my cabin to pack everything up.

Coming up next – The Prague Extension!
 
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I loved our Passau stop!! I didn't do a Disney cruise, but one with all adults thru another company. Oh that cathedral. The most beautiful I ever saw. And there was a great bakery right next door!
 
I've been waiting for this! So good and so interesting about the treetop place.
 
Thanks! For some reason or another I slept through this entire day so it was nice to get the details on Passau and the tree walk. DH and I walked in Passau and he remembered about a 1/3 of what you did so you filled in the gaps. I'm excited to see your photos of Prague (hint hint :)).
 

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