ILoveToCruiseNCL

We were supposed to sail from our emergency docking port of Linz to Vienna tonight but we were just informed that the Danube is still closed for all traffic due to unsafe conditions so here we still remain since 2:30 am last night.   We will be bussed to Vienna tomorrow morning and will, with luck, be able to meet our ship, Viking Egdir, at some unknown location in the early evening as the earliest possible time that she can get to Vienna is midnight tomorrow. This part of our cruise is now flying on a wing and a prayer and I doubt that our cruise director is getting any sleep with all of the constant adjustments that need to be made because of low water and now high water. I feel really bad for Passau as he mentioned that they have flooding there now. 

Our ship, Viking Egdir, had to pull over and dock in Linz at 2:30 am when we were only half way to our destination of Melk, Austria because of the extremely rapid current on the Danube now. They are hoping to bus us to our tour of Melk Abbey in a few hours but have no idea as to what the plan for us after that will be. As it’s still raining here I don’t know if the Danube’s waters will be becoming any calmer later in the day. Our fabulous cruise director is doing the best he can but Mother Nature is fully in charge now! 

We just left Passau a couple of hours ago to head to Melk. We had only 3 inches to spare getting under the bridge and are very lucky that we got through when we did! The rain is still very heavy where we are and the water is flowing very swiftly. Also, there is a lot of detritus in the river now. 

We are on the GE now in Passau and were booked for an excursion cruise on the Inn to Schärding which was cancelled due to the excess rain. I hope that the higher river level for the Danube doesn’t cause us any more problems with staying on our original schedule to Budapest. We already did a ship swap from Nuremberg to Passau because of low water. The Egdir tried to backtrack to our Regensberg stop when the water level went up but the lock broke Saturday night.  I think it’s fixed now. Never a dull moment when river cruising! 

I hope that the water level continues to rise so that others may sail through. We are in Nuremberg today and are doing a ship swap from the Gymir to the Egdir in Passau. 

My husband, Bill, and I are on the August 19th Grand European sailing of the Egdir from Amsterdam to Budapest. We are also doing the pre extension in Amsterdam and the post extension in Prague. This will be our first Viking cruise and we are very excited and are also so happy that the river levels have improved to facilitate a cruise without ship swapping!