River Cruise from Amersterdam to the Black Sea?

[hgill]

Are there any river cruises, besides Tauck, that go from Amersterdam to the Black Sea? Thank you. :confused:

[cbb]

Avalon has an Amsterdam to Bucharest (WAO) for 24 days and then on to Istanbul (WAOE) for a total of 27 days. One date is left in 2012 and in 2013 this itinerary sails once in May, June, July, and October. Looks like an excellent itinerary with some great optionals (you'll have to click on "2012" to see what is being offered this year.)

[beverlyjack]

Grand Circle does it as the Grand European Cruise. See http://www.gct.com.

[LHT28]

AMA & Scenic tours also go

[HDS]

Uniworld cruises from Amsterdam to the river port for Bucharest. That's as close as you can get. No river cruise ships travel the full length of the Danube and into the Black Sea.

Our journey was two cruises back to back. Amsterdam to Vienna then Vienna to Bucharest. About 28 days.

[Talisker92]

Vantage also offers a cruise called the Grand European Cruise-Rhine to the Black Sea

[pacmom]

Would recommend that you cruise from the Black Sea to Amsterdam--the countries go from post Communism to capitalism. Also the flight home is shorter. We did this with Uniworld 8 years ago as a B2B. Pat

[cbb]

Pacmom--great advice! We had a guide on one of the trips into Eastern Europe who kept apologizing for the "Stalin architecture" or "50's highrises." WWII was not kind to some of the port cities and the subsequent rebuilding was hasty.

[beverlyjack]

Grand Circle's cruise goes through the Danube-Black Sea Canal to Constanta on the Black Sea. You spend one day and night there. Then you bus back to Budapest, for you last day and night, the next morning. For the detailed itinerary, click HERE.

[2onboardagain]

I looked in the Viking brochure and next year (2013) they will be offering a 23 day Amsterdam to Bucharest cruise. They will be offering a 3 night post cruise stay in Bucharest & Transylvania and an optional visit to the Black Sea port of Constanta is also available.

[bcnvcanada]

Before you get to excited about this port-sea town, I would suggest that you look under Europe and port name and see what other have had to say about it. We were there in the Spring, and we would not go back again to this city. So many of our friends had bad exp. in this city, held up in the daylight hours, taxi robbing pax, It was a mess. I know that in all town certain areas are bad, but with the amount of reports from pax, I would guess that there is a problem there. We did not have a problem, but a good friend of ours was rolled, and her leg was broken. It was set on the ship, and later she had to have pins put in it.

[shoshona2]

We are on Tauck's Bucharest to Budapest August 19th river cruise and have been to Constanta on a previous Oceania Black Sea Cruise in 2003. Constanta is a big nothing port! It is on our itinerary to visit with our guides. If it is dangerous now, I wouldn't venture off on my own.

 

Sheila

[5326jan]

We were there in September on a Black Sea Cruise and the only thing worthwhile to see, in my opinion, was the abandoned Casino. It was like something out of a movie. Beautiful, huge and ornate. But abandoned. Looking inside through the windows, you could see the beautiful plaster work, chandeliers, inlaid marble floors, but on the outside lay "street dogs", trash floated around in the breeze and graffiti decorated the nearby walls. So sad to see something with so much potential for beauty, excitement and happiness stand there waiting for decay to overtake it.

 

We did not feel unsafe, just unsettled by the "lifelessness" of the town. We were not sure why it was a stop on our cruise. Although they did have a full day bus tour to Bucharest. Be prepared to see the streets inhabited with "street dogs". They don't follow you, interact with you or even look at you. It's so creepy. There are about 250,000 abandoned dogs in Romania. People lost their jobs and it was too hard to care for their pets in addition to their families. Some "entity" does feed them, and they are tagged once they have been neutered. It's just so sad to see a "companion" animal so alone.

[GiannaD]

Would recommend that you cruise from the Black Sea to Amsterdam--the countries go from post Communism to capitalism. Also the flight home is shorter. We did this with Uniworld 8 years ago as a B2B. Pat

 

 

I definitely agree with this poster. We have done Amsterdam to Budapest and Bucharest to Vienna in two different cruises with Vantage. In my opinion it is much better to go from Bucharest to Amsterdam. The post communist countries are still quite depressed but very interesting and as you head up river the conditions change dramatically with Vienna being spectacular.