Photos from October Budapest to Amsterdam Cruise on Amadagio

[cruiseph]

Hi Larry and Pat:

Wow! I just downloaded Picasa2 and gave it a spin. This is a great program, and the price is right too. It cannot do the more sophisticated things that Photoshop can do, but it does a wonderful job of normal photo editing, improving and cropping. This was a great suggestion you made, and I think I will be using Picasa more often that Photoshop in the future. It is very easy to learn to use, and the photo organizing is much better than Photoshop.

 

Thanks!

Have you been on any other river cruises besides Amadagio? If so, how do they compare? Your pictures are great.

[TataTom]

Hi Cruiseph:

 

Thanks for the compliments on the photos. I enjoyed taking them, sharing them and I enjoy looking at them every once in a while to rekindle the fond memories. One thing I did not get a photo of was my Harley baseball cap that flew off in the wind in Rothenburg...we climbed the bell tower (really strenuous!) and as soon as I got out on the small platform at the top the wind took my hat and off to the next county it went. I got razzed a lot about that later! But the view was great up there.

 

That was our first river cruise...done to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. (we married late, I'm 69 and my wife is 64). I doubt very much if it will be our last one though!

[MrsDave]

My husband and I are thinking of taking one of the River Cruises...we have been on regular cruises..but, never this...last year we were on NCL...a Carribean 7 day...and..thought that we had enough of that type of vacation...can anyone tell us about Viking...or any other line you might suggest?..we were thinking of the South of France...what to expect..what not to expect...I always do my research...

Thanks for any information!

Tina & Dave

[H2Otstr]

We did that cruise last May with Viking. If you have any specific questions you can send an email to H2Otstr@aol.com.

[High C's]

Tom - excellent photos! Thank you so much for sharing them with all of us.

 

We are considering this very cruise for 2008. As it will be our first River Cruise, would you mind answering a few questions:

 

1. Tipping - is it applied on a daily pro-rated bases similar to the ocean cruises? If so, how much per day?

 

2. Excursions - am I correct in understanding that your guided tours are included in the cost?

 

3. Drinks in your room - are you allowed to bring wine/spirits on board for in room consumption or not?

 

4. Dress for dinner - what is the expectation? I assume there are no "formal" nights?

 

5. Location on the ship - is there a "best" location (not a suite - out of our price range! I guess I'm asking more if there is a location to avoid)

 

6. Flights - did you have the flight included, or did you arrange your own? We are coming from Toronto, but can easily get to NYC if they only arrange flights from the US.

 

7. And finally - how early do you have to book these trips? I assume the 2008 books are not out yet.

 

Please feel free to share anything other info! Sorry for such a long list. River Cruising has definitely piqued our interest after looking at your photos and following Buck's posting!

 

Thanks again

 

Jackie

[ski3bee]

Hi Tom,

We sailed on the Amadagio in late May of last year, our first river cruise and very wonderful. We loved the Amadagio.

Thank you for the wonderful pictures, they brought back some fun memories, especially of Durnstein, which was our favorite.

JSwen:)

[cpt.g.faas]

Thank you very, very much to all guest from the amadagio - season 2006 ! I am very, very happy over all comments. I leave the ship on 11/19/06 in nuremberg, and go to an new project in season 2007. Thank you very much, Gerald Faas, ex. 1st.Cpt. "AmaDAGIO"

[WIT]

I enjoyed your photo's thanks for posting them. We will be taking the Danube Cruise( Prague to Budapest ) Amadeus Line ship Amalegro end of May first week in June. What was your favorite City? Also any hints on Budapest we might stay an extra night. Thanks:)

 

We are returning to Budapest next October to take the Amalegro Bleack Sea Discovery cruise, and hope to do more in Budapest with a planned extra night there. Here is a response we got that might help:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=482505

 

We usually go out on our own pretty sucessfully, but the guide is an option!

 

Our favorite city was Prague.

[TataTom]

Hello, High C's:

I'll try to answer you questions as best I can.

1. Tipping - is it applied on a daily pro-rated bases similar to the ocean cruises? If so, how much per day? Yes, you are given "suggested" amounts per day for the cruise director and for the crew. I have already forgotten what the amounts were. Someone help me here...it was not a small sum but I felt every penny was well earned.

 

2. Excursions - am I correct in understanding that your guided tours are included in the cost? Most are. There will be a few extra tours, maybe 3 or 4 total, but you will have a great cruise without them. They are indeed extras. We took an extra tour to Rothenburg, which was well worth it.

 

3. Drinks in your room - are you allowed to bring wine/spirits on board for in room consumption or not? Bring aboard all you want. Get some ice from the ice machine and make your own drinks in your room if you wish. There will be corking fee if you have the server open the wine at your dinner table. But wine with dinner was free, all you wanted, and good wine too.

 

4. Dress for dinner - what is the expectation? I assume there are no "formal" nights? There was one Captain's dinner where we were asked to be a bit formal, but even then only maybe half of the diners wore ties. All the other meals were informal. Usually we changed from our touring clothes into something like business casual for dinner, but anything was OK and anything was seen.

 

5. Location on the ship - is there a "best" location (not a suite - out of our price range! I guess I'm asking more if there is a location to avoid) I don't really know. We had a cabin in the middle of the upper deck and it was wonderful. Other folks we met had cabins on the first and second decks and they were very pleased with their cabins as well. The first deck is partially the waterline so the windows are higher and smaller. On the second and third decks there is a sliding glass door, but you do not have a "patio" to go out onto. The engines are in the rear of the ship and the bow thrusters are in the front, but even the most forward cabin is still in the middle of the ship.

 

6. Flights - did you have the flight included, or did you arrange your own? We are coming from Toronto, but can easily get to NYC if they only arrange flights from the US. We let Brendan arrange our flights, and they let us come out of Peoria. The flight schedule was very good, with several hour layovers at plane changes. We flew Peoria to Chicago, Chicago to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to Budapest. Returning we flew Amsterdam to Chicago and Chicago to Peoria. We also paid for the transfers, and those went well also. We felt we got good value for our money.

 

7. And finally - how early do you have to book these trips? I assume the 2008 books are not out yet. We booked our October cruise in April, and it was already filling up. We really wanted a September cruise, but those were full already by April. But the late October cruise ended up being a great choice, because we missed the summer heat, the summer crowds and picked up the fall colors.

 

Go to the post on this forum titled "On the Amadagio" and you will find tons of information about this cruise. Here's the link:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=417384

[High C's]

Thank you so much, Tom! I'm very excited about this trip. I have always wanted to travel Austria and Germany, but couldn't bring myself to think about travelling around by bus, packing and unpacking. And my husband had no interest in the stress of driving around - certainly not a holiday for him! This is the perfect answer!

 

Thank you again.

Jackie

[jrowland]

Great picture Tom!. One question. Any suggestions, trick of the trade on how to manage all the pictures one takes on a cruise. I will be taking a 2 week Alaska tour/cruise in June and plan to take a WHOLE lot of pictures. I'm little concern that once I get back from the trip and start going through all the pictures, I might not remember where I took the picture and even what the picture is. Don't know if I could take pictures and write down notes as I take pictures. Perhaps I can give it a try though.:rolleyes:

[WIT]

Great picture Tom!. One question. Any suggestions, trick of the trade on how to manage all the pictures one takes on a cruise. I will be taking a 2 week Alaska tour/cruise in June and plan to take a WHOLE lot of pictures. I'm little concern that once I get back from the trip and start going through all the pictures, I might not remember where I took the picture and even what the picture is. Don't know if I could take pictures and write down notes as I take pictures. Perhaps I can give it a try though.:rolleyes:

 

jrowland: You are absolutely right about writing notes while taking pictures - at least one and probably both tasks will suffer. When I used written notes with my film SLR, I would try to in advance set aside paper sections for topics I expected. Results were dismal.

 

When I got my first digital camera I got a second and eventually a third battery so I could use bus transport time to review photos taken, deleting many and writing notes about the rest.

 

The 'perfect' travel camera to me would certainly include the ability to add a spoken label to any picture the photographer wished. I am actually surprised (how much can adding a cheap microphone cost?) that some clever manufacturer hasn't jumped on this one. With this camera feature, I would just buy enough 2GB SD cards at $20 each to hold all the trip's photos - my current 5MP camera puts 408 photos on each.

 

Since the industry has not yet provided this feature, I currently travel with a small laptop with Picassa installed. When time permits, I pull the card from the camera, slide it into a slot in the laptop, I view each photo on a 7"x10" screen, delete most and label the rest using the keyboard. To be conservative, I also keep the photos on the SD cards until I get home.

 

Once I'm home and I want to share photos, the upload to PicassaWebAlbums includes the labels I typed earlier.

 

Some use portable storage like the newer IPODs to hold trip photos. This allows you to look at the photo but I haven't yet heard of audio labels for IPOD-stored photos. Has anyone?

[Kid DD]

Hi WIT, I recently (Nov 2006) took a 16 day river cruise along the Rhine, Main and Danube from Amsterdam to Budapest. We extend our stay on each end-1 day in Amsterdam and 3 days in Budapest so it landed up to be 3 weeks. My picture taking goes back 35 years so I am a little experienced in how to keep track of photos and am on my second digital camera, a Nikon D80 which is a 10 mgpixel camera.

 

First, thing I did was buy two 1 gig flash cards. This is in case one goes on the fritz, you will always have an extra.

 

Second, I also bought a back up battery not knowing how much power my new Nikon would use. I really didn't need the second battery for this model. My older Sony Mavica CD1000 needed 2 to get through the day without a charging source so it depends on your camera.

 

Third, I came fully equipped with a laptop and since it was a cruise, the laptop just stayed in my room for downloads. I also used the laptop as a viewing screen and gave slideshows of the days tour for the small group of 10 that we were travelling with.

 

I also brought a few blank CDs and DVDs to burn my photos in case my laptop fritzed. What happened during the trip because I had an all in one card reader (very small, the size of a flat cellphone, 2 1/2 by 4"), I volunteered to download photos for my friends. Some took enough photos to fill 2 CDs so that worked out well for them and for me. I like taking my laptop but if you don't have one, another alternative is the Wolverine ESP Multi storage device which comes with it's own card reader slots, has a viewing screen and is about 5"x3" and has an 80 or 120 gig storage. It runs around $400. I looked into the Ipod but since it is so small and can be lost or stolen, I decided I didn't want to use that for travelling.

 

Last but not least, how do I keep track of the 4000 photos (16 CDs and 8.6 gigs) I took on my 20 day trip. I downloaded each day and during the trip, I made sure to take pictures of river markers, names of towns we passed and road signs. When entering a building, I will take a full photo of it, then take a photo of the entrance sign or just the brouchure so I know the next sequencing of photos is of that tourist attraction. You will be surprised how helpful these extra photos are that you will not use to display to your friends.

Hope this helps,

DD

jrowland: You are absolutely right about writing notes while taking pictures - at least one and probably both tasks will suffer. When I used written notes with my film SLR, I would try to in advance set aside paper sections for topics I expected. Results were dismal.

 

When I got my first digital camera I got a second and eventually a third battery so I could use bus transport time to review photos taken, deleting many and writing notes about the rest.

 

The 'perfect' travel camera to me would certainly include the ability to add a spoken label to any picture the photographer wished. I am actually surprised (how much can adding a cheap microphone cost?) that some clever manufacturer hasn't jumped on this one. With this camera feature, I would just buy enough 2GB SD cards at $20 each to hold all the trip's photos - my current 5MP camera puts 408 photos on each.

 

Since the industry has not yet provided this feature, I currently travel with a small laptop with Picassa installed. When time permits, I pull the card from the camera, slide it into a slot in the laptop, I view each photo on a 7"x10" screen, delete most and label the rest using the keyboard. To be conservative, I also keep the photos on the SD cards until I get home.

 

Once I'm home and I want to share photos, the upload to PicassaWebAlbums includes the labels I typed earlier.

 

Some use portable storage like the newer IPODs to hold trip photos. This allows you to look at the photo but I haven't yet heard of audio labels for IPOD-stored photos. Has anyone?

[WIT]

We just missed you in Budapest, we did the December Christmas Markets cruise from Budapest to Prague. Liked it so much we are taking the Danube down from Budapest to Istanbul next October and would appreciate any suggestions for our early days in Budapest.

 

You didn't mention how you share your photos. Tatatom (the starter of this thread), I, and others have uploaded selected shots to webshots or picassawebalbums. It would be great to see some river cruise shots from that D80.

[Kid DD]

The trouble with 4000 photos is just that, too many to put on one CD or a reasonable slideshow. And with the D80, I thought I had died and gone to heaven with the 18-200 digital zoom that I bought to go with that great body. Now the trouble with cruising as aposed to driving or riding a train or bus, when you are going only 6-8 mph, and the unobstructed river view, you can take approaching far view, approaching zoom in, castle approaching, castle full front facing river, castle on hill with town below shot, and all the same views as you are going. It adds up to 20 shots for each castle, not to mention the clarity and different kinds of exposure settings.

 

When we went to Mardi Gras in 2001, I took 1200 photos with my Sony and landed up with an 888 pic slideshow. My girlfriend Eldena still shows it today on her screen saver by day of our 12 day trip.

 

So as you can guess, I am a perfectionist and have trouble tossing out the extra photos for just the primo ones. I haven't looked into other photo sites, the current one I have is Kodak Gallery which is okay but now that I have seen the ones you guys have, I might load them on one of your websites. At 2.5 meg for each photo, it will take time even though I have cable.

 

And I didn't mention that Tatatom has some great shots, that October timeframe had more sun than when we were in Budapest in mid November.

We just missed you in Budapest, we did the December Christmas Markets cruise from Budapest to Prague. Liked it so much we are taking the Danube down from Budapest to Istanbul next October and would appreciate any suggestions for our early days in Budapest.

 

You didn't mention how you share your photos. Tatatom (the starter of this thread), I, and others have uploaded selected shots to webshots or picassawebalbums. It would be great to see some river cruise shots from that D80.

[WIT]

The trouble with 4000 photos is just that, too many to put on one CD or a reasonable slideshow. And with the D80, I thought I had died and gone to heaven with the 18-200 digital zoom that I bought to go with that great body. Now the trouble with cruising as aposed to driving or riding a train or bus, when you are going only 6-8 mph, and the unobstructed river view, you can take approaching far view, approaching zoom in, castle approaching, castle full front facing river, castle on hill with town below shot, and all the same views as you are going. It adds up to 20 shots for each castle, not to mention the clarity and different kinds of exposure settings.

 

When we went to Mardi Gras in 2001, I took 1200 photos with my Sony and landed up with an 888 pic slideshow. My girlfriend Eldena still shows it today on her screen saver by day of our 12 day trip.

 

So as you can guess, I am a perfectionist and have trouble tossing out the extra photos for just the primo ones. I haven't looked into other photo sites, the current one I have is Kodak Gallery which is okay but now that I have seen the ones you guys have, I might load them on one of your websites. At 2.5 meg for each photo, it will take time even though I have cable.

 

And I didn't mention that Tatatom has some great shots, that October timeframe had more sun than when we were in Budapest in mid November.

 

Kid DD - Yes, Tom's Danube fall color shots are one big reason we are on the Black Sea Discovery cruise next October.

 

I also have trouble discarding the average shot, but I write better labels for the ones that will be shared.

 

You mentioned varied shots on the same subject. Might I inquire - how are you using your viewfinder vs your LCD?

[TataTom]

Jrowland:

 

Lots of good suggestions here on how to keep track of your photos. My process was pretty simple, not the best though. I kept copies of each day's itineraries (provided by the cruise director). The photos have the date and time recorded on them, and that gave me enough information to identify things. One note...I forgot to change the time on my camera so I was recording CST instead of the local time. No matter, I just had to mentally add 7 hours to it. Next time I will record the correct time!

 

I had a one gig card in my camera, and I reduced the resolution on my camera from 6 to 4 megapixels, knowing that I was satisfied with the image quality on my previous digital camera, which was 4 megapixels, and did not intend to make any super size enlargements. Doing this gave me about 1000 photo capacity on my 1 gig card. I also took a spare 1/2 gig card with me, but did not use it. When the cruise was over, I found that I could have used the 6 megagpixel resolution, since I only took about 500 photos. (I took more but deleted the not so hot ones right away).

[Kid DD]

;)

Kid DD - Yes, Tom's Danube fall color shots are one big reason we are on the Black Sea Discovery cruise next October.

 

I also have trouble discarding the average shot, but I write better labels for the ones that will be shared.

 

You mentioned varied shots on the same subject. Might I inquire - how are you using your viewfinder vs your LCD?

Hi Wit,

The one thing about the Nikon D80 is that it doesn't let you enable the LCD when for looking for a shot unlike my Sony Mavica. I do miss that feature but the longer battery life (I can have my camera on all day 8-10 hrs with one charge) makes up for it. This has allowed me to go back to the old way of taking photos before digital by looking though the viewfinder for every shot. While taking my bird photos from our kitchen window, once I forgot to turn it off overnight and I could still use the camera for the rest of the day.

Attached is one of these photos of an Anna Hummingbird I just took a few days ago.