good evening ladies and gentlemen and thank you so much for coming this evening to learn about luxury
river cruising with the ama waterways i want to thank jackie and john matthews for inviting me to
share my stories with you on on the waterways and this fabulous itinerary
that they have group space on they are going to be hosting melodies of the danube escorting
their group fund september the 13th of 2021 so i'm just going to have an absolute delightful
evening with you we're going to talk about ama waterways i'm going to walk you through a day in
the life on ama tell you a little bit about us and then i'm going to walk you through this fabulous
wonderful itinerary i've been with on waterways for 11 years and have done all of our itineraries
and i'd like to say that in actuality melodies of the danube is the most requested itinerary
um uh in all of the rivers of europe it really is just such an incredible opportunity for you to be
able to visit five countries in seven nights and to be able to see not only the world-class cities
of budapest and and vienna and prague but also to be able to see the fairytale towns
along the river and they are so delightful and so special in their ways so it is great fun for
me to be able to do this with you this evening so ladies and gentlemen here is a map of melodies of
the danube and i'm a map lady it's really great fun to know where you are when you're in europe
and we're going to have you come in uh and if you take the two nights in budapest that is wonderful
so on the danube here we're going to come up and so you would be in hungary
we're then going to come to bratislava and bratislava is in slovakia so that is another pin
in your map we're going to cross over into austria and you're going to have several stops in austria
from vienna to up the vacant valley to melchland passau in paso you've come over into germany
and you're going to end your cruise in the town of vilshofen which is very special to us and i'll
tell you when i get there on the slide um if you take our land program we are going to take you
through the magnificent town of regensburg on the way to prague where you will spend three nights
so in budapest um it is one of certainly my very favorites i've been traveling hungary for 25 years
and budapest is this fabulous city where the danube runs through the town and splits it to
the side of pest which you are seeing with the parliament building here to the other
side where you can see in the foreground of the buda side and the difference is on the pesticide
it is kind of what they call on the plane if you will it's kind of a flatter topography and you
have the magnificent state buildings you will have the wonderful hotels the what fabulous restaurants
great shopping the major monuments of the historical significance
or many of them are on this side as well so it really is the pulsating side of budapest
but also on the wonderful side of the buda side here's where you have the palace where it is
more residential on this side it is very rolling hills and you will visit the fisherman's bastion
along this area and also saint stephen's cathedral so you'll have the tours are going to include both
sides of the river when you're looking for things to buy absolutely by paprika in hungary it is the
finest in the world you can buy it in wonderful places and you know what buy a bunch of it because
freeze it and it'll keep forever so it's really great you then we're coming up the river and
we're going to vienna now vienna is just a world-class city to say the least um it is a
city filled with the most magnificent buildings such as the hofburg palace as you see here
it also is about list it is about mozart it is about beethoven they have a fabulous opera house
they just do some amazing opportunities for you to be able to do we do a coach tour that will
take you kind of around what they call the ring uh and you'll be able to see these magnificent
buildings that we're talking about they're going to be baroque they're going to be all kinds of
different architecture and then we're going to bring you into the old part of the city and do
a wonderful walking tour as well which is really great then we're going to let you go and and have
have fun on your own while you're in uh in vienna if you have been there before you might want to
take one of our hiking tours or one of our bike tours as well those are certainly offered to you
and uh it's just nice to get yourself acclimated into this magnificent city or maybe you'd like
to go out to shone broom palace and this is the summer palace of the hapsburgs the one you saw on
the slide before was more of a winter palace you must you might as well have two or three actually
and the summer palace is absolutely beautiful gardens are fabulous and you would tour schonbrunn
and it is furnished so it's great fun to be able to go in into the palace as well
we then are going to come up on the danube into the vachau valley now the vachau is where now
we're going to get into the fairytale towns and what's so incredibly wonderful about this is that
we um the vacao is like being in the black forest you have the wonderful rolling mountains and you
have the darling fabulous towns along the way um it has wonderful particular wines from this area
as well as it's known for apricots amazing that there's a certain apricot that is grown in this
area that is like no other and we even do one of our special interest tours for an apricot tasting
so great fun on the vaquel and it's going to bring you to the fairytale town of dernstein
dernstein is just absolutely lovely it is a walk town we dock right here along the front
of the town that you see here and we do a wonderful walking tour there are no cars
in the town which makes it just absolutely fabulous and where you see this wonderful steeple
of the church here is called the stifskirucha and the one thing about it that you will never forget
is that is robin's egg blue when you come up to the river and you see that it is like oh my gosh
what a magic place to be able to be hey if you didn't want to walk through town we are doing a
hike up to the castle and the castle is a ruin but it was one of the places where richard the
lionhearted was imprisoned and boy i tell you he was in a lot of these places so always at the top
of the hill but you can get the most beautiful amazing pictures when you come into that area so
durnstein is just very very special coming up the vacal all the way up to vizenkirchen and what this
is going to do for you this is a tour not to be missed please this is the benedictine monastery at
milk it has been and this is the town of milk it has been a working monastery for 960 years
we are going to bring you up by coach um too because it's probably quite high on the hill there
and it has a fantastic museum it has a most amazing library you could possibly imagine
it also is a school for the people of the kids that are around the area
so it is a working school and then we're going to bring you through the church now
i don't know if you've been to rome and saint peter's which has an amazing amount of gold in it
but i would wager to say with you that this church has as much gold as st peter's it is
absolutely incredible to be in the middle of the vacau valley with all these wonderful little towns
and to have so much wealth in gold you actually can even ask your guide if you'd like to walk back
to the ship there's a way to get out of milk and down into the town has like one street as you can
see here in the foreground and you can walk back to the ship so that's kind of fun to do as well
and look at the library isn't it beautiful it is
it has thousands and thousands of books it is i think about two or three different rooms
and all the ceilings are painted it is simply being in an art museum it's just gorgeous
then we're going to come up the river to lynn's now limbs is a very special town for us
for a couple of reasons first of all it is the it's a media arts town of of austria very high
tech it's their own little silicon valley if you will and we do kind of a media arts tour
where steps off the vessel here as you come into the the main square in uh in the downtown area
it's just absolutely delightful by the time you're going you're going to have all of the geraniums
hanging out of the windows you know with those beautiful window boxes it's really really gorgeous
um so to do a morning tour is go great or you can take a bike tour as well however
on this day we're going to have two extremely special cruises that uh not cruises i'm sorry
but shore excursions for you to take advantage of one of them is going to salzburg salzburg austria
um is just a world-class town to say the least a very wealthy town at one point
and it still is it is very comfortable to say the least it is in the julian alps when you think of
this area this is all sound of music this is um mozart by all means and you have the castle
on the hill which is called home in salzburg and salt salts means salt so there's a huge salt line
under the castle which is kind of fun but the shopping here the wonderful mirabelle gardens
the things that you will see here are just absolutely exquisite now if you might have been
to salzburg before you might consider my favorite and i have spent a lot of time in salzburg so
um i choose to go into the czech republic we have a tour to a town called chesky krumlov now this
is a really interesting little town and you will feel the difference coming into the czech republic
from austria it's just really really wonderful this little medieval town is in the mountains
and it was never um overrun by the ottomans or the romans or anybody it just never got seen so
it wasn't destroyed it was never marauded if you will so the town is absolutely delightful
has a wild and crazy history um a wonderful wonderful um um yeah palace actually which is uh
has gorgeous gardens around it which you will visit as you walk up to the town it is a walled
fortified city with this lovely little um kind of i guess you would call it a river beautiful
shopping area has wonderful wonderful restaurants for you to try and it's just a really special
place and to come to the czech republic and do this is great fun so i know that's a hard
thing for you to be able to choose but i know you'll make the right decision for yourself
and then we're going to end your lovely cruise in um in vilshoffen and vilshoffen is where we
uh well here's the story we are the only river cruise line in vilshaven and the reason for that
is because we um rudy knows the mayor and we are the only river cruise line that stops here so it's
just great fun and the town does an oktoberfest for our guests through the entire season so
you'll be able to enjoy oktoberfest uh involves often with us it's an absolutely gorgeous tent
right off of the vessel we have there is a um a beer queen as you can see here we're doing
all the beers and the pretzels and the um papa the music and the dancing we have a ball so
it's just great fun for you to end your your your uh at least the cruise part in vilshaven
so ladies and gentlemen the rivers and the wine they continue to flow it's been my great pleasure
to be able to walk you through this wonderful melodies of the danube group that jackie and
john matthews are going to be escorting thank you for listening to my stories i look forward
to having you come on on the waterways and really have a vacation of a lifetime
thank you so much
you