Vienna was great, but it’s time to move on. We’re going to board a boat and go cruisin’ down the Danube river. We’ve done some river cruising before. It’s a nice way to travel. Maybe our favorite. C’mon. Let’s go!
We took a taxi down to the docks and found our boat – our home for the next ten days. This can be challenging. River cruising has become so popular in Europe, two or more boats might be moored at the docks – and they all look alike.
Riverboats
Riverboats in Europe are long, low, and skinny. They’re shaped like popsicle sticks. They’re made this way so they can squeeze under bridges and through locks on Europe’s long rivers.
The boats are designed to operate in shallow water. The depth to which a boat lies under the water’s surface is called “draft” in boat-talk. The boat we’ll be on has a draft of only four feet.
Hmmm… If we’re going to be riverboat people for the next ten days, we ought to learn some of the lingo, eh?
Now we know what “draft” is. How about the “beam” of one of these boats? The beam is the width of the boat at its widest point. The beam of our boat is 37 feet.
That doesn’t seem like much, and it’s not. But the boat is 137 feet long. See? Almost the same width-to-length ratio as a popsicle stick.
Do you know what the nautical term for a boat’s length is? Me neither. As far as I can tell, “length” in boat-talk is just “length.” Why there would be special boating terms for everything else, but not for length? I don’t know.
Argh!
To continue… “port” is on your left when you’re facing the front of the boat. “Starboard” is on your right. These are important terms. Using “left” and “right” on a boat will just get everyone confused. One can imagine the pirates of old… “I said heave to your left!”
“I did heave to the left!”
“Aaaarghhhh! Your OTHER left, ya swab!”
There was probably a lot less arguin’ and fightin’ in the pirate world after they started using “port” and “starboard.”
To board the boat, we walked across a gangway on the port side. Multiple crewmen took our bags and showed us to our room. They wouldn’t let us lift a finger.
We’re on Board
Our room was small by normal standards, of course, but by riverboat standards, I imagine it was pretty good size. We’ve stayed in smaller hotel rooms than this in Paris. Well, we did once anyway…
I wanted to stay in the Marais district. We booked a tiny room on the top floor of a hundred year old building. Its French doors opened out onto a slanted slate roof. The view was that classic picture of Parisian rooftops with chimneys sticking up everywhere. Classic. So what if we have to crawl over the bed to get to the bathroom? But I digress.
After settling in and checking out the boat, we went to the dining room, located at the ship’s stern. Glass walls on three sides provided a panoramic river view.
The service was exceptional. It seemed like there were as many servers as there were diners. We found out later that a group of 40 people had cancelled at the last minute, so our boat would only be about two-thirds full. Good for us!
The sun went down as we ate, drank, and watched from the dining room. Food and alcohol was included in the price of the cruise, so the vino was flowing. We called it a day, conked out, and slept through the night.
In the morning, I got up and I pulled the curtains back. Whoa! We were moving quickly down the Danube. The ride was so smooth, I had no idea that the boat was moving.
We were already halfway to our first stop – Bratislava, Slovakia. New territory for us, for sure. This should be interesting.
To be continued…
Photo at the top of this post of a boat cruising down a European river. Credit: extravagantni/istockphoto
