Chart a leisurely course along the romantic lower Danube River aboard ms Swiss Sapphire or Tauck's luxury riverboat, exploring the rich cultural legacies of Central Europe's ancient heart. Cruise by medieval monasteries, citadels and villages, and through the Iron Gate of the Danube. Attend a Romanian folk wedding performance at a popular Black Sea resort, and a tasting at a Hungarian winery. Learn all about paprika, and examine one of the finest Baroque libraries in Europe. Share local specialties with your Bulgarian contemporaries at a special home-hosted lunch; meet a Croatian family rebuilding their lives in postwar Vukovar; and choose to visit a Transylvanian castle or the isolated island monastery where the original Dracula is said to be entombed. One of several Danube cruises from Tauck, this memorable journey travels through Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, with two nights on land at ideally located city-centre hotels in Budapest and Bucharest.
Departures
20 May; 12 Aug; 23 Sep 2012.
Inclusions
- Gratuities to ship staff, drivers, local guides, Tauck Directors and Tauck Cruise Director
- All private Tauck shore excursions – $614 Value!
- Two nights at a hotel in Budapest city center and two nights in Bucharest at a hotel next to Parliament
- Visit with a Croatian family in their private home in Vukovar
- Visits to Bucharest’s massive People’s Palace and to the Baroque Bishop’s Palace Library in Hungary
- Private piano performance on a visit to the Béla Bartók Memorial House in Budapest
- Passage through the celebrated Iron Gate, a dramatic series of gorges and narrows on the Danube River
- Choice of Romanian excursions – to Bran Castle in Transylvania, or to Snagov Monastery, reputed burial place of the original Dracula, and Caldarusani Monastery
- Private visit to the Royal Palace of Dedinje in Belgrade, once home to Serbian kings
- Airport transfers upon arrival and departure as noted
- 28 meals (11 breakfasts, 8 lunches, 9 dinners); wine with dinner on the riverboat; service charges, taxes, porterage, and applicable fuel surcharge
- Voted by the readers of Travel + Leisure as 2011 "World's Best River Cruise Line"