Hello there!
My parents are taking a Danube river cruise in May, and I wanted to get them a Rick Steves' guidebook, but it doesn't look like there is one. Does anyone have any alternatives? I'm going to get them the Prague and Budapest Rick guides, but would also like something that covers their cruise.
Any suggestions are welcome!
Which cruise line?
Not all Danube cruises are the same. What are the start and end points? The Danube flows through 10 countries.
PS Prague is not on the Danube.
@CJean. Many River cruises include a visit to Prague before or after a Danube Cruise.
Sorry, I saw no mention by the OP of pre/ post cruise add ons. All they said was that it was a Danube cruise with one of its stops in Budapest. I tend to respond to what is written, and try not to assume what an OP may have intended. Depending on the cruise, and cruise company, the cruise could start and end in many different cities. Without knowing the particular itinerary, how can anyone suggest guidebooks? Because it will have to include multiple books. I know of no guidebook which includes all possible port stops along the Danube.
Karsteele sorry for all the quibbling. I am guessing the cruise in question is maybe one of the 3 below. Knowing which or at least the stops, because almost every cruise makes different stops, some folks here might be able to suggest some resources.
Avalon Waterways: Offers a 10-day itinerary featuring two nights in Prague, a transfer to Nuremberg, and a cruise to Budapest.
Tauck: Features a 12-day Danube journey starting with a deep exploration of Prague before heading to the ship.
Uniworld & Scenic: Both offer central European packages combining multi-night land stays in Prague with luxury Danube cruising.
Find out their cruise stops and check those tour books out of the library. Copy the relevant pages, staple together and share with your parents. They don’t need the whole country tour books. Voila!
Depending on which company the cruise is with, guidebooks may be overkill. We have done 2 river cruises with Tauck, and the excursions they included (at no extra cost) at most locations didn’t leave us a lot of time to fill, though we did do one or two things on our own at many of the stops. Almost all meals were on the ship.
On the other hand, it seems that Viking tends to give you an orientation tour and then charges extra (a LOT extra) for excursions to selected sights. I’m sure other lines do the same. In that case, there could be a lot more free time to fill. The suggestion about getting tour books from the library and copying a few pages is a good one. Or doing some targeted internet searches and putting together a synopsis is another.
Viking which sails the Danube (and the Main/Rhine/other) river from Budapest to Amsterdam offers a "resource" page with suggested reading prior to their cruise. Maybe, once you know their itinerary, you can pick one or two other books beyond a guidebook for them to read.
One of the recommendations is The Danube - A Cultural History " ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10438603-the-danube )
The Danube is the longest river in western and central Europe. Rising amidst the beautiful wooded hills of Germany's Black Forest, it touches or winds its way through ten countries and four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea through a vast delta whose silt filled channels spread across eastern Romania. From earliest times, the river has provided a route from Europe to Asia that was followed by armies and traders, while empires, from the Macedonian to the Habsburg, rose and fell along its length. Then, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Danube took on the role of a watery thread that unified a continent divided by the Iron Curtain. In the late 1980s the Iron Curtain lifted but the Danube valley soon became an arena for conflict during the violent break up of the former Yugoslavia. Now, passing as it does through some of the world's youngest nations, including Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Moldova, and Ukraine, the river is a tangible symbol of a new, peaceful, and united Europe as well as a vital artery for commercial and leisure shipping. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of the landscape through which the Danube flows, where the enduring legacies of historical regimes from the Romans to the Nazis have all left their mark.
Find out their cruise stops and check those tour books out of the library. Copy the relevant pages, staple together and share with your parents. They don’t need the whole country tour books. Voila!
That seems like way too much trouble when you could just use Gemini or ChatGPT for that information.
Yesterday I asked ChatGTP to draw a map that located the 10 most popular tourist sights in Budapest. The map ChatGPT created showed 6 out of 10 sights in the wrong location.
Blockquote
you could just use Gemini or ChatGPT for that information
You would seriously trust either of those to give accurate information to your elderly parents who may not have travelled in Europe in recent years?
You would seriously trust either of those to give accurate information to your elderly parents who may not have travelled in Europe in recent years?
If they are on a Danube River cruise, they will always be with a group and will be very safe. If they want background information on the places they are going to see on the river cruise, yes I would trust Gemini or ChatGPT to give them some information.
I was responding to the suggestion that one should make a trip to the local library for information. If you take a look at a Viking cruise on the Danube, you can see that they stop at places like Krems and Passau. So one can take half a day in a probably fruitless search for information about Krems at the local library, or one can type into ChatGPT, "I am going on a Danube River cruise and one of the stops is Krems. Give me some information about Krems." And you will get 100 times more information that way and it will only take 10 seconds.
Tonight i aked ChatGTP about the dates and activities for christmas markets in a particular city. It presented all the information I needed and even threw in some pictures of the festivities. Then I went to check another nearby city using plain old google. I wanted to see what it looks like so i clicked on Google images .... wait, same imgaes as ChatGTP gave me for a different city. A few checks and sure enough ChatGTP was wrong with the pictures.
Yea, sure, trust it to plan your trip.
Yea, sure, trust it to plan your trip.
Well, to be clear, I was not talking about planning a trip by using AI. A river cruise like the OP was talking about is completely planned. There's no planning necessary. (Although I do use AI to help me plan trips and I find it incredibly useful.)
I was talking about getting information about some of the places they would stop at on their cruise. The original question was, how to get information about the cruise and the stops along the way. <That's the question at hand.
So, if, for example on the Viking cruise I looked at, the boat stops at Krems and Passau, and you wanted some information about Krems and Passau, how would you go about getting information about those places? Most people would say something like, "Well I would Google it." AI is about the same thing, it just puts all the search results into an article which is easily digestible. And whether you use Gemini or ChatGPT, in addition to the information the chatbot gives you, the result almost always includes links to where it got that information. So you can click on those links and see the original source of the information.
But anyway, how would you go about getting information about places along the route of the river cruise? What would you do instead of using AI?
