River Cruising through the Balkan Danube with APT

I was beyond delighted when I heard I had been chosen to have the opportunity to go on a Balkan river cruise with APT. After the wonderful experience on the Emerald Douro river cruise last year, I decided that river cruising could perhaps be one of my favourite forms of transport, and this Balkan cruise reaffirmed that thought!

We boarded the MS AmaVerde in Giurgiu in Romania, around an hour’s drive from Bucharest. This was to be the starting point for our 1151km journey down the Danube, from Giurgiu to Budapest.

On boarding this beautiful ship, it was evident we would have a fantastic week. APT/AMA ships have spacious rooms and beautiful upper decks with small swimming pools (and on some ships, a pool bar) as well as two restaurants, a comfortable lounge area and many other facilities.

On our first full day we had a choice of two tours in Bulgaria – Veliko Tarnovo or the Rock Hewn Church Hike. I took the latter and loved the gentle hike into the Rock Hewn churches. These churches dating back many years were beautifully preserved, and we saw murals dating back to the 14th century. The second day we sailed the final stretch of the Bulgarian Danube and docked in Vidin. This allowed us a stroll straight from the ship into this interesting town. In the afternoon we had a tour to the Baba Vida fortress and then to the rock formations at Belogradchik. These were bizarrely shaped rock formations which came complete with equally bizarre legends, such as ‘the bear’, ‘the shepherd boy’ and so on due to what they resembled.

On our third day we had a day at sea, the only day on this trip with no planned activities. We spent a very pleasant day in the on board pool watching the scenery go by – a pastime I would recommend to anyone! We passed through the beautiful Iron Gates and other rock formations, including Trajan’s Tablet and the carved face of King Decebal.

We arrived in Serbia the next day and docked close to Novi Sad. Music fans may recognise this as the location for Exit festival, which takes place at the Fortress. In the afternoon we had a more sombre outing after docking at Vukovar in Croatia. This town was completely devastated during the Yugoslavian civil war and you can see the remnants of the devastation and hear the horrific stories from that time. The visit ended with a visit to Ilok and a wine tour.

The last two days took us to Hungary, one day at the medieval town of Kalosca and then the following day in the well-known capital of Budapest! Budapest is simply beautiful, and the tour took us to both sides of this wonderful capital. The beauty doesn’t manage to hide a sad past however, and with most of these locations on the Danube there are monuments to the devastation left behind by the Nazis in the second world war, including the poignant sculpture of the shoes on the Danube itself.

This is a magnificent voyage and one that took me to places I may otherwise not have visited. I would recommend a tour to this end of the Danube. The raw beauty of many of these places and the history is something everyone should discover, and travelling by River cruise is probably the ideal way to do it.