Cruising through the Rhine Gorge towards Rudesheim, a German wine region famous for its rieslings. Photo / Joanna Wane
Three rivers, six countries, an open bar and a personal butler service. Joanna Wane goes with the flow on a 15-day luxury river cruise.
We could have spent our afternoon in Rudesheim at a 15th-century knight’s residence that’s now a mechanical music museum with more than 400 self-playing instruments. Or we could have drunk wine made by Benedictine nuns at a medieval abbey. Instead, we walked in the footsteps of Elvis.
Part of the 1960 movie GI Blues was filmed in this centuries-old German town on the north bank of the Rhine, where our riverboat had parked up for the day. In one particularly corny sequence, Presley serenades his girlfriend as they ride the Rudesheim cable car to a monument overlooking the valley. Number 76, the car they snogged in, is still in operation today.
“Oh, love me tender in the cable car …” croons our tour guide, Andy, as we hike through a patchwork of vineyards blanketing the hillside. “I’ll stop singing now,” he says, with a grin. “I don’t want to ruin your day.”
The song featured in the movie is actually Pocketful of Rainbows and apparently there’s some doubt as to whether the scene was shot on location, although Presley really was stationed at a nearby US Army base the year before, meeting 14-year-old Priscilla at a party there.
Still, that’s not Rudesheim’s only claim to fame. According to Andy – a colourful but possibly slightly unreliable narrator – it’s also the birthplace of late-harvest riesling, one of the Rhine region’s most prized varietal wines.
Legend has it that back in the 18th century, ripe grapes were unintentionally left well past the usual harvest date and became infested with noble rot, a beneficial fungus that produces a sweeter finish.
The abbot who owned the vineyard was so thrilled with the result that they experimented with leaving the fruit even longer to shrivel on the vine, producing what’s now known as trockenbeerenauslese, a dry berry wine.
“Gentlemen,” says Andy, “only a kiss from your true love is sweeter.”
Last year, the town celebrated its 950th birthday, but the Romans began making wine here centuries earlier. It tasted like sour vinegar but was safer than imbibing dirty water from the Rhine. Locals continue to embrace that tradition today, Andy tells us.
“We still drink more wine than water.”
Well, in such a renowned wine region, it would be rude not to. We’ve arrived late in the river-cruising season and the terraced slopes – so steep the grapes must be harvested by hand – are ablaze with the golden colours of autumn. Soon, the Christmas markets will open, selling gluhwein (mulled wine) and roasted chestnuts, and there’ll be the chance of snow on the ground.
Catching the cable car down, we wind our way back to the boat, where two crew members are waiting with steaming flannels and cups of hot fruit tea. “Welcome home,” they say, scanning the personalised electronic cards that keep track of who is and isn’t on board. In the Panorama Lounge Bar, pre-dinner cocktails are being served.
Home – and that’s how guests are encouraged to think of it – is the Scenic Crystal, a 135m “space-ship” that carries some 160 highly pampered passengers. On our all-inclusive cruise, which covers restaurant-quality dining, an open bar, a choice of daily excursions and two exclusive onshore concert experiences, 57 crew members are looking after us. That’s a ratio of less than three to one.
Two days earlier, we’d set sail from Amsterdam, the starting point for a 15-day trip to Budapest (with Prague as an optional add-on). Taking in three major rivers – the Rhine, the Main and the Danube – it’s a popular option for first-timers like us who haven’t travelled on the water like this before.
In New Zealand, our rivers are wild and untamed. In Europe, they’re bustling multi-lane highways that have been essential transportation routes since ancient times. The German city of Cologne, our first stop on the Rhine for its twin-spired Gothic cathedral, was founded 2000 years ago.
Our balcony suite on the upper Sapphire Deck comes with a personal butler whose duties include a valet and shoeshine service. The minibar is restocked daily and room-service meals are available on request.
A sliding door alongside the bed opens to a small “sun lounge” with a full-length window that can be lowered to half mast for an uninterrupted view. Each morning, we pull back the curtains to see church spires emerging from the mist or the ruins of a castle looming on the hilltop.
An Australian company that originally specialised in land tours, Scenic has been running river cruises in Europe and South East Asia since 2008.
Its Antipodean origins make for a comfortably familiar vibe; the majority of our fellow passengers are Australian or Canadian, with a handful of Brits, Kiwis and Americans. When the Toronto Blue Jays go down to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Major League Baseball playoffs, the final game is screened in the lounge for a group of hardcore fans who don’t get to bed ‘til the early hours of the morning.
Generally, it’s an older crowd who have the time and financial resources to go on this kind of adults-only, five-star cruise. Most days, an off-boat outing is available for “gentle walkers”, but there’s also a small gym and complimentary e-bikes on board. We still come home a couple of kilograms heavier, though.
In Bamberg, a Bavarian town infamous for its polarising smoked beer, my husband and I go for a spin on our own. Cycling along beautiful tree-lined canals, we lose ourselves in a maze of cobblestone streets before stumbling on the fairytale Old Town, with its crooked buildings and colourful, half-timbered facades.
The last time I was in this part of Europe was backpacking with friends in the 1980s, stringing up our wet washing to dry on the train. One night in Amsterdam, we became so disoriented by the city’s maze of canals that one of the girls I was travelling with threw herself onto the bonnet of a passing police car and demanded to be taken back to our hostel.
The chocolate cake we’d consumed earlier may have been partly to blame. And here’s a hot tip: in Amsterdam, a “coffee shop” is a place where you can legally buy and consume cannabis products; to get a flat white, go to a cafe.
This time, I’m carrying a suitcase and unpack completely on the first morning. A week later, a bag of dirty laundry I leave on the bed (one complimentary batch per trip) is returned to the cabin perfectly folded in a black box and gift-wrapped with tissue. Our room is serviced twice a day, with a turn-down at night and chocolates left on the pillow.
From the Netherlands, we meander through Germany and Austria to Hungary, where we dock for the final time in Budapest. By then, we’ve dipped into another couple of countries, with optional day trips to the picture-perfect heritage town of Cesky Krumlov in Czechia and the grittier Slovakian capital of Bratislava, just across the border from Austria.
Over centuries, the borders that define these countries have constantly shifted according to the prevailing power; on my last visit to this corner of the world, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia still existed. Yet, for all the random lines drawn on a map, the cultural differences, from architectural design to the local cuisine, are often distinctly apparent.
History weighs heavily here, from the ornate plague monuments that dominate so many old town squares (the European equivalent of New Zealand’s war memorials) to the disdain for Napoleon’s destructive rampages in the early 19th century. Some of the towns and villages we cruise past are more than 1000 years old.
In Germany, a side trip takes us on the “Romantic Road” to Rothenburg in Bavaria, where a queue of people waits for the original Kathe-Wohlfahrt Christmas shop in the medieval old town to open. Inside, a rotating 5m-tall Christmas tree is guarded by a nutcracker doll, dressed with thousands of glittering lights.
If the crooked, yellow timber-frame building off the main square looks familiar, our guide tells us, that’s because Disney copied it for Geppetto’s house in Pinocchio. Parts of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were filmed here, too; the wooden “child catcher carriage” is on display outside the Medieval Crime and Justice Museum, which has a special exhibition on the 17th-century witch trials.
In Vienna, it’s the opening day of a month-long a cappella festival. On the edge of the city’s elegant shopping district, we stumble across a men’s group belting out The Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams from a balcony above the street.
Even this late in the season, the tourist trails around St Stephen’s Cathedral are crowded. In the heat of summer, the crush must be almost unbearable. The trade-off is that it’s pitch black by 4.30pm, and only the Viennese pull off looking stylish in a puffer jacket.
That night, we’re treated to a private classical concert at Palais Liechtenstein, a Baroque garden palace built by one of Europe’s oldest noble families. On display is an incredibly ornate 18th-century “golden carriage” – one of the few to survive the French Revolution.
Despite being warned not to approach it too closely, someone sets off the security alarm as we stand around sipping Champagne.
By now, life on board the boat has settled into a daily rhythm, primarily structured around food. A breakfast buffet (menu items on request), the Daily Wonder schedule of activities before and after lunch, pre-dinner drinks in the lounge with a port talk by cruise director Cathy Lasouski, and a three-course dinner, followed by the evening’s entertainment with Tolga, the enrichment officer. A charmer from Turin, his main job is to flirt shamelessly with everyone on board.
This is the last run of the season from Amsterdam to Budapest, but soon the Christmas market cruises will begin. One of the couples I chat with has done eight trips with Scenic so far, from exploring the Douro Valley in Portugal to sailing the Mekong River in Vietnam. They’ve even done this route in reverse, disembarking in Amsterdam.
In Budapest, where our voyage ends, the Danube slices the city in half. For me, it’s an absolute highlight of the trip. On our last night, the captain takes us for a bonus cruise to see the lights. Glowing on the river’s eastern bank, the Hungarian Parliament Building is a magnificent sight.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve not only ridden three rivers but navigated 68 canal locks to accommodate changes in the water level. On the section connecting the Danube and Main, there are 16 of them.
To mark the highest point, the boat throws a “lock party” on the top deck, and as we slowly rise from the bowels of the chamber, the triumphant notes of Vangelis’s Conquest of Paradise reverberate around us.
At the captain’s farewell drinks, all the crew are brought out to great applause, from executive chef Maman Sudiaman to a couple of dishwashers.
The quality and warmth of the service onboard has been truly outstanding and everyone has their personal favourite.
“I could get used to being called ‘my dear lady,’” someone says, referring to one of the butlers, who reminds me of Dev Patel in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Cathy, our indefatigable cruise director, gets a standing ovation. “The lady full of heart,” is how hotel director Enio Lovrovic describes her. Dragan, the onboard masseuse, is pretty popular, too.
“Twelve days ago, you embarked on this beautiful ship as a guest,” says Enio. “Two days from now, you’re going to leave this beautiful ship as friends and family.”
Like Cathy’s “titters before dinner” – a nightly joke where a hapless husband is usually the butt of the punchline – it’s kind of corny but we lap it up. And as my own long-suffering husband heaves our bags into the back of a taxi to the airport, the awful reality dawns on me. I’m back down from two butlers to one.
The writer travelled courtesy of Scenic on a Jewels of Europe river cruise, see scenicnz.com