As we walked back to our cabin after an enjoyable evening in the lounge, our cruise manager Sharon, asked us stop by her desk as she had some news for us. As it turned out, her news was something we thought would never happen. Our second cruise through Eastern Europe on the Danube, which started the following Tuesday, had been cancelled due to low water that day. .

We were

taken aback to learn that this particular cruise had been cancelled. Although there had been many cancellations due to low water on the Danube west of Budapest this summer (2018), the Eastern stretch seemed to be a good choice when we booked in the spring. Low water had not yet been a problem on that stretch of the Danube.

We had booked two back to back cruises which were to be our Swan Song on the European rivers. The senior Rambler didn’t want to take anymore long flights, even in business class. and he really didn’t want to take any more cruises. However, this Rambler wasn’t ready to give up travel and she didn’t want to travel with anyone else so… Eventually he reluctantly agreed to the Bordeaux cruise., This was my choice because I enjoy traveling in France and drinking wine and because the Seine and the Garonne seemed to have plenty of water. Plus our Normandy cruise had been our favorite so far. The senior Rambler was more enthusiastic about the second cruise. From Bordeaux we would fly to Budapest and enjoy several days in that charming city as our second cruise didn’t start until Tuesday. We would then board the SS Beatrice for our journey towards Romania. We taken our first river cruise on the Beatrice and had really loved the ship. It had recently been remodeled and we were looking forward to seeing her again.

Michelle, our travel agent had booked our overseas flights and connectors, all business class, through Delta Travel and AAA, at a really good price. As the two cruises didn’t quite match up, we would have 3 nights at the excellent Corinthia Hotel in Budapest, before we would board the SS Beatrice for our cruise on the eastern Danube. Since Budapest had become one of my favorite cities, I was eagerly awaiting our stay there between cruises. At the end of our second cruise, we would stay one night in Romania before our flight back to Amsterdam, and our flight home.

The first part of the trip went right according to plan. We enjoyed our Delta One flight to Amsterdam and easily made our connecting flight to Bordeaux on a very small airplane. Our first class seats were right in the front on the KLM plane and we enjoyed a nice breakfast on our brief flight to Bordeaux. Little did we know that we would we would not be able to use two of our three remaining booked and paid for business class flights.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and if I had known what I know now, I probably would have gotten the airfare through Uniworld, as if they book the flight, and there is a problem, they will make the changes for you. When faced with a cancellation, instead of picking another Uniworld cruise, we should have taken the full refund for the second cruise Uniworld offered, and flown to Budapest anyway. We could have spent the time in Budapest, booking local tours and getting to visit my relatives in Bratislave. We couldn’t have made our flight to Amsterdam from Romania since we ended up in Budapest, but there may have been time to change the flight. At least we wouldn’t have had to pay for an expensive last minute fare.

However, we didn’t make either of these choices. Unworld had also offered us an option of taking one of three other cruises. I might interject that several other couples had also booked back to back cruises and had to make the same choice we did. Working with Sharon on the River Royale and Michelle back in Georgia, we weighed the options. The cost had been substantial as we had booked a suite for this supposedly last cruise, but I didn’t really consider the Budapest option at this time. C,ruising is what I was looking forward to, not staying at a hotel, however nice. That’s what happens when you have to make a decision at the last minute. You are actually forced to make a choice at the last minute. Not being an impulsive person, by nature, I usually take time to weigh all my options. This time, there wasn’t any time. We had to decide by the next morning at the latest.

None of the cruises that were available had a suite available, unfortunately, but Uniworld offered us two cabins for the Provence cruise on the SS Catherine. Since our cabins on the River Royale were on the small side, this had some appeal and the Cruise Director was Emmanuelle Bonneau who we knew and liked from past cruises. In the end, we chose the Provence cruise, with two cabins. However, our choice meant that we had to get to Lyon from Bordeaux before the Catherine sailed at 5 PM. This would be tricky since not only did we have to book at the last minute but there weren’t many flight choices. As it turned out, our only option was to fly EasyJet on a very early morning flight. One of our daughters was horrified, exclaiming that EasyJet was the Greyhound of the sky, another just wanted us to come home.

Fortunately, we took Sharon’s advice not our daughters’ as EasyJet turned out to be a good choice. Sharon reassured us that most of the crew flew EasyJet and had no problems, but one thing we needed to know was that they were very strict about having one carry-on. Otherwise you would be assessed a fee before you could board. This didn’t seem to be a problem for us as my purse would easily fit into my carry-on and the senior Rambler didn’t have an extra bag. So that was set, Uniworld would take to the Bordeaux Airport at 5 AM for our flight to Lyon where we would again be met by a Uniworld representative.

The flight back to Amsterdam at the end of the cruise was more problematic. Hindsight being 20/20 again, we should have booked our flight home from Avignon to Amsterdam on EasyJet, but we stuck with Delta, hoping we could get a credit four the two flights we missed, but unfortunately we didn’t. The flight from Marseilles, the closest airport to Avignon with flights to Amsterdam, cost us over $1,000. Ouch. EasyJet would have been much cheaper. When our daughter who didn’t want us to fly Easy Jet heard we were going to fly our of Marseilles, she again was annoyed with us. She cited the high crime rate in Marseilles and when we meekly said, we were only going to the airport, and would spend no time in the city, she still wasn’t happy.

The final problem was what we would do in Amsterdam, for the six days before our scheduled business class flight home to Atlanta. That didn’t seem to be much of an issue, as there are many things to see and do in Amsterdam. However, we did need a hotel room for our stay and I booked at the Hyatt near Schipol, as they had an excellent free airport shuttle. Little did I know how much we would appreciate that shuttle during our time in Amsterdam. The Hyatt wasn’t the fanciest hotel we every stayed at but all the staff were friendly and welcoming so it turned out to be a good choice.

With our new schedule in place, we had one more day cruising and another in Bordeaux before we would head off to Lyon via EasyJet and an entirely different cruise than we had expected.

No photos for this blog entry as you might expect.