Port & Destinations Issue 7

36 RIVER CRUISING
RIVER CRUISING
37
Quick
fix
Jane Archer finds great
value and fun facts on a
taster voyage along the
Danube with Nicko Cruises.
If you learn nothing else on cruises along the
Danube River, it’s that things are never quite
what they seem.
Take the cannon ball lodged in the façade
of one of the shops in Bratislava’s old town.
It was fired by Napoleon’s troops when he
bombarded the city in 1809. Or was it? Given
the French were firing from the river and the
building has its back to the water, it would
have been close to impossible for the ball to
have ended up where it is.
“In recompense for the damage done,
anyone whose property was hit was let off
taxes for a year,” guide Jana smiles. “Of course
people found the cannon balls and put them
into the fronts of their homes.”
I’m visiting the city, the capital of Slovakia,
on the penultimate day of an all-too-quick
four-night cruise on NickoVision, a river ship
owned by Nicko Cruises, a German river cruise
line sold through Cambridge-based Light Blue
Travel and making a name for itself in the UK.
Most of the other passengers on the cruise
are German, but there are 28 Brits on board.
Some are agents getting their first taste of
river cruising after Clia’s Riverview conference
in Vienna, others are holidaymakers, some
also river cruise virgins, who were tempted on
board by Light Blue’s great value fares, which
cover flights, transfers, drinks, tips and daily
excursions.
“It was a very good price so we thought we’d
give it a go,” one of the Brits told me. He was
with his wife and elderly mother, who doesn’t
travel much due to poor eyesight but was
managing well on the ship. Natalie, another
river cruise newbie, was so smitten that by
day two she was planning a pre-Christmas
getaway with Nicko.
NickoVision launched in 2018 and has
two decks of cabins with French balconies
(rooms on the lower deck have a fixed
window), a sauna, gym and small top-deck
pool. Unusually for a river ship of this size it
has three individual restaurants. The main
dining room and Manhattan, on the middle
deck and lower deck respectively, are open
for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mario’s Grill,
Esztergom's grand basilica towers over the River Danube. Below: A cabin, the main dining
room and Manhattan Restaurant on NickoVision. Left: A statue outside Esztergom basilica
depicts the crowning of St Stephen, Hungary's first king, on December 25 1000.
a more intimate eatery at the back of the
vessel, is open for lunch and dinner. All are
complimentary.
Our cruise, round-trip from Vienna and
calling into Budapest, Esztergom and
Bratislava, was a one-off, slipped in as a taster
for first timers and a little pre-season escape
for river regulars. Once over, NickoVision was
heading to Passau to start a summer season
of seven-night Blue Danube sailings.
English-language tours
There are separate English and Germanspeaking
tours in each city (and incidentally
no language problems on board as
announcements, menus and daily
programmes are in English and German,
and crew are bi-lingual) but I skip the one in
Budapest and instead strike out alone.
It’s a national holiday in Hungary,
commemorating the revolutions that swept
across Europe in March 1848, so most shops
are shut and some museums have free
entry. I visit one that remembers the tragic
events of 1956, when thousands were killed
and wounded after Soviet tanks rolled in to
Budapest to crush an uprising against the
Communist government.
In Esztergom, a sleepy place now but once
the capital of Hungary, a little train clunks
and clanks its way up to a grand basilica with
an enviable location looking down over the
river. Inside, is beautiful, with a massive altar
and walls lined with marble. Or are they?
Apparently it’s actually gypsum because they
couldn’t afford the real thing. And that brass
frieze? Gypsum painted to look like brass. As I
said, nothing on the Danube is what it seems.
In Bratislava, Nicko has arranged another
little train, this time to a castle up above
town and with views over the surrounding
countryside, where Jana tells us about life
when the city was part of Czechoslovakia and
trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
“We could see Austria but we could only
dream about what life there was like,” she
says. When her family finally got a pass to go
to the seaside after many years of applying,
one sister had to stay behind to make sure
the family didn’t abscond to the west.
Back in town Jana guides us through
streets lined with half-timbered houses and
restaurants and cafés – a sign that the city,
now just in Slovakia after splitting from the
Czech Republic, has left the past well and truly
behind it. Or has it? No river cruiser can miss
seeing the UFO bridge as they sail into town.
“It was built by the communists but we still
like it,” Jana laughs.
✔ A seven-night Blue Danube cruise roundtrip
from Passau and calling into Ybbs, Vienna,
Budapest, Bratislava and Melk this summer
costs from £1,755 per person all-inclusive.
MAY 2023 | STOWAWAY MEDIA