A slower kind of cruise: our week on the Danube
As I sit down to write this, it’s been well over a month since we got back from the Danube. Wedding planning (September is creeping up alarmingly fast), work and life in general all got in the way, and this post has taken longer to land than I meant it to. But I didn’t want it slipping by, because we had the best time, and it felt like a genuinely different holiday to the one I wrote about last summer.
It was also a rare trip without Dezzie. He stayed behind for a holiday of his own with my parents, and going by the photos I got sent, he had just as good a week as I did.
If you’ve read my other posts, you’ll remember our ocean cruise as a whirlwind: five countries in seven days, hopping off the ship for a highlight or two before hopping straight back on. My body never quite caught up. It was brilliant, but by the end I was running on empty. This time, it was our first ever river cruise, with TUI along the Danube on an itinerary called Danube Treasures. I wanted to see if a slower pace would suit me better. Turns out, it really did!
Read more: Marella Cruises review as a disabled person
We arrived into Budapest and headed straight to the main indoor market, soaking up the atmosphere before we’d even properly unpacked. That evening, we watched the Hungarian Parliament building light up gold from the deck of the TUI Skyla as we pulled away and started sailing overnight to Bratislava.
Trying the rollator
The other big difference was trying a rollator for the first time, the byACRE Carbon Overland, gifted to me by Assist Mobility. I named it Rolly within about a day, because apparently that’s just what I do with mobility aids. Plus, a name always makes it feel less clinical. I’ve written a full review of how Rolly coped with cobbles, kerbs and everything else a European city threw at it, over on their site, so I won’t repeat that here. This blog post isn’t part of that collaboration, it’s just me, telling you how the trip actually felt.
Emotionally, it was a lot more to unpack than I expected. I already knew, from how my body had coped the previous summer, that without it I’d be paying for this trip in pain, fatigue and days of payback afterwards. Add 6 months with sciatica, and getting the rollator stopped feeling optional and started feeling like common sense. There was relief, real relief, at having something that could take the weight off. But it’s also a much more visible mobility aid than what I’m used to, and that took some getting my head around before we’d even left home. Was everyone about to start looking at me differently now? Was I disabled enough to need this kind of aid?
Another kind of worry
There was another kind of worry sitting underneath that too. Being visually impaired, I genuinely didn’t know if a rollator would work for me at all. It turned out to help in ways I hadn’t expected. George could still guide me, whether that meant calling out obstacles ahead or resting a hand on the backrest to gently steer me round something I hadn’t seen coming. Because Rolly sits out in front of you, I found I could actually feel uneven ground and obstacles through it before I reached them myself, more warning than I usually get. More than once, I caught myself thinking, why haven’t I tried one of these before?
Once I felt the difference it made, day after day, that fear went away fast. This was helped along by discovering nobody paid it much attention anyway. If anything, people asked about it because it looked good, not because it looked medical. It couldn’t have gone any better and it was certainly the right rollator for me.
Getting Rolly around
George ended up doing most of the carrying, folding Rolly up and down steps and on and off trams, and he said it was surprisingly lightweight and easy to manage. That mattered more than I expected it to, because it meant using it never became something either of us had to think twice about.
Onboard, I didn’t use Rolly at all. There was no lift on the ship, and depending on where we’d docked, getting off sometimes meant a set of stairs or two. George carried Rolly down, light enough that it was never a struggle for him, while I took the stairs myself. I saved my energy for being off the ship, since that’s where Rolly could actually do something for me. It worked for us, but only because I can manage stairs at all. With no lift on board, the same set-up simply wouldn’t be doable for everyone, and that feels worth saying plainly rather than glossing over.
Using Rolly onboard was never really the point though. The point was what happened the moment we stepped off the ship, to give me the support for a day of walking and exploring a new city.
Having the chance to be supported physically, have my weight evenly distributed and a seat whenever I needed it completely changed how I physically handled this trip. My pain and fatigue were so much lower and I could spend more time enjoying myself, rather than calculating the energy I’d need to get to our evening at the end of each day.
If I didn’t need Dezzie, or the wider support that comes with being visually impaired, I think Rolly would genuinely be my main mobility aid for longer day trips. Unfortunately using a guide dog and Rolly at the same time isn’t possible.
How we explored
We also changed how we approached each stop. On the ocean cruise we’d booked an excursion most days, but this time we booked just two for the whole week. We’d loved the days on the ocean cruise where we’d had nothing booked and could just wander a town at our own pace.
A river cruise moors you so much closer to the centre of wherever you are, so making our own way round felt like the obvious choice. Most evenings we’d sit in on a talk about wherever we were heading next, then spend the rest of the evening planning the following day around it.
We had a rough plan, but nothing fixed, which meant we could build each day around how much energy I had and what the weather was doing, rather than someone else’s timetable. That’s the difference between coming home needing a holiday to recover from your holiday, and not. We were so lucky with the weather too, it only rained once all week, despite what earlier forecasts had predicted.
That was all deliberate on our part to make this trip easier from a physical point of view. What wasn’t deliberate was how accessible the ship’s own schedule turned out to be. Needing to be back on board by a set time each day meant rest got built into the trip whether I’d have chosen it or not. Left to my own devices, I’ll always try to fit in one more thing rather than stop, especially when you only have one day in a city. A river cruise doesn’t really give you that option, and completely by accident, that turned out to be one of the most accessible things about the whole week.
What do you mean my only choice is to sit with a hot chocolate, a cookie and a good book while we watch the world pass by?! Yes exploring was great, but I believe this helped me to get to the end of the week without major payback.
Bratislava
Bratislava was all about having a wander and taking in the landmarks at our own pace, along a cobbled promenade that ran right beside the river. The real highlight was finding a tea room built into an old bomb shelter underground. We ended up staying for a few hours, no itinerary to race back to, just chatting, catching up, and the best cup of chai I’ve ever had.
Dürnstein
Dürnstein was tiny by comparison, really just one main street. So despite it being a short port day we didn’t feel short-changed. We walked along the river, took in the landmarks, and made it our mission to try everything apricot the town had to offer: ice cream, chocolate and a bit of gin.
The lanes up towards the abbey were narrow and properly cobbled, but I was able to lift Rolly over the smaller steps myself. It was light enough to do without much thought, which said a lot. Apricots became something of a running theme for the rest of the trip too, which I certainly didn’t complain about.
Back on board, the food was genuinely lovely, and with unlimited hot drinks and chocolate cookies on tap, we made very good use of both.
Linz
Linz started with the best breakfast of the trip, bread, hummus and vegetables. After that, just a quick look around the Hauptplatz and the surrounding area. We also picked up a Linzer torte to share. In hindsight, we should have got one each…
The afternoon was a different kind of day entirely. We visited Mauthausen, a former concentration camp nearby. This was one of the excursions we’d booked ahead of the trip. It was a somber experience, but it felt important to do, and it’s stayed with us since.
Vienna
Vienna was the furthest we travelled from the ship each day, so we used the underground, which turned out to be genuinely easy and accessible.
Our first stop was Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the zoo within the palace grounds. The zoo was enormous, a huge range of animals, and I saw pandas in real life for the first time, something I genuinely hadn’t expected to tick off on this trip. The enclosures were brilliant too, spacious and clearly well thought through. Having Rolly to sit on between them made a real difference to how much of it I could actually enjoy.
In the afternoon we headed into the centre and found Stephansplatz, the overall vibe felt surprisingly similar to London. We picked up a cake with apricot jam, because I clearly could not get enough! Then we found some streets with far fewer crowds, which we preferred to the main square, finishing with a walk through Resselpark.
On our second day in Vienna, after heading back to the same tube station, we visited the Sigmund Freud Museum. As someone with a psychology degree, this was very much up my street, and I learned something I genuinely didn’t know before: Freud was instrumental in how cerebral palsy first came to be diagnosed. While I knew I’d enjoy the museum, this was more personal than I was expecting.
Back in Budapest
Our final full day was back in Budapest, where we went to see the Shoes on the Danube memorial. After Mauthausen a few days earlier, it meant more than it would have on its own, one memorial sitting differently because of the other. We also visited St Stephen’s Basilica, the second of our two excursions for the week. It was an interesting tour, but with Budapest being the main reason we booked this trip, we were keen to explore the streets independently again.
The Jewish Quarter was the part of the city I loved most. Less touristy, more atmosphere, we went looking for the street art and just wandered. By this point in the trip my energy was dipping and pain was higher, so we stopped often, cafes, bars, wherever looked good.
I loved taking in this city. We never even made it across to Buda, the other side of the river, but that just means we’ll have to go back!
Would I do it again?
Without question. Between Rolly, the slower pace and having the confidence to plan each day around my own energy, I’ve found a way to travel differently. It still lets me see everything I want to see and we ticked plenty of places off the bucket list.
Rolly is also an excellent travel companion (as well as George!) and I’m sure it won’t be my last trip using it.
I wouldn’t say it’s better than an ocean cruise as they’re very different and will suit different types of holiday. Unfortunately that means we’d be happy to go on either type of cruise again…
Have you done a river cruise, or found a different way of travelling that works better for your body than you expected? I’d love to hear about it.
~ Chloe x
