BudgetTravel

And there were experiences that we simply never would've planned on our own. Our first night in Vienna was one of the few evenings with no scheduled activity. Neither Richard nor I had been to the city, so we took the easy way out and bought Viking's excursion to the Palais Auersperg, where the Vienna Residence Orchestra performed a beautiful concert of Strauss and Mozart.

To be honest, we really began to have fun when we went off on our own. The same night that we went to the opera, two other couples had dinner at a place called Figlmüller, and raved about it. Inspired, we skipped the next day's tour of Schönbrunn Palace and explored Vienna without a guide--and tracked down Figlmüller for lunch. We sat next to a couple from Hamburg, who laughed knowingly as the restaurant's signature Wiener schnitzel arrived. It was the size of a medium pizza. Then we stumbled across an outdoor market where I haggled lightheartedly with an elderly gentleman over antique Christmas ornaments.

The Danube, as seen from a bridge in Regensburg (Jessica Antola) DOWNLOADABLE CRUISE CHECKLIST Download the handy checklist, print it out, cut on the dotted lines, and take it with you. You can also give them to your friends! If you don't already have it, you will need Adobe Acrobat, a free (and easy!) plug-in, to read the checklist. Download the checklist Download Adobe Acrobat APRIL 2007 ISSUE • Table of Contents: April 2007 • Secret Hotels of California Wine Country • River Cruising in Eastern Europe • My Brooklyn Is Better Than Yours • The Cool List: Best New Thrills • Web Smart: Booking Cruises Online • Road Trip: Michigan's Upper Peninsula • 40 Best

When we docked overnight at Vilshofen, Germany, Richard and I left the ship around 9 p.m. for a stroll through town, where we discovered IO Expressio, a lively wine and coffee bar owned by a hip couple. No one knew where we'd gone--we felt like kids sneaking out of the house.

Cruising on the River
Unlike on Caribbean cruises, with stretches where all you can see is vast open water, there was always something historic in view along the riverbank. It was mesmerizing to watch the progression from farmland to villages to cities, then back again. When we sailed through a particularly notable or scenic area (such as when we entered Budapest at dawn, passing under the famous Széchenyi Chain Bridge and the Liberty Bridge), cruise director Casey gave us interesting commentary over the loudspeakers around the ship.

For all of the rigidness of the trip, and the occasions when it could feel a bit stifling, there was a big upside to the small-ship experience: Namely, we met some fantastic people. It's the kind of thing that you certainly can't take for granted on a ship with 3,000 passengers; even though there are so many more people around, you have to make much more of an effort to actually engage. It's the difference between a small town and a big city, or between going away to a college of 700 students versus one of 10,000 students.

My fondest memory of the trip is of an afternoon we spent aboard the ship. It was a beautiful, sunny day as we left Melk, Austria, then cruised through the glorious Wachau Valley toward Vienna. Fred, Suzanne, Jeanne, and Brant joined Richard and me out on the top deck. We had purchased wine, cheese, sausages, crackers, and bread while in Melk, and we had a makeshift picnic.

As the hillsides dotted with castles, country roads, and vineyards glided by, we ate, drank, and talked about nothing, the way friends do, discussing which of the cheeses was the most delicious and figuring out who bought the least expensive bottle of wine (it was Brant, for E1.20). And despite the fact that we weren't dining on china or drinking from crystal--in fact, we were using water glasses for the wine and a corkscrew as a knife--we felt a little like European royalty.

Booking a Cruise
It's possible to book a Viking River Cruise through a travel agent or directly through the cruise line (877/668-4546, vikingrivercruises.com). Other lines that run sailings on the Danube and other rivers include Avalon Waterways (877/797-8791, avalonwaterways.com), Grand Circle Travel (800/959-0405, gct.com), Peter Deilmann Cruises (800/348-8287, deilmann-cruises.com), and Uniworld (800/360-9550, uniworld.com).