Overall delightful trip, excellent weather after a first rainy day, enjoyable side trips, mostly entertaining personable guides. Delicious food all meals. Veranda stateroom on port side had good views most of the time with room to sit on the porch and watch the scenery. Especially fun in the locks and Budapest at night.

Embarkation Budapest airport to hotel (because boat was an hour and a half away with low water) bus dropped us a block from the hotel in rain and didn't offer any umbrellas. One of our party was walking with a walker so got soaked walking to the hotel. An auspicious start. Once on the boat we felt more welcomed. The boat shift, while unavoidable, was still a disappointment because we didn't learn of it until we had completely unpacked and made ourselves at home. At least giving us an inkling it was a possibility initially might have saved some trouble as we mightn't have unpacked so thoroughly. Changing crews dampened the "you're home" feeling for the last two days as we had entirely different staff who didn't know us nor seem as interested in trying to be friendly. (we started on the Tor and shifted to the Var). I suspect it may be that their portion of the tips would be less from us and changing over the ship twice as often was a lot of work for them--fresh bedding, cleaning, etc. The ships were identical in layout, however, so there was no learning curve on where things were. Layout was the same.

Would like to see a small workout room opportunity on the boat--recumbent bike, treadmill, stairclimber maybe--because sometimes I just wanted to work up a sweat a little. The tours were nice but the pace was generally relaxed (good for most of our travel group) and with all the good food, more exercise would be nice. Free time in the villages gave some opportunity for brisk walks a couple of days, but not on the tours.