River cruises focus on the destination – Leader

On the Viking Freya, most of the staterooms measure 135 to 205 square feet.

One night I found a towel elephant along with the daily newsletter on my bed.

Those are about all she has in common with the cruise ships lined up at Port Miami and Port Everglades in Florida.

The 443-foot ship cruises rivers – this year she’s on the Danube.

She has no swimming pool, no spa, no salon, no casino, no children’s clubs, no fitness center, no hot tub, no belly-flop contest, no art sale, no pricey alternative restaurant, no wall of snapshots you can buy for $19.99 each.

There’s almost no nightlife, just a pianist who also sings, and maybe a trivia contest in the lounge – which usually clears out by 11 p.m.

No beach parties are on the list of shore excursions; no Margaritavilles await at the ports the ship visits.

Everything is set up for Viking’s target demographic: affluent English-speakers age 55 and up.

A cruise on Viking Freya is destination-oriented, with at least one stop a day and a history-intensive guided tour – at no extra charge – in most ports. Almost everyone goes.

If you want to skip a port and stay on board, there are lounge chairs on the top deck by the chef’s herb garden, board games in the library and lots of well-lighted spots for reading.

The ship is short and squat and has almost no curves. Her best physical feature is floor-to-ceiling windows in the public spaces with excellent views out and lovely light coming in.

On the Aquavit Terrace, the windows retract in good weather and turn it into an outdoor lounge.

She’s my kind of cruise ship.

Viking Freya, two years old and holding no more than 190 guests, is part of the first generation of Viking’s Longships, vessels the line is building and launching at lightning speed to remain the biggest company on the rivers of the world.

This summer, the California-based line will have 53 ships, most of them sailing Europe’s rivers, and half a dozen in Asia and Egypt.

By the end of 2015, it will have 64 ships.

Freya launched in April 2012. As with all Viking ships – and any line’s river cruise ship – its size and shape were limited by the rivers it would sail and any locks on those rivers.

The ships must be slim enough for river channels with ships passing in both directions and low enough to pass under bridges. That leaves no room for most of the basic amenities on oceangoing cruise ships.

The journey I took was the Danube Waltz, a seven-night cruise from Passau, Germany, to Budapest, Hungary, with a day in each of those cities plus four stops in Austria and one in Bratislava, Slovakia.

My cruise was in April, when we had mostly cold and sometimes rainy mornings and a few sunny afternoons. We spent little time in the lounge chairs on the top deck.

Accustomed to the monotonous stretches of blue on ocean cruises, I soaked up the views: small villages, old stone bridges and abutments, the ruins of castles and fortresses, steeples peeking above ridges.

Viking ships have only one dinner seating in the main dining room, and a lighter menu in the indoor/outdoor Aquavit Terrace one deck above, but dinner hours in both are roughly the same. The ships have no place for late-night burgers and ice cream.

My shipmates were sophisticated travelers. For many, it was their first river cruise, but it wasn’t their first trip to Europe.

Some passengers were repeat Viking customers. Many had been on ocean cruises and didn’t like them; some didn’t care to try.

The dining room has no assigned seating. Some people struck up friendships and dined together for the rest of the cruise.

Others sat at a different table each night and made new acquaintances. The smallest tables in the main dining room seat six, in Aquavit Terrace, four, so the only option if an anti-social cruiser was aboard was to carry their dinner back to their room (there is no room service).

On one afternoon, the Viking Freya went through the biggest lock on the trip and the only one we went through in daylight. We crowded the rail of the top deck, through some delays, before the captain guided the ship in.

The water dropped so slowly that it was imperceptible. Then the metal barrier behind us poked above the water, and a seagull walked nonchalantly across. Cameras snapped all around.

Eventually, the water level dropped 60 feet, leaving us in a dark canyon, sunlight above. Then the two gates in front parted, and we sailed out.

If there was one thing I’d change about my cruise, it would be the tours – too much history and architecture, too little art, music or modern life.

Some of what I liked about the cruise: The crew was well-trained and attentive. The tours and other activities were well-organized and ran smoothly. I wasn’t nickeled and dimed. No one was pushing photos, jewelry by the inch, the drink of the day or dinner in an alternative restaurant that cost extra.

Wine and beer were included with meals, and there was no corkage fee if we bought wine off the ship to have with dinner. In fact, other than at the bar, it was hard to spend money on board.

I also liked Viking’s willingness to detour from the conventional, whether it was the chef’s organic herb garden on the top deck, an experiment with a new tour of Vienna’s street market led by the chef de cuisine, or an Austrian-themed dinner where we took our plates to the galley for the main course and got a glimpse of behind-the-scenes operations that seemed oddly intimate.

On the final day, some passengers were leaving as early as 3 a.m. to catch flights back to the United States.

The last guests would be off the Viking Freya by 9:30 a.m., and a few hours later, the crew would welcome new guests for a cruise back up the Danube, doing our itinerary in reverse.

Dinner was a little rowdy as we said our farewells. We exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, bought each other drinks, talked about where we would go next, wondered how our clothing seemed to take up more room in our suitcases than it did on the way over.

McClatchy-Tribune

McClatchy-Tribune photos