Options
Grand European River Cruise August 2019
What is the most appropraite dress for venues on this trip and for weather conditions in August? This is our first time taking a river cruise.
0
What is the most appropraite dress for venues on this trip and for weather conditions in August? This is our first time taking a river cruise.
Comments
Dress on river cruises is the number one topic here and there are tons of old posts on this.
Glancing at this itinerary it appears to be the family version of the Budapest to Amsterdam cruise we just took. Just the opposite direction. In general river cruises are fairly casual. Day wear pretty much whatever you're comfortable in depending on weather. They have had heat waves in Europe lately so do a 10 day forecast before final final packing. For evening they discourage very casual items like jeans, logo tshirts, sneakers, short shorts, flip flops, etc. Slacks and a nicer top is plenty.
There is one fancy dress evening in Vienna and most all the men wore sport coats/ties and women in dresses or dressy slacks and top. The farewell dinner on board people made an effort to dress up a bit too.
This is what I know for adult dress after 4 Tauck river cruises. For kids i have no idea. I suspect they don't expect as much from them. In the 4 years I've been on this forum, those who take the bridges tours pretty much only ever ask questions - they don't answer them or come back with feedback/reviews. Maybe I'll be wrong here and someone will pipe up. I hope so.
If you have any other questions I'm happy to help.
Thank you Claudia. Since I'm new to this I must have mistakenly put in the family cruise. We are not on the family cruise but taking the Grand European River Cruise leaving August 11. I really appreciate your information since this is our first time taking a river cruise. If you have any other suggestions I would greatly appreaciate them.
We just returned from our first river cruise and it’s the first time Mr B took a jacket with him at my suggestion. At the Welcome dinner, only about three men wore jackets, one wore a suit, a British guy actually! Boy was I in trouble for making him take a jacket. He does always wear a nice dress shirt and can get away so much with his boyish figure. At the dinner at the castle there were more jackets but it didn’t really matter, we were in a private area so we were not offending anyone other than other Tauck people. The most annoying thing about the dinner were the smokers on the tour, who smoked on the patio outside and their smoke drifted into the room and upset the people sitting near there.
Considering how much room a jacket takes in the one suitcase that Tauck suggests we take, it’s a pain. It was 100 degrees for a lot of our time in Europe too. I don't think Mr B will be taking a jacket again.
As I've said before, each cruise kind of has its own "dressing ethos" that is part who's on the tour and what the itinerary is. Our first was a group that had booked the entire ship and made up of mostly retired military officers. The vast majority of men wore at least sport coats. That's the most jackets I've ever seen. The only off ship dinner that rated a jacket was dinner in Paris at Fouguats. The most casual was the Rhine in Oct when it was cold and the castle dinner was more of an oompah band and sauerkraut vibe. Very few jackets that time. My husband wouldn't have brought a jacket on the Budapest to Amsterdam cruise this year if it hadn't been for the dinner at the palace in Vienna and he isn't planning to take one to Switzerland next year on the land tour. For dinners in the 4/5 star hotels he'll mostly wear a combination of a collared shirt, vneck sweater and a tie if he really wants to push the boat out.
The only really inappropriate apparel I've ever seen at dinner was a young man (on a cruise for their honeymoon ) who came to dinner in sneakers, casual jeans and bright orange sweat shirt. He sat down, read the menu then got up and left the Compass dining room. Not sure if he felt out of place or didn't like the menu.