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Southbound, Rhine and Mosel Aug 12, 2026- MS Inspire
My Hubby and I will be on our first Tauck Cruise, looking to meet others sailing with us.
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My Hubby and I will be on our first Tauck Cruise, looking to meet others sailing with us.
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Hi Barbara, We ( Gary and Diane) will be joining you on this river cruise. This is our first Tauck river cruise but we just came home last month from a Tauck land tour to Central Europe. It was fantastic! Tauck did such a great job with the land tour, that I'm sure we will be just as happy with the river cruise.
We love the river cruises. The ambience of the ship, attentive crew, great food, experienced tour/cruise directors, onboard entertainment, excursions—all excellent. Enjoy!
Thank you , we are looking forward to this cruise so much. The Moselle valley and River is special to me, as I was stationed at Hahn AFB just above rhe river 50 years ago-before I met my hubby - now I can introduce him to the country I fell in love with years ago.
My husband,Ted and I (Linda) will be joining you all in August Rhine And Moselle cruise. This is our second trip down the Rhine with Tauck. The first trip The Rhine and Swiss alps was wonderful. When my husband talks about taking another trip he always brings up how much he loved our trip with tauck, so here we are. so excited about this upcoming sailing
Love river cruises, have gone on 10 with Tauck, 11th this year and 12th in 2027 if God wills. The attention of the crew, all the Tauck and Cruise directors I've had were wonderful, the food is excellent, for me having Arthur's is a plus as I don't have a large breakfast or lunch, so that's my favorite place for those meals.
How wonderful that so many of you have already met via this forum! I hope you (collectively) will post reviews afterwards. Have a magnificent journey!
Happy New Year everyone! So excited to “meet” others we will be sharing the cruise with. Where is everyone from, we reside in Palm Bay, Florida. Anyone doing pre-or post cruise overnights? We’ll be in Amsterdam a day early and staying in Zurich overnight. Perhaps due to flights home, we could be visiting Paris for a couple of days too, ah gee-such a tough idea!! Looking so forward to our adventure! There is a Solar Eclipse the day we board in Iceland- I’m sure we will get to experience this too. Everyone stay healthy!
Barbara,
I read your last post long ago and forgot to respond! Gary and I live in the Atlanta area, although we have lived all over the place including three stints in Florida. We are also arriving the day before and will be at the Sofitel. We always just fly home at the trip's end as we have to ransom our puppy back from boarding her. We are so looking forward to this cruise! If it is anything like our Tauck land tour last October, we are in for a treat!
Hello Barbara and Diane. My husband, Glenn, and I will be joining you on this cruise. This is our 1st Tauck tour as well, and we will also be at the Sofitel a day before. We currently live in the Delaware Beaches area (in southern DE) and we recently moved there from northern NJ about 2 years ago. We'll be flying in and out of Charlotte NC via Dulles (our dogs will be vacationing with our son there while we are away). This is our 1st "bucket list" trip of our retirement. And we've also already booked a Tauck small group land tour in Italy in 2027 for our 2nd one. We are looking forward to meeting everyone.
I'm pretty sure you Tauck "newbies" will have a great time. We're signed up for the Rhine/Moselle cruise in Fall 2027 and that will be our 12th European river cruise, all with Tauck. Got a couple U.S. land trips planned between now and then.
Not to distract the thread's subject but... We were Army, stationed in Frankfurt 1971-73. Barbara, if you got out to see the country from your Hahn posting, did you get over to AF facilities at Wiesbaden? The Amelia Earhart hotel was a good dinner stop. We would drive over from Frankfurt for Mexican food on Wednesdays. Yeah, I know it's Germany, but a plate of tacos is a nice change in the middle of all the schnitzels and bratkartoffeln (burp!).
This is a long shot, but do any of you on this trip play Mah Jongg? And does anyone know IF they have a set on board?
Hi Lynn. I'll bet there will be many of us at the Sofitel the day before the cruise! We should try getting together for a drink that night if we get there early enough. We arrive in Amsterdam at 10:30 a.m. I've been researching the restaurants around the hotel for dinner that night. We have also booked a Fall 2027 land tour to Germany during Octoberfest. Our first Tauck land tour was this past October to Warsaw, Krakow ,Budapest, Vienna and Prague. It was an amazing trip. I can't recommend it enough! As far as Mah Jongg, I do not play and I have no idea if they have a set onboard. Looking forward to meeting everyone in 6 weeks!
You might try Restaurant ‘t Zwaantje, a casual spot serving traditional Dutch dishes. Same for The Pantry.
I am not familiar with mahjong but have seen people playing cards. The river boats do have some board games but I have never seen anyone using them. Perhaps you can bring a travel version if such a thing exists?
Happy 4th of July (a bit late), hope every one had a Happy and safe holiday. Only 5 weeks from today, we board the big bird and start our adventure- can hardly wait!! Sorry, we’ve not learned Mahjong - although Sam did send a set home, sadly never learned. We do have a set of Monopoly Cards - more fun and faster than the board game, we’ll bring to share. We will be arriving a day early, but not staying at the Sofitel, staying at the airport Hilton, since we don’t arrive until 6pm. Will be looking forward to meeting everyone on the 12th. Everyone stay healthy, so we can all meet up 8/12!!
Any news on the impact of water levels on the Rhine. Tauck just cancelled Budapest to Amsterdam because of Rhine and Danube water levels. Also did a ship swap last week on the Basel to Amsterdam cruise.
According to cruise mapper and cruise mommy the levels are near historic lows but they are expecting a shift in the weather patterns and are hopeful to see the river levels start rising next week
We are very concerned about the river levels and nothing I have seen indicates any significant rainfall for the next two weeks. At this point who knows, we just hope this isn't going to turn into a bus tour.
I’m not sure an entire river cruise can turn into a bus tour, there just aren’t the hotel rooms for so many people at this time of year
They only use hotels if the distances get too far from the ship to the sights visited.
https://www.cruisemapper.com/news/16468-low-water-levels-disrupt-danube-rhine-river-cruise-operations
I find it interesting that there is news about AMA, Viking and a few other cruise companies cancelling or rearranging river tours due to the low water levels available just by googling, you can find no information about Tauck cancelling- which we know has happened - other than references to this message board. How does Tauck keep their cancellations out of the news? Is it because it is privately held and they don't have securities regulations obligations to report news?
I have seen Tauck mentioned on a different travel forum which is discussing river cruise modifications as a result of the low water levels on the Rhine and Danube. I think that Viking, Uniworld, AMA ,etc have so many more vessels that news stories focus on them and there are many more passengers discussing their experiences.
Interesting. I searched this morning and didn't find any references to Tauck but maybe I didn't look far enough into the search results.
This being our first River Cruise - and cruise with Tauck so I might be totally wrong. Might it be that our River boat is a bit smaller, and we have fewer passengers - thus our water displacement is less?? I may be totally wrong, and hopeful our trip is not interrupted. Will keep an eye out, and send up some prayers for rain in the next 3 weeks.
Sorry Barbara but the draft for both the longer ships like the Grace and the slightly shorter ones like Treasures is the same - 4 feet. I'd suggest praying for rain. Good luck.
We got the Tauck form letter ( via email) today about water levels and possible changes to the cruise. That's not a good sign... I will admit I am pretty stressed right now about this whole trip.
I know what you are saying ..we are booked on the Swiss Alps Rhine Itinerary departing August 3rd for our 30th anniversary…we of course received the letter as well…I feel like I am constantly checking my email for further updates…we fly out on the 31st and hope we know what is going on before then…
On the same August 3rd trip Swiss Alps Rhine itinerary, concerned about being a bus trip, sure hope things change in water conditions
We’re booked for the first week of September, Switzerland north. A question, if the changes are not acceptable, bus trips and ship changes can we cancel. We purchased the Tauck insurance. This is not a once in a lifetime trip for us. We’ve been on another Tauck river cruise and have been to Europe a few times before. I have no problem rescheduling or applying the$ to another trip.
Anyone else been thinking this way?
Mary,
We are definitely thinking along the same lines as you. We have also been on a river cruise before and would not have a problem rebooking for another time. This cruise having to turn into something else makes me sad. A river cruise is special in it's own right. That's why we booked it. Looks like we just have to wait a while to see what happens, but we really don't want this to turn into a land tour. That being said, Tauck land tours are great ( we were on one in October and have another booked for Fall 2027). We loved our tour last year and didn't hesitate to book another. I just hope we get an option.