Best of the Danube -
Celebration of Music

It’s roundtrip. You board and disembark in Budapest, so your flight home leaves from the same city you arrived in, and every sailing follows the same loop.

Alongside the regular sightseeing, this itinerary weaves in music-focused moments like the choir performance at Melk Abbey and an onshore concert in Vienna. Select departures also travel with a guest conductor, musician or vocalist on board as a host, so depending on your sailing date, you may find yourself sharing the ship with a working professional from the classical music world rather than just visiting music-themed sights.

Austria and Slovakia both use the euro, so that covers most of the week. Hungary is the exception, since it uses the forint, so it’s worth carrying a little local cash for your days in Budapest, even though some places will accept euros.

No, they’re offered as alternatives rather than a package, since Salzburg is a full-day trip in one direction and Český Krumlov is offered specifically to guests who aren’t doing the Salzburg excursion. You’ll need to pick one or the other for this stop.

It’s an interactive sound museum spread across several floors of a historic building that once belonged to Otto Nicolai, founder of the Vienna Philharmonic. Alongside exhibits on the physics of sound and the lives of Vienna’s great composers, its best-known feature is the Virtual Conductor, where you step onto a podium and lead a virtual performance of the Vienna Philharmonic yourself.