How was it for you? Christmas, I mean. Was it a week of joy and revelry? Or was it, like mine, a rather miserable few days of pretending not to be bored stiff? The solution may be to take a year off — take a cruise: somewhere that matches the character of the season. There is no place on earth more beautiful than the banks of the Danube in December. Fire scorches the mantelpieces of ancient schlosses, snow covers the forests, the lights glimmer in the waters below Budapest, and songs resonate around the drinking halls of Salzburg. What more magical way of spending Christmas?
There are a number of options (like Viking’s excellent cruise, Christmas on the Danube), which tend to share features; eight stops over ten days, sailing downstream from Nuremberg or Regensburg to Istanbul. The river, descending through Austria and Germany towards Hungary and the Middle Danube, passes along areas steeped in dramatic history.
Most cruise organisers opt to spend the day itself in Vienna. A sensible choice. Even more than usual the city is filled with music. Carol-singing — none of your amateur stuff either — pervades the streets, and concerts of Strauss and Mozart can be heard all over the city. Most cruises spend the remainder of their journey snaking leisurely through Devin Gate towards Hungary, and the marvels of Budapest.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, writing of his epic trek to Constantinople in 1934, called Budapest ‘a captivating town; a stimulating new language, strong and startling drinks, food like a delicious bonfire and a prevailing atmosphere of sophistication and high spirits’. Little has changed in the city today, and it’s certainly a far cry from England, where the rest of your family would be sitting in the debris of wrapping paper, fighting over the remote. Dining in some sumptuous eatery on Andrássy Avenue and reflecting on your journey, it could only be pleasing to consider the Christmas you left behind.