'I found a river cruise made for taking it slowly with excellent stops and food'

19 October 2023 , 16:26

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Done the Danube? Drifted down the Douro? Romanced the Rhine? Then it’s now time your European river cruise experience included a voyage on the Vltava.

You may have thought every stretch of navigable water on the continent was already catered for, but it wasn’t so. One popular cruise route curls all the way from Berlin, along the Havel canal, down the Elbe, into the Vltava and on to Prague, where it ended.

Now CroisiEurope has extended the route beyond Prague as far as the impassable barrier of the Slapy dam. The new section takes two days, one day out and one back, the ship sailing only during daylight so passengers don’t miss any of the scenery.

And what scenery. Soon after leaving the clutches of the Czech capital the hills close in, until you’re gliding serenely between looming rocky and wooded precipices. For a waterway in the middle of Europe, this is a remarkably tranquil passage – no giant industrial barges and no passenger vessels bigger than daytrippers out of Prague.

Most of the first afternoon I didn’t see anything on the water other than a few paddle boarders, the occasional rowing boat, and swallows darting over the surface hunting for insects. The main reason for the lack of any significant river traffic is the water is too shallow in places for anything large.

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'I found a river cruise made for taking it slowly with excellent stops and food'

The MS Elbe Princesse ll (PR HANDOUT)

CroisiEurope’s vessel I sailed on was the MS Elbe Princesse II, smaller than many river cruise ships and driven by a pair of paddle wheels at the stern to allow it to cope with shallower depths than propeller boats can handle.

This is a route made for taking it slowly, sitting on the sundeck with a glass of something, watching the hills slip past. Every so often a low bridge might mean you have to evacuate the sundeck to avoid decapitation, but otherwise you are as undisturbed as the rustic world around you. Vltava means wild water and now it could not be a more inappropriate name because a series of dams and locks have made it as smooth as a boating lake.

The highlight of the first full day is a stop for a coach excursion to Konopiste Castle, home of aristocrats in the 13th century. Its most famous owner was the last, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 set off the First World War. He obviously liked the sound of gunfire and the interior of the castle – palace would be a better word – reflects his obsession with hunting.

Konopiste Castle is a must-visit (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The walls inside are crammed with the heads and horns of 100,000 of his victims, with the time and place of their demise meticulously recorded. Owls, eagles, deer, goats, bison... he shot the lot – his game books state he clocked up 275,899 kills in his lifetime. Many of the rooms have been perfectly recreated to show what they would have been like in their glory days, something made possible because Franz Ferdinand had them photographed for insurance purposes.

I’m not sure if he was worried about servants pilfering the silver, or fire – I suspect the latter, because he introduced electricity to the castle. He also introduced water closets, a pioneering move at the time. “He flushed. Not even the Kaiser flushed at the time,” our guide crowed.

CroisiEurope has named it its Castles of Bohemia cruise and history is the focus of the excursions. In Prague, there’s the enormous presidential palace overlooking the city, which is not so much a castle as an entire town within a town.