Discover the sauce of the Danube with your first river cruise since lockdown and visit Austria’s wine region

I AM lazing on the top of a river ship as it glides along the Danube in Austria’s beautiful Wachau valley wine region.

No I’ve not escaped from lockdown. I’ve been transported back to a fab holiday on A-Rosa Donna last August by news that her sister, A-Rosa Mia, is back in action from today.

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Visit the beautiful Danube river as well as Austria’s wine region as you glide along in your first cruise since Covid-19[/caption]

It is the first time her owner, the German river cruise line A-Rosa, has sailed the Danube since everything stopped in March because of Covid-19.

A-Rosa Donna makes her grand comeback next week, on June 28.

I had a wonderful cruise. A week of blue skies, hot sun and a dip in an even hotter spa pool (seriously — 40C) at the Gellert baths in Budapest as we sailed from Engelhartszell, a tiny village in Austria no one has ever heard of, through Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.

In Vienna, I waltzed through 2,000 years of the city’s history in Time Travel, a fun attraction with weird talking waxworks and a simulator that “flies” you over the cathedral, and had coffee and cake in the posh Café Landtmann.

I visited a huge baroque abbey filled with gold in the little town of Melk in Austria, took selfies alongside weird street art in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava and toured a magnificent Basilica standing guard over the Danube in the Hungarian town of Esztergom.

“In communist times, the Cardinal used to bless Trabant cars to get them going,” my guide Peter whispered. I’m not sure he was joking. After all these weeks in lockdown, I can’t wait to cruise with A-Rosa again. But it looks like I might have to wait a bit longer.

Because A-Rosa might have got the green light to restart now Europe has reopened its borders — this week the company’s river ships also set sail on the Douro and Rhine — but we British have a big red stop sign.

Never mind that we have to quarantine for two weeks when we get home, there’s a Foreign Office ban on holidays abroad. And if that’s not enough, Austria and Slovakia are among the European countries that do not want British visitors right now anyway.

Lucky folk joining A-Rosa Mia today — plenty of them judging by the few cabins left — will find life on board different to usual due to new rules being imposed on all cruise lines.

Everyone must sign a fitness to travel declaration and have their temperatures taken before being allowed on. Their luggage will be disinfected, they must follow one-way markers on the decks and wear face masks walking in indoor public areas.

They must also keep 1.5 metres away from others. I’m not sure how that works for massages in the spa, but A-Rosa says it is open for business. My week-long cruise last year was wonderfully casual, with unlimited free drinks.

I joined other British guests — and a few of the mostly Germans passengers — at the bar each day at beer o’clock, which started around 5pm. A few of my new pals made the most of the freebie drinks by working their way through all the cocktails on the menu. Not all on the same day of course.

And then we drifted in to dinner, which on A-Rosa is self-service. Grab a table and help yourself. It is the same at breakfast and lunch.

Or it was. Buffets are a Covid casualty for all shipping lines.

So for now, restaurants on A-Rosa’s river ships have been rejigged to comply with social distancing, everyone is allocated a seat and meals at set times.

It is hard on the crew, who now have to wait on tables and keep surfaces disinfected in line with tough new standards.

Not that it’s put anyone off. “We had so many applications from crew once they heard we were getting going again,” A-Rosa’s UK boss Lucia Rowe tells me.

It has not put me off, either.

I’m counting down the days until lockdown ends and we can drift along the Danube again.

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