On our second day in Vienna, we were told that the Aria was on the wrong side of a damaged lock. We were given a choice: take a bus tour to Amsterdam or go home. If we decided to go home, we would receive a refund for the unused portion of our cruise but would not get a refund on airfare. Although we had our hearts set on a river cruise, we decided to make the best of it a go by bus to Amsterdam.
Here is the route that was planned:
Here is the route of the bus cruise:
In addition to this route, there were several day trips between Vienna and Melk, Frankfurt and Rudesheim, Frankfurt and Heidelberg, and a home visit out of Nuremberg. Such day trips probably doubled the number of kilometers traveled and hours spent on our bus. For the most part, Grand Circle scheduled two or three nights at each hotel instead of a new hotel every night. This made packing and unpacking slightly easier. The downside was all of the extra back and forth day trips.
I was curious about how the rivers between Vienna and Amsterdam are connected. There are several canals, some built hundreds of years ago, that provide water routes. Here is a graph that shows some of the locks that allow ships to traverse the continental divide.
Many of the locks conserve water by pumping water back and forth into holding ponds rather than letting all the water flow downstream.
But one damaged lock can change a river cruise into a bus tour.