It happened that the river was frozen when we were there on the first day and we weren't able to use the boat. Nevertheless, we managed to use the boat on the last 2 days which was great. I would think that the flexibility to use the boat to travel around and park near to town to be an excellent alternative than driving as parking is very hard to find and pretty expensive. Moreover, the host provided a cell phone which was definitely helpful as we got into some issues and were able to contact them easily. By the way, children would definitely be thrilled to be able to feed the swans, mandarin ducks, seagulls along the way.