Passau (10th June)

Today is the last full day of our cruise.

At around 9am we sailed into Passau. Passau is built at the confluence of 3 rivers: the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz.  It's certainly a very pretty city. Once again full of narrow cobbled streets and baroque churches.

We had a walking tour of the city with our hilarious guide, Alex.  Being situated as it is around 3 rivers, Passau is subject to flooding at regular intervals - the last bad flood being in 2013. The height of the flood water is marked on the side of the town hall, and Alex helpfully stood under the markings so you can get a sense of scale of just how high the flood water reached.

 After our tour we were treated to an organ concert in St Stephen's Cathedral - which has the largest church organ in the world.  Then it was off to lunch.  Can't go to Bavaria and not have a beer.  We had  schnitzel and the local bier: Innstadt.  After that a bit of shopping and back to the ship for a lazy afternoon lounging on the sun deck.

It being the final night of the cruise we had the Captain's cocktail party and farewell gala dinner. Unfortunately, after pigging out at lunch I couldn't eat much of the 6 course meal they served up. I will definitely need to go on a diet when I get home.

So that is it - the end of our cruise.  I must admit this trip surprised me.  I expected the Hungarian and Slovakian stops to be cities full of concrete tower blocks, and I expected many of the towns and cities in Austria and Germany to be industrial.  Instead I've been treated to a series of fairy-tale towns and villages in Austria/Germany and beautiful historic cities in Budapest, Brastislava and Vienna.
Having traveled around Europe by coach, train and car before now, I'd say a river cruise is definitely the way to do it - so relaxing.

The Adventures of Becky and Ruth in Linz

We were supposed to go to Salzburg today -  but we missed the bus.  For some reason I had it in my mind that the bus went at 8.45am, but in fact it went at 8.15. So when we turned up at reception at 8.30 the bus had already gone.

Instead we decided to walk into the centre of Linz. We walked around the main shopping area and went into a mall where there was yet another Spar.  For those of you in North America, Spar is a chain of corner stores in the UK (most of which have a floor area of about 6 x 6ft).  This was nothing like the Spar stores in the UK.  For one thing it took up almost the entire basement of the mall. It even had a small coffee shop/bar inside it!  Then we had some interesting adventures trying to figure out the automated door into the public bathrooms. 

After all this excitement we made our way to the main square in Linz where we had a coffee and some of the eponymous Linzertorte.  We then went on the Linz express (and electric train type thing) for a 25 minute tour of the city with commentary in English. 

We then walked back to the ship and spent the rest of the day relaxing on the sun deck, watching the French open on the TV in the lounge and we even had a dip in the pool.  It was actually nice to spend a day mostly just relaxing instead of charging around on one excursion or another.

Tomorrow is the last full day of the cruise.  We will be in Passau, Germany.

Durnstein and Melk (8th June)

This morning we woke up to find we'd arrived in Durnstein. This is a small village at one end of the Wachau Valley.  Going into the village was a bit like going back in time. The cobbled streets are all on an incline - as the village is on the side of a hill, and most of the streets are too narrow to get a car down them. Not even a Fiat 500.

Durnstein's main claim to fame is that it sits below the castle where Richard the Lionheart was captured and imprisoned by Leopold of Austria on his way back from the crusades. Richard's minstrel, Blondel was then supposed to have found him by going around Austria singing under the windows of all the castles until he came here and Richard sang back to him.

The morning was rounded out by a bus trip to a local winery for some wine tasting.

In the afternoon we had a few hours of scenic sailing down the Wachau Valley, which is a UNESCO world heritage site.  The valley is full of small villages and castles. Becky and I sat out on the sun beds on the top deck and made the most of the view.

At around 4pm we arrived in Melk for a trip to Melk Abbey.  It's a huge place, decorated in Baroque style, so it's very grand.

That Viking Baldur ship was docked behind us at Melk ..... I'm still convinced it's following us.

Vienna - 7th June

Today was a full day in Vienna.

We started off at Vienna museum of the fine arts.  This was a special tour before the museum opened. They started us off with a bellini cocktail before taking us to see the Bellini painting. We saw several interesting paintings including Bruegal's  Tower of Babel, and Hans Holbein's portrait of Jane Seymour. But my favourite one was this:

After the museum we were taken on a coach tour of the city, and then a short walking tour, which included a visit to the Spanish riding school where we were able to watch the Lipizaner stallions practicing.

The afternoon was free for us to explore Vienna by ourselves. After a brief visit to St Stephen's cathedral we made our way to the Hotel Sacher for lunch.  When I first started going out with my husband he promised he'd take me to Vienna one day for some Sachertorte.  We've been married 26 years now and there was still no sign of him making good on his promise, so I had to take myself here instead.  Becky and I had a scrumptious lunch in the cafe at the Hotel Sacher, followed by some really wonderful special coffees and Sachertorte for dessert. So my birthday cake was Sachertorte - that kind of made my day.

After some souvenier shopping we made our way to the shuttle bus and back to the ship where we've been hanging out in the the Leopard Bar before dinner and sampling some nice cocktails. We met some nice people in the bar ... so the plan is to sit with them at dinner.

Becky has been driving me mad all day singing Vienna by Ultravox....

Greetings to the readers from North Carolina.

A very full day - 6th June

Becky and I were up at 5.30am to go up to the top deck and watch the ship traverse the first and largest of the locks we will pass through on our way down the Danube.  I can't believe how many river cruise ships there are, and one in particular, the Viking Baldur, seems to be following us all over the place. It even joined us in the lock.

Later in the morning we arrived in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.  We had a walking tour of the city, which is quite small for a capital city (a population of less than 500,000) and full of quaint little cobbled streets. Quite a lot of the city centre is pedestrianized - probably because many of the streets are probably too narrow to get a car down. My sister says I probably used the word probably too many times in that last sentence....

After lunch it was back to the ship to carry on down the Danube to Vienna. Bratislava and Vienna are the 2 closest capital cities in Europe (and possibly the world) being only 56km apart. Uniworld had laid on various afternoon entertainments, including a strudel making class and a waltz class, but Becky and I decided to spend the afternoon relaxing up on the sun deck and watching the world go by with a pina colada.

After an early buffet dinner we were then taken off to a Mozart/Strauss concert at a Vienna Concert hall, which was highly enjoyable.

Budapest - June 5th

Today we went on the Budapest city tour.  A bus tour around both Buda (on the hills one side of the Danube) and Pest (pronounced Pesht) on the other side of the Danube.  It's actually a surprisingly beautiful city with many lovely historical buildings and plenty of character.  I must admit, that this being my first visit to an ex-eastern block country I was kind of expecting a city full of 60s style concrete apartment blocks, but it was nothing like that at all.

Many of the buildings have colourful roofs made from ceramic tiles.  Budapest is famous for its embroidery and lacework.  Becky and I had a number of Forints (the Hungarian currency) to get rid of, so after our tour of the city we went shopping and bought various lace/embroidered products.

As it was the Pentecost holiday lots of the local children were dressed in their national costumes.

In the afternoon we were treated to a Hungarian concert pianist performing works be Liszt in the Salon on deck 3.

We left Budapest at around 5pm and sailed by this iconic building that I'm sure many of you recognize from the Viking cruises adverts.....

All Aboard - Sunday 4th June

First of all. Let me apologize for not posting until now.  I'm afraid the "free wi-fi" on the ship is virtually non-existent.  We have had no connectivity at all until this afternoon, and even now it's a bit flaky. So I may have to add photos to my posts later.

Becky and I got up to the news of the terror attack in central London that had happened overnight. Fortunately we were staying out by the airport and were nowhere near the incident.  Police presence at Heathrow was very visible when we got to Terminal 3, but everything seemed to be running smoothly and our flight to Budapest was on time.  We were met by the Uniworld rep at Budapest airport and loaded onto a coach for transport to the ship.

Fortunately, the coach was air conditioned because Budapest was very hot and humid (30c). Budapest is known as the city of spas, but those of us from the UK could be forgiven for thinking it was the city of Spars (as in the corner shop) .There was a Spar grocery store at the airport - and we must have passed half a dozen more Spars on the way to the ship, also a number of Tescos and a Costa coffee.

The ship is very posh. Done out in Austro-Hungarian Empire style. Lots of gold leaf and mirrors and a nice spiral staircase with a large portrait of Empress Maria Theresa (who the ship is named after). There's a small but very beautiful swimming pool, 2 bars, a Viennese cafe (which is virtually next to our room), and a lovely sun deck that Becky and I have made extensive use of in the nice weather.  Sadly Becky and I are confined to the "basement" - i.e. the lowest deck of the ship.  We chose a cheap room thinking that all the rooms would have a window, but our window is very narrow and close to the ceiling. The ships can't have too many decks of course, or they wouldn't get under the bridges, so there are only 4 decks altogether including the sun deck.

 

At dinner the chef made Becky a special chocolate birthday cake which was delivered to the table at dessert time, and shared with the people at our table. Though Becky would have liked to keep the whole thing for herself

On our first evening aboard we were treated to an evening sailing up and down a short section of the Danube to admire Budpest lit up by night. The Hungarians kindly put on a firework display for Becky's birthday outside the parliament building - though our crew members kept insisting that it was actually for the Pentecost bank holiday that was happening the next day (Monday).

At the airport

So here I am at Ottawa airport.  Becky's plane was due to leave San Francisco before my plane takes off from here.  So I decided I would check the Virgin flight status page to make sure she took off alright.  The page finally showed her as "in flight" 5 minutes ago.  With that out of the way I thought now would be a good time for a cup of coffee, especially since there's over an hour until my flight starts boarding. 
What do I find.... Starbucks has already closed.  I should have bought my latte first!
Anyhow, looking forward to a very boring hour or so now.  There's only so many games of Candy Crush I can play before it gets old.   I'm also going to be without any refreshment while I sit around.  Tim Horton's is still open - but a Timmies coffee just doesn't do it for me like a chai latte.

Ho hum.  See you on the other side .....

Heading off again

Tomorrow I get on a plane to London to meet up with my sister, Becky.  For Becky's 60th birthday we are going on a cruise along the Danube, from Budapest to Passau.  Fingers crossed that we will find each other at Heathrow and then we'll take the next flight from London to Budapest together. 
Watch this space for more vacation exploits!