Wednesday, June 17, 2015 Vienna

We were tied up with two other Viking ships. When coming or going you have to go through the reception area of the other ships.

We had breakfast this morning with our usuals and another couple from Colorado. We had an early departure for about a one hour bus tour of the primary landmarks followed by a walking tour of about 45 minutes ending at St. Stephan’s Cathedral. There we were supposed to meet our pals, who were in another tour group. We were then going to make a plan for further touring and share a cab back to the ship. However, due to a misunderstanding, we missed each other. We waited most of the next hour for them to show up, broken only by a short trip for a look at the nearby St. Peter’s Church. When everyone met again to go to the buses, they had decided not to stay and to return to the ship for lunch instead. Caught a bit off-guard, we decided to return to the ship also.

We had lunch with our pals and another couple from New Zealand. Then we signed up for another expedition by public subway to visit a “Farmer’s Market” with the ship’s chef. I was not too excited about this option at first and was a bit disappointed to have missed some of the sites in the city centre, however, it turned out quite well. The market was not like those at home, but was quite permanent with a variety of interesting stalls. 

The chef bought us a sampling of some of the local specialties.

It was only one stop past the city centre, so we were able to walk through the city park, walk to the subway station at St. Stephan’s square, and return to the ship in plenty of time. In fact, we even napped for more than an hour before the 6:30 briefing on tomorrow’s activities and our disembarkation procedures.

We had dinner at 7:30 with our usual pals and the Ecuadoran couple. He is quite a serious and curious guy, always asking questions on all kinds of topics from politics to technical things. He had lots of questions about flying and air traffic control.

We departed about 5:30. The terrain was generally quite flat as long as it was light enough to tell. We passed by Bratislava, Slovakia before dark, but did not see much as we were at dinner on the other side of the ship. There is live music and partying in the lounge every evening and tonight we decided to check it out. It was a pretty rollicking party, led, of course, by the Aussies. There is an entertainer on board performing every night. Occasionally he is joined by our Program Director. Apparently he was the drummer and lead singer in a rock band that was a pretty big deal in Europe, but he couldn't make any money, so he turned to an alternate career.

About 11 we went through the second deepest lock on the Danube River and retired for the night soon after. On either side of the wheelhouse there are small control stations where whoever is driving relocates whenever there is close manoeuvering such as docking or entering a lock.

Weather was quite cool, cloudy, and windy for the morning and early afternoon before moderating in the late afternoon. Forecast was for 66 F or 19 C. It might have got a little better than that eventually.