Saturday, June 20, 2015 Budapest

I woke up at 4:30 and finally got up at 6:30 to do some more pictures. Celeste woke up soon after. We went for a great buffet breakfast in a fancy breakfast hall at 8 and went back out touring at 10.

We went back to the market mall to look for something for the girls, but in the end we decided that the traditional items there were too expensive for items that would rarely be worn and went for a couple of Minnie Mouse shirts instead. I am sure they will be a bigger hit than what we were originally looking for.

We returned to the hotel around 1 to catch our wind and to drop off my jacket as the day was becoming fairly warm. Then we headed off on our second adventure – exploring in the general direction of the opera house, where we plan to tour at 3. We found one of many bike drop-off depots, a cute washroom sign, and a guy getting his picture taken with a statue of a fat guy.

We wandered around the pedestrian area looking for a place to eat. We finally settled on the same place we ate yesterday, but we ordered different things. I had a delicious Goulash soup while Celeste had the sausage soup that I had yesterday. 

Then we raced over to the opera house and just managed to catch the English tour. What a zoo in that place! Our group was very large, so they split us up into three smaller groups. In addition, there was a French tour and more than one cruise ship tour in the building. As we raced from place to place, hotly pursued by the next group, we continuously crossed paths with other groups following different paths. I don’t know how they made it work. It seemed like chaos, but I guess it is a pattern that they have worked out over the years. At about $15 CAD per person, I am sure they bring in a lot more from tours than they ever do from opera. At the end of the day, it is a pretty impressive building with a very interesting story.

After the tour, we went back to the hotel by a different route, stopping in tranquil Franz Liszt park,

and then checking out a street that is promoting a new bar and restaurant and coffee house scene. We stopped at the hotel about 4:30 for a bathroom break and a breather, and then headed out again, wandering around the neighbourhood from 5:30 to 6:30. We did not want to waste any of that last precious time here. Here is part of a park across from our hotel. The Plexiglas bottom of this pool is actually the ceiling of a subterranean nightclub. It is pretty cool looking up from below.

We started getting ready for an early bedtime as we will be up about 2:30 AM to begin the process of getting home. If everything is on time, we will spend 19.5 hours from first take-off to final landing, plus ground travel at either end. Our transfer to the airport leaves three hours before flight time and we are getting up an hour before that. It will be a long day!

I am glad we spent this extra time here. I have passed through here a few times, but never but only made a couple of overnight stays and a couple of daytime stays of an hour or two. It was interesting to get to poke around a little bit.

Friday, June 19, 2015 Budapest

We had to have our luggage outside our door at 8 for pickup then we went for breakfast. We ate alone this morning. Our pals left about 3:30 this morning to catch their flight. Many others also left throughout the night. There were not very many people left that we knew.

Our bus transfer to our hotel left about 9:30 and we were there minutes later. There is a Viking Tours table right in the lobby, so we booked a tour of the Hungarian Parliament for 12:15 and set off on foot. We got there almost an hour early, so we toured around the grounds and lounged on a park bench for a while. The tour was interesting, but it was hard to understand the guide with her accent and the acoustics.

We wandered back toward the hotel, but stopped about 2 to get an authentic Hungarian meal with homemade beer. I had a sausage and vegetable (mostly peppers and tomatoes) soup; Celeste had chicken paprikas; and we split a sour cherry strudel with a delicious vanilla ice cream.

From there we toured St. Stephan’s Cathedral, which was just up the street from the restaurant.

We got back to the hotel and checked in about 4. Our room is pretty elegant. Probably what you would expect at the Saskatchewan Hotel in Regina. We were pretty pooped, so we grabbed a nap and slept from 5 to 9! I sorted and culled pictures for a while and went back to bed about 11, but Celeste had already been asleep for a while.

Weather was mostly overcast and breezy. Temperature about 72 F 22 C.

The crew of our ship, including the captain, was almost entirely from Eastern Europe – Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, I think Ukraine. The program director was a Brit, who was born in Bulgaria, and the hotel manager was German. The cleanliness and service was flawless throughout. They really made an effort to make you feel welcome – and to earn a tip at the end of the trip, of course. 

The food was excellent throughout - maybe not quite as fancy and not as much variety and not as continuous as on a large cruise ship with a huge kitchen and crew, but very good for the size of the ship. There were always three or four choices of appetizers and main courses and four or five dessert choices at dinner. They were always well prepared and presented. For lunch there was always a generous buffet plus two or three items to order off the menu. And for breakfast there was again a buffet with additional items available off the menu.

Thursday, June 18, 2015 Budapest

We awoke at 5 and peeked out the window. It was sunny and the terrain was mostly flat with occasional hills in the mid-distance. We went back to sleep and awoke again at 7 and found the same conditions. We had breakfast with our usual pals and then went up to the sundeck to watch as we sailed into Budapest.

Here, our captain parks beside another Viking ship while its captain and a spectator look on.

The sundeck has an herb garden and a putting green.

Close quarters when parked side by side.

Our tour left almost immediately. We toured for about an hour on the bus through the downtown of Pest, and then had a walking tour of the hillside palaces and monuments across the river on the hills of Buda.

After a late lunch with our usual friends and the Ecuadoran couple we walked down one of the main shopping streets to a huge indoor market. The main floor was mostly food and an upper rampart was mostly souvenirs. Every second stall in the food area had a huge selection of paprika and dried peppers.

We walked back along the river, but it was not as scenic and attractive as we had hoped. There was lots of traffic beside a narrow sidewalk that was often in rough shape.

We had dinner with our usuals and an East Indian couple that had been in the US for 40 years. At 9 some Hungarian performers put on a show of singing, dancing, and violin music. The violin player was amazing. At about 10 we cast off for a cruise to take in Budapest by night. Very pretty.

It was a very nice day today. Sunny and 75 F 25 C.

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.