Our Travel Blog

Most nights we have some form of entertainment on board, last night our cruise director (a Welsh girl) took to the microphone for an evening of songs. My first thought was Uh Oh, what are we in for here. It turns out she was previously a professional singer and has an amazing voice. Again a good night was had by all.

We cruised over night to Würzburg and woke up to fog and 1C (34F). At least now the sun has broken through and we should be going up to 12C (54F). After lunch we will head out on a walking tour of the area for a couple of hours. Some one commented to me that they thought I sounded bored with the trip, far from it. Although may of the towns have a basic similarity there are also a great deal of differences between them. I find it difficult to capture those differences when writing the blog with out going into pages of historic details, that would take away from food, drink, socialising and entertainment time…… ain’t going to happen! So I’ll continue with the blurb at the beginning and pictures at the end. As I’ve said before, Google and particularly Google Lens can be your friend with the pictures.

The only important contribution that I found that Würzburg made to the civilised world was the invention of the X-ray. However our tour guide around the city had a few different ideas. Today we had a tour guide whose mother was a strong American Catholic, his father a strong Turkish Muslim and himself a German Protestant! I am beginning to doubt the information from some of these guides, it appears that most towns have the largest Cathedral and/or the oldest Catholic Cathedral!

Todays tour focused primarily on the Prince-Bishops residence in the town.

Below are pictures of the outside and inside of the Prince-Bishops residence

I’ve run out of titles! Today was an earlyish start, 0900. The weather has changed, it was 4C (40F) climbing to 12C (54F), but at least it was sunny.
We headed off in a coach for the ten minute trip into the centre of Bamberg. Yet another old German city, in concept the same as many of the others, a cathedral, many churches a few castles and in this case many breweries.

The beer brewed here is fairly unique in that it has a smokey flavour. In the middle ages the barley was soaked in water to produce the malt. After a few days the resulting mix had to be dried, this was done by heating from a wood fire, the smoke of which got absorbed into the mix. In later times the heating was by convection, so the the smoke was eliminated. Bamberg continues the tradition of using the smoking fires.

Today’s tour guide was not German, nor American but Welsh. There must be a lack of local guides.

Again, I’ll load the pictures, but with little commentary so I can upload while we have internet.

First a motor scooter for our daughter who loves all things pink!

Now some general views of Bamberg

At the end of the tour we were cold, and being Sunday no shops were open, but cafes were! No lunch today!

After returning from Resenburg last night we settled into the new cabin. As I think I said yesterday, although this is meant to be a superior cruise line to Emerald, there were many things we preferred on the other boat. It had far more storage for clothing and other items in the cabin. Although we are in the same relative position in the boat (albeit one level up) the engine noise is much more noticeable on this boat. Previously we felt the boat was just gliding along, on this one you can feel and hear that it is being powered along. It gets pretty noisy when we are manoeuvring in and out of locks. Despite my nit pickings above, it has done nothing to diminish the trip!

Last night after leaving Resenburg we made a brief stop to pick up a Bavarian brass quartet for some traditional Bavarian entertainment.

A good night was had by all!!

Today the weather has turned colder, 12C (56F) and it has just started to rain. We are currently on the Rhin-Main-Danube canal, by passing the river. We are going through a series of locks, there are 16 altogether with some of them having a rise / drop of 15m (80ft). After lunch we will be stopping at Nurnberg (as I am too lazy to look up spellings, berg and burg in town names is used interchangeably!!) for a few hours.

This morning there was an origami lesson in the lounge, Lyn completed two items, I gave up halfway through the easy one!!

This afternoon we embarked on a tour to the old town of Nurnberg. When our tour guide introduced herself on the bus, we both remarked how good her English was. She came from Michigan, USA! She married a German 26 years ago and stayed in Germany. What I found interesting was…. she had a slight German accent!

Again it will be mostly pictures as I can set them up to download over night, rather than wait for individual downloads and adding a commentary. Google Lens could be your friend if you are interested in what each of the pictures are. Unfortunately the weather put a damper on things, literally. We had our first serious rain of the cruise.

The trip finished up in sausage / beer restaurant. The beer was OK, but I have tasted better German sausages from the street vendors in Ottawa!

An early morning for us, our bags had to be packed and placed outside our cabin door before 0800! After that it was breakfast and back to the cabin in hurry up and wait mode. We boarded the buses around 0900 for a 90 minute trip to Regensburg in the state of Bavaria. Once upon a time it was the state capital, but that is now Munich. Once on the boat we hurried up and waited a little more to check into our cabins. We scored a minor upgrade in the fact we are now on the third (top) level vs the second.

Our new boat is the Scenic Opal, Scenic is the owner of our previous company Emerald, and as such have “posher” boats and service. So far I think we prefer the cabin layout of the previous boat, we haven’t made a decision on the restaurant and bar yet, although the bar is free to all, all day long and all types of drinks. Previously we had a package that was beer and wine all day long. Evidently we’ll get a refund on the unused portion of that package! We all so have a free mini-bar in the room as well as butler!

After lunch we headed off on a short walking tour of Regensburg, like all other towns it has a Cathedral or two, many old buildings etc. The oldest standing part of the city is the North Gate which dates back to 176AD.

Below is a “David and Goliath” mural, said to represent the Catholics (Goliath) over running the Lutherans (David). Never did understand religion!

Above is the old Salt House, salt being a valuable commodity for preserving food in days gone by when there was no refrigeration.

Above is the plaque on the house where Oskar Schindler (Schindlers List) once lived.

Below are a few random pictures of Regensburg.

Hopefully tomorrow’s entry will be different day, same country, same ship!!

We woke up today in Germany. A cooler cloudier day than previous ones. We will be sailing until mid afternoon, then we will moor at Passau. A walking tour of the town is planned and then it is back to the boat to pack up our cases. We will remain on the boat overnight and then drive to Ragensburg to join our new boat. Perhaps the new boat will have better WiFi. As usual I’ll post the blog when the internet allows, so there may be a few updates during the day. One thing I meant to add was the passenger nationalities on the ship. Almost half are Canadian then Australian followed by New Zealand then USA and finally UK. It makes it simple for announcements as everyone speaks English!

This morning has been spent cruising the Danube and going through some locks. The last one was pretty interesting as there was a low overhead bridge at the exit of the lock. So low in fact that the radar head and the ships bridge cabin had to be lowered. We were allowed to stay on the outdoor upper deck but had to remain seated!

Below are some pictures of the cruising and the bridge passage.

This afternoon we took a walking tour of the town of Passau, the main feature of which was St Stephens Abbey. This is probably the first of many “quaint” little German towns we will visit. We have an earlyish start tomorrow to catch the coach to our next ship, so again I’ll just dump a few photos from the town walk.

So, something happened to the notepad today and I lost Bluetooth connectivity. This meant no physical keyboard. The spare time we had today was spent solving the issue. Trying to download drivers over a wonky internet connection was pretty frustrating!

Today we awoke in Durnstein Austria, we took a walk into the village, and after an hour or so it was back to the boat for a 2 hour cruise through Wachau Valley, a UNESCO sight. After that it was off to Melk for a tour of the abbey. Internet permitting I’ll just throw a load of photos after this. Unfortunately there ws no photography allowed inside the abbey.

Just to make the day a little more difficult we had an all passengers meeting tonight where we were told that there wasn’t enough water in the Danube at it’s highest point. The company has managed to find another boat the other side of the “dryspot” to take us to Amsterdam. Unfortunately the new boat has 6 less cabins than are needed to transfer all the passengers across. In addition, it means packing and taking a coach for 70kms (45 miles) to pick up the next boat. The good news is the boat is from a sister company that is superior to this one!

The internet doesn’t seem good enough to publish pictures tonight, maybe I will be able to load them tomorrow.

Last bit of good news, it seems that 6 couples have volunteered to leave the cruise, so we should be ok!!

This morning we woke up in Vienna, Austria. Despite the weather forecast saying no rain until 1400, it was raining! After breakfast we boarded a coach for a tour of Vienna, followed by a walking tour, followed by free time. Unfortunately Vienna is another European city that is giving half of its road space to cyclists, and traffic was at a standstill with barely a cyclist in sight! Because of the rain there weren’t any photos from the bus.

There were many grand buildings in the central area including the State Opera House above and the National Library below.

In the centre of the city is St. Stephens Cathedral.

In 1450 the two iron rods were installed in the wall of the cathedral; these were the official lengths that materials etc. would be sold in.

Above is the home of the original Sacha Torte, a world famous chocolate cake.

After wandering around for a while we had a coffee and light snack, Sacha torte and apple streusel. Then we braved the U-Bahn to head out of the city to the Schonbrunn Palace, the summer palace of the royal family. The place is immense and is modelled on Versailles in France

On our tour around we passed the stables of the famous Lipizzaner Horses, we were lucky to just about see one!

I guess I should explain the title! In the dim ad distant past when I was still gainfully employed I travelled to Vienna every couple of months for a couple of years on business. One of the things I always brought home were a local candy, it was a chocolate ball with marzipan in the centre, these were known as Mozart Balls. Vienna were a few short after we left!

First things first! Last nights blog was cut short as the internet went on strike. It seems the internet is dependant on the location of the boat, so if blogs seem incomplete it means I gave up!

Last night we left Budapest, Hungary and woke up in Bratislava, Slovakia. Another earlyish morning, we had the choice of a slow paced tour of the old city, a normal paced tour or the active tour which involved a 300 step climb up to the castle overlooking the old city. Guess which one Lyn chose! Wrong!!!! she chose the active tour up to the castle. She may have regretted it half way up, but she made the trip.

Much of the central area of the old city of Bratislava was the Jewish area with its Synagogue. All this area (including the Synagogue) was levelled by the Russians during their occupation to make way for new roads. St Michaels Roman Catholic Cathedral was spared.

I didn’t put this picture in yesterday although their were identical buildings in Budapest. These are Soviet era prefabricated apartment buildings. Each floor took 1 week to complete. No sound or heat insulation!! In the background you can just see a wind farm in Austria.

Once the Soviets left a local sculptor decided some levity was required around the city. Below is one of the offerings. This one is known locally as Peeping Tom!

This is very haphazard I’m afraid, I am trying to do some of the blog while the connection is good. This afternoon we are off into the country for tea and cake with a Slovakian family. I’ll publish this now, mistakes and all, and will try to update later.

Well, the weather took a turn for the worse, and it started raining shortly after we got back from our hike this morning. We decided to continue with the tea and cake visit to a Slovakian family, so after lunch we braved the elements and headed out in a motor coach for a 45 minute trip east of the city.

Well last nights writings got lost in cyberspace somewhere! Here is a quick recap. We were met at the house by a couple in their mid 70’s. They had built their home from scratch in the Soviet era as it was the only way to get a house that was not a soviet prfab.

The husband was the set designer for the Slovak National Theatre for 45 years and this can be seen in their entertainment room.

Below is their entertainment room

The picture below was painted on a glass door, but it was painted from behind the glass, or in reverse.

Their son is a ceramics designer and the plates below depict some of his work.

One of their daughters is an artist and she was flying off to London for an art show depicting her work. Their other daughter married a Scottish police man and is now living in Inverness, Scotland. Lyn became the family hero when she mentioned that she was born in Inverness!

Below is the “man cave” where we sampled the families home made wine. Most of the villagers had their own vineyards in their back gardens and would make wine. In fact this is partly how the family financed their home construction, their garden is about 100 metre long, so plenty of grapes can be grown. They sold their grapes and wine in return for building supplies. The garden looked fantastic, but due to the rain we weren’t able to visit it.

Enough for today, let’s hope the internet improves tomorrow!

Things have got a little mixed up due to the low river level in Budapest, so today 4 coaches were laid on to take us back to the city for some sightseeing. This mean an early (0800) breakfast!

Although we had spent some time in Budapest, it was worth going back and discovering parts that we had missed. We had a tour guide with us, and instead of having to stand close by her to hear what was being said, we all had a receiver and ear buds and she did her commentary over a transmitter.

Seen close together on the street, some Soviet era cars

The Internet today is really slow, so I am going to dump a few pictures on here and let them load. Mostly they will be showing the architecture, so no great commentary needed.

We took our time getting up today as we were to leave the hotel at 1100 to be taken to our boat. After breakfast we (Lyn) finished packing then we hung around in the room for a short while before heading down to the lobby to check-out. The hotel was great and centrally located, if your ever looking for a place to stay in Budapest check out the Barceló Budapest.

The lobby was pretty full of guests waiting for the cruise transport (this was the hotel that Emerald uses for their guests who arrive ahead of the cruise). We met up with a couple from New Zealand and spent our waiting time talking to them. We finally got onto the minivan around 1200.

It was a 20 minute trip to the boat conducted at high speed in the minivan towing a trailer with our baggage. Once on board we were given a welcome drink and invited to go to the lounge for lunch and drinks until our cabin was ready. We stayed with NZ couple and time flew by. They went off on a tour of the Buda Hill area where we had visited yesterday. We also met up with an Australian couple while waiting around. So far it seems the boat comprises Australians, Brits, Canadians and New Zealanders.

Around 1330 we went down to reception to check in, and were shown to our cabin. We were pleasantly surprised at the space there was. The cabin was only 180 sq feet, but there was plenty of room to store everything. One complete wall was glass window looking out over the river, horizontally across the middle of the glass was a wooden handrail, and the top part of the window could be lowered at the touch of a switch. This gave the effect of us having a balcony, but also allowed the balcony floor space to be part of the cabin. Very ingenious!

This was going to be a no picture blog as not too much of interest happened, however plans changed as the water level on the river is a little low and the boat had to move away from Budapest to avoid grounding! We are now sailing about 40km north to a safe mooring area, which means we had a great night view of the city from the river. Below are some of those pictures.

I’ll just post them as eye candy as you have seen the daylight views of most of these sights plus I am having problem adjusting to the local wine!!