Our Travel Blog

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!!

Another sunny and warm day in the forecast. After breakfast we headed out to the Hop-on-Hop-off bus again. After touring most of Budapest yesterday, today was to be a river cruise (a little ironic given our plan for the next couple of weeks) and a visit up to the Buda Hill area. For those that don’t know, the name Budapest comes from the formation of two cities into one, Buda and Pest. Evidently locals will still identify as coming from Buda or Pest and there are still friendly rivalries between the two.

The bus trip to the dock was only one stop, and we had about a 30 minute wait once we got there. I was surprised at how little river traffic there was on the Danube. So far we have only seen two commercial barges.

Once on the boat we headed for the outside deck upstairs. Much of what we saw was a repeat of yesterday but from a different viewpoint so I’ll try not to throw repeat pictures in.

We got a better view of the Parliament buildings from the river, unfortunately the untamed finger snuck into the second picture!

Moored up at the side of the river was a boat that looked as though it would be more at home on the Mississippi.

Below is the Chain Bridge

Below is a picture taken when we were walking across the bridge. It got it’s name from the original bridge that was constructed a couple of centuries ago which used chains as part of it’s construction. The bridge, and all the others crossing the Danube, were destroyed in WWII and have since been rebuilt.

As we were cruising along we saw the Emerald Sky, our cruise ship for the trip to Amsterdam

At the end of the cruise we walked back to the Chain Bridge and crossed it to the Buda side of the Danube. From here we took a large golf cart, otherwise known as the Castle Bus, up to the Bud Hill area of the city.

We were expecting to just go up to a hill that houses the Buda Castle (aka the Royal Palace, see yesterday for pictures), however we discovered there was a complete town up there. Within the town was the magnificent Matthias Church.

We spent quite a time wandering around the town and then had lunch before heading back down to river level.

We continued walking along the river bank to the botanical gardens.

From the Botanical Gardens we headed back to the Hop-on-Hop-off bus and made our way back to the hotel.

We decided to go back to the Bazar again for our evening meal. This time we found a restaurant that had a more Hungarian menu and chose a local stew and dumplings.

Back at the hotel I tried out a couple of night views from the patio.

Tomorrow we head out to join the cruise.

We managed to get a great nights sleep and woke up around 0830. The hotel includes breakfast, so after doing all things morning, we headed down for food. A good buffet was laid on from cereal through Continental to eggs, bacon, pancakes etc.

Prior to leaving Lyn had bought tickets for the Hop-on-Hop-Off bus, which is our usual way to do a quick trip around the city and see what want to explore further.

It promised to be a warm day with temperatures in the low 20’s (mid 70’s) and clear skies.

We headed down to the bust stop which was by St. Stephens Basilica.

At this stage, I have to mention we didn’t bring a camera on this trip, as I had just got a Google Pro 7 cell phone whose camera specs are better than the camera’s!! HOWEVER, I am still not used to using it and there may be the occasional spare digit appearing in the picture!! Also thee photos have been compressed in size as the originals were 4-6MbB in size, which would take up a fair bit of bandwidth to upload them.

Rather than spend a whole time jabbering on, I’ll just show a bunch of pictures with minimal content. If you are interested in the story behind them, the internet search is your friend!

Many walls were decorated with art.

Although we are not lovers of Opera, the internal decor of the Opera House was amazing.

As we drove along the Danube we could see all the cruise boats moored up for the day

The attention to detail on the stone work of many buildings was amazing, below is just one example.

We stopped for lunch at a sidewalk cafe where we had a quick sandwich (Carrot cake and Apple pie may have found their way onto our table as well!)

Next we were back on the bus to Heroes Square

In the same area as Heroes square were a number of other attractions, including a zoo and botanical gardens. We didn’t visit these as we weren’t too sure of how much time we’d need for other parts of the tour. There was also an old castle in the vicinity.

Budapest is also home to the worlds second largest synagogue, so the tour information told us. A little fact checking shows that it is the 9th largest. Wonder if I can get my money back??

At the back of the Synagogue is a metal tree sculpture, each leaf is engraved with the name of a Hungarian who died in the holocaust.

By the end of the afternoon we were ready to head back to the hotel. On the way we were looking for a restaurant for tonight’s meal. Although there were a few along the way none really appealed. As we got closer to the hotel, there was a sign over an entrance way for a Bazar, the spelling was close enough to attract Lyn’s attention! In fact this led to a whole area of restaurants, some indoors and some on patios. Well worth exploring later.

We went back to the Bazar later and had a very enjoyable meal there. Prices here seem to be similar to, or slightly less than Canadian prices. The exchange rate leads to some large number though as 1 Canadian dollar buys around 380 florints.

Enough for today, hopefully the pictures worked out OK this time. By the way, the usual disclaimer, I am writing this at the end of a busy day, there will be spelling and grammar mistakes!

Well, despite every flight being delayed to some degree or another, we finally made it to Budapest. Whats even more amazing is that our bags also made it AND were some of the earliest ones of the carousel!

The cruise line had arranged transport from the airport to the hotel, which was about a 30 minute drive to the heart of Budapest. We arrived almost exactly 24 hours after we left. Of that only 10 or so hours were actually spent flying.

We checked into the hotel that is an old building that has been completely modernised. We are on the 8th (top) floor which means we don’t hear much of the sound from the bar filled street below. We also have a large size patio with furniture.

After checking in we managed to get down to the bar for a beer and a snack, before heading back to the room. In order to stay awake a little longer I am adding another chapter to the blog. It’s now 2100 (1500 in Ottawa), and despite my getting about 4 hours sleep on the flight, I am fighting a losing battle to stay awake!

So, we’re on our way, somewhat early. More on that later! We’re flying a slightly more logical route than our last trip. Starting in Ottawa we fly to Toronto, then Munich, then Budapest. We have to fly west initially as it is not possible (with the exception of Air France) to fly overseas from the Nations capital! Once in Budapest, we’ll spend a few days there prior to boarding a boat for a cruise on the Danube to Amsterdam.

This trip was booked and finalised some months ago, however 3 weeks ago I got an e-Mail from Air Canada apologizing, but for operational reasons, our first flight had been canceled and they had automatically booked us on the flight an hour later. However, due to the mysterious ways airlines fix their fares, this meant the Munich – Budapest flight had to be moved! The first flight was delayed by one hour, the last flight by 4 hours and there was no change to the middle flight… go figure.

Up until last night I wasn’t too concerned that we only had 90 minutes to change flights in Toronto, but then for some unknown reason I checked the history of the flight we were now on. Over the last three days it had been canceled once and delayed more than 90 minute twice. I really didn’t want to phone Air Canada as there have been horror stories of 4-6 hour hold times. Imagine my shock when I was connected to an agent in under 4 minutes. From here it went from the sublime to the ridiculous, I had seen that the flight I had originally booked (but was told had been canceled 3 weeks ago) was still flying! I asked if I could be moved back to that flight. Although the agent was willing to make the move, the computer wouldn’t let her as the flight had (literally) just been canceled! To cut a long story short we finished up booking a trip three hours earlier. I guess we’ll get good use of the lounge.

I checked my eMails this morning to find one from the cruise company. The first thing I saw was “low water”. One of the risks of a river cruise this time of year is the water levels. If they are too low the cruise is conducted on a bus!! Not a pleasant thought. I read the e-Mail fully, and due to an earlier problem with water levels, our boat had been changed. Not a big issue I believe, as most of the companies boats are are very similar in layout.

Well, its now Wednesday and we are in Munich. My gut reaction to change to the earlier flight was a good one. Although our original (cancelled) flight managed to un-cancel itself, it was 2 hours late and the flight we were moved to was over an hour late. Both of these flights would likely have caused us to miss our connection.

The trans Atlantic fight was fine, and it was a new aircraft type for me an Airbus A350.

Now its just a matter of waiting a few more hours for the flight to Budapest. The vacation real starts tomorrow!