Day 6

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

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Clay woke me before 6am today. The alarm didn’t go off. I guess he was just awake. We had breakfast at 7am. Clay wanted an omelet this morning and ordered it before even sitting down. The waiter came back from the kitchen to tell him they couldn’t fix omelets this morning. They could fry eggs to order and they could make porridge today, but not omelets because of a problem with the fire. Go figure! Clay had already made his toast and was all ready for that omelet. Oh well.

Regarding low water. It has rained hard all day and we are sailing again. We left Vilshofen right after dinner. We hope to be in Regensburg by morning and Riedenburg by afternoon. We are basically a day behind in the sailing schedule right now. This will mean some more long bus rides until we catch up. They are hopeful that we can make the Rhine-Main-Danube canal. I think we are about 40-50 km away right now. Anyway, getting everyone disembarking or otherwise to Nuremberg tomorrow will mean some more long bus rides. But that is better than packing up and leaving the boat. Fingers crossed.

So we had a long day riding the bus again today and it was soggy as well. We were happy for the rain if it means we keep sailing. We got to Regensburg later than scheduled and it was a bit of a disappointment all around after the long bus ride and wet walk. What I most remembered there was the stone bridge and it was covered in scaffolding as they repaired it. Half was repaired and from the bridge you couldn’t even tell it was old. We walked through the new part of town to get to the bridge and we hadn’t been there before. It was built in the 17^th and 18^th centuries vs. the 1000’s! The cathedral has a new organ “hanging” in it since we last visited. We got to have the famous Regensburg sausages at Wurstkuchl for lunch and not much else but Clay was happy. After lunch we drove to Kelheim. We saw the remains of the first attempt at a canal to bypass the Danube Gorge. We drove up to the Liberation Monument and had too much time to kill there after the rush of the morning. It was covered in scaffolding and the views were cloudy and seen through rain. Then we drove back down to Kelheim to board a sightseeing boat through the Danube Gorge ending at Weltenburg Abbey. There we had a complimentary beer and pretzel. We got to tour the brewery the last time here and that would have been a better use of time that the closed Liberation Monument too. It is over 1000 years old! At 5pm we had our abbey church tour. I love this church. They have the most life-like statues including St. George slaying the dragon on the altar. We had a long walk out of the abbey into Weltenburg to meet the bus. It took us nearly 2 hours to get back to the boat. That brings us up to date here. Simona held a mandatory briefing about tomorrow but came by our table at dinner to let us know we didn’t have to attend. Whew! She told us our options for tomorrow and even though it will be a long day with long bus rides, we all agreed to go do the 2 Nuremburg tours tomorrow on the between cruises turnaround day. The other thing was that the dining room manager came by and told us that starting tomorrow after disembarkation that the boat would end assigned tables and go to open seating. He offered to let us keep our table reserved instead if we preferred. We all discussed the pros and cons and agreed that we would all prefer to continue to keep our table and dining partners for the next week. They assured us that they would mark it as reserved for us. So, we’re going to becoming those clubby long-term cruisers that all the new arrivals hate. I can’t imagine doing these one or two week intensive cruises as a vacation for a working person. It is strenuous with no rest. You’d need an actual vacation vs. a trip to rest up when you got back home. Fingers crossed that we keep sailing all night. It looks and sounds precarious out there tonight!

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Day 5

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

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Clay woke me up before the alarm went off. We were docked in Aschach, Austria. We had gone through at least 5 locks during the night so it wasn’t a very restful night. Still I was happy to still be unpacked in a boat cabin and not in a hotel expecting to pack up and move again. We’ll see how long we can stay aboard. You have to wonder about the loss of Internet 24 hours before learning we don’t expect to complete the cruise.

Breakfast at 7am and buses loaded to depart at 8:15am. There were 3 buses this morning. Ours to Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic, one to Salzburg, Austria and one headed back to Linz for a morning walking tour. Those people for Linz were rejoining the boat in Engelhartszell, Austria for lunch and then another walking tour in the afternoon in Passau. We had already done both those walking tours. All 3 options were included in our fare so we just had to decide. We picked Cesky Krumlov because I had heard so much good about it and it would be a new country otherwise Salzburg was a close 2^nd. I am not sure why people rave about Cesky Krumlov. It was fine. But I wouldn’t rave about it. We walked from the castle gardens down through the castle complex without touring the castle. We wound around the little town to the town center square on the middle of the peninsula in the Moldau River. There we had lunch at the restaurant Don Julius. It was a fixed menu. They served pitchers of water and coffee or tea any other drinks were an extra cost. The first course was mushroom goulash with baskets of bread. The main course was beef in a sweet sauce with dumplings. There was a little side of a slice of lemon topped by red berries in sauce topped by whipped cream. It was all strange but actually very tasty in an intensely interesting way and filling. I think if anyone had anticipated the giant slices of bready dumplings that we’d have all avoided the bread baskets. Dessert was warm apple strudel. We had a little less than 2 hours of free time after that. We walked back the way we’d come before and found Clay a t-shirt and me a patch (79 Czech Kroner or crowns). We were trying to find a trdelnik or their version of chimney cake. We had passed several but now that it wasn’t raining and the sun was shining we evidently couldn’t smell them cooking anymore! Finally, we back tracked to the very first one the guide had pointed out. We watched them being made. They are different here than in Hungary and honestly nowhere near as good. They don’t use funnel shaped forms, they are metal instead of wood, they are shorter and breadier, they don’t use butter on them, they cooked them over gas flames and you can taste that. Just not as good. We had a nearly 2 hour ride back to the boat which had traveled up river to Passau, Germany without us. We drove by a field with 2 red foxes in it. The first one was close to the road and stood and stared at the bus. He looked like a storybook character! We had been advised to carry our passports since there are no sometimes border problems with the refuge crisis. Our guide said that Passau is a huge center for refuge processing and resettlement. She pointed out the police at the border between Austria and the Czech Republic and said that was new that usually, there is nothing and no one there. There was nothing and no one at the border between Czech Republic and Germany. There was a lot of traffic entering Passau and there were a lot of river boats docked along the embankments. We located our docked behind Amadeus Royal only because it was so much longer and our captain was standing atop Royal. If he was supposed to be watching for us, he missed flagging us down! Clay and I told her it was our boat and the 2 women across the aisle insisted it was not. The guy behind us pointed out it was our captain atop the nearer boat and the guide agreed to get out and call out the question to him. He waved us over. We are just waiting for the last bus to return from Salzburg and then we are supposed to sail. I guess when we reach the point where we can’t sail anymore that is when we’ll learn what the plan is to continue.

So, tonight was the Captain’s Farewell Cocktail Reception and Gala Farewell Dinner. I guess they moved it up a night because they don’t know if all of us or any of us will be onboard tomorrow night. Thursday is the departure day for people on just this segment. If we can’t get closer to Nurnburg, their end point they may have to be bussed ahead to make flights etc. Still no word on what they will do with the smaller number of us sailing to Amsterdam for another week. I’ll keep you posted. So anyway, it turned into a mandatory meeting about being bused an hour and a half each way from our dock overnight in Vilshofen to Regensburg and Weltenburg for the day’s excursion tomorrow. We’ll have to leave at 8:45am and expect to be back onboard after 7pm. They are issuing a 15 Euro per person credit to our shipboard accounts to help us cover food off the boat. Since we haven’t spent anything onboard and don’t plan to, we’ll see if they hand back cash when we leave or offer to mail us a check at a later date. It is a little cheap. Dinner was not anyone’s favorite and it started late and ran even later. We didn’t get up from the table until after 10pm. Oh, we learned from our dining companions that they learned from another passenger to Salzburg that Internet came back over night but that you have to have a new PIN code to get on. There was no announcement about this even tonight.

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Wachau Valley - Day 4

Monday, October 5, 2015

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We got to sleep in today and we did. We didn’t go to breakfast until after 8am. We were scheduled to dock in Durnstein at 7:30am. We docked next to another company’s boat during breakfast. It is against our window. We have a city walk of Durnstein and a wine tasting at 10am. We should sail again at 12:15pm. Lunch at 12:30pm. It is beautifully scenic here. The Danube winds and turns among mountains planted in terraced vineyards. There seemed to be a castle or castle/fort ruins on every other hill top as I looked out all night. We will dock again in Emmersdorf at 3pm for the Melk Abbey excursion so we should be able to have some nice scenic sailing. It is overcast with fog/light clouds around the hilltops but it looks like temps in the 50-60s F without rain. They need the rain!

We are back from our Durnstein tour. Only 2 hours here. Still no Internet. It is a small village of under 1000 inhabitants. They are connected to an unrelated village, Rossatz, across the Danube by some small wooden ferries. The Wachau Valley is 16 km of a special microclimate and they grow grapes and apricots here. I think both crops may be equally important. But, I have heard of their Gruner Veltliners and Rieslings while I never heard of the jam, marmalade and schnapps from the apricots. We had a guided walking tour and was rather informal and then an unsuccessful attempt at a more formal wine tasting in the old Durnstein Stift or monastery. It was a sad state of affairs that mostly reflected poorly on our passengers though someone must have complained because we had a different group division today and if anything it may have made things worse. What are you going to do? People that behave badly are going to be themselves no matter what. In addition to the 2 wines I already mentioned, we also tried a red that is from a 1916 locally bred varietal and the wine was Zweigelt. We didn’t care for it. We had been here before in 2003. I remembered the stone ruin where Richard the Lionhearted had been imprisoned. We approached before from the high road and tunnel above town and stayed up there mostly. We did visit the church then, but they didn’t let us go all the way to the river then! We had a completely different view. We saw a sign in town for Eleanor of Aquitaine and we remember visiting the church where she married in Bordeaux. It is amazing that people traveled so far back then. It is hard enough now.  It is time for Bavarian Fruhschoppen for lunch. Then scenic sailing.

We spent part of the scenic sailing having the Fruhschoppen buffet in the Panorama Lounge and out front. We spent the greater part sitting up on top. The Wachau Valley was very scenic. We sailed past Willendorf, where the famous figure called Venus was unearthed. This is some of the longest continuously human-inhabited land on earth. We spotted a couple who had reserved 2 or the boat’s 4 bicycles sitting on stairs near Aggsbach-Markt watching for us to pass. They were here waiting to get their Melk Abbey tour tickets when we walked ashore at Luftner’s private dock in Emmersdorf across the Danube from Melk and the abbey. The abbey was just as impressive as we remembered from our 2003 visit. I remember being so upset seeing the river below it and thinking that we could sail it. Now we finally are!

We still don’t have Internet. Simona announced this afternoon that they have an IT expert working on it. Clay claims they just need to pay their bills to have the switch thrown to turn it back on. Could be. We’ll see how long it takes or if they ever get it back for us. We are about 15 minutes past sailing time and I think I finally hear the engines starting to go. Yep, I just stuck my head out and we are untied and pushing sideways. There is supposed to be a port talk at 6:45pm. Since there are 4 different excursions tomorrow and you can do 2 in a day and stay nearby or 1 of the other 2 and be gone all day. I imagine that it will be confusing. I went up to take photos of sailing past Melk Abbey and Simona announced it as well as that attendance at her port talk is mandatory for at least one person from every cabin. We are approaching a lock above Melk and I suppose that will happen at the same time! Clay is not planning to budge before dinner so I volunteered to go. Dinner is at 7pm and is billed as a Pirates dinner. Last night’s Austrian Buffet had nothing Austrian about it except the desserts. They even served French wines! I had to ask for the Gruner Veltliner from the night before. Anyway….

Still no Internet, but in worse news… now no water in rivers. Clay and I both went to the port talk. It was confusing and was made even more so by Simona trying not to say what she had to say. Tomorrow should go as planned with the variety of excursions. But Wednesday will involve the forced removal of everyone from the boat for the day whether they booked any excursions or not as they see how far they can get the boat upriver. Simona said at some point (it was not clear where) that the river is closed to navigation due to low water and high rocks. I am still hoping we can make the canal at least so we can sail as far as Frankfurt. We’ll see. I’d say I’ll keep you posted but without Internet, I won’t. I’ll just keep up with my notes here and post to the blog when I can.

Pirate night dinner was actually pretty funny. We entered to find the staff in ridiculous costumes of course but the funny thing was the disarray. The tables and chairs were askew, the napkins weren’t folded and when you picked them up all the silverware was just in a jumble under there. The table numbers were moved and knocked over, the salt and pepper were separated. It was funny. Well we have an early start and a long day tomorrow to visit the Czech Republic. It will be my 74^th country!

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Vienna, Austria

Sunday, October 4, 2015

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I had a great nap yesterday afternoon. I spent part of the afternoon with the window wall open and saw jets landing over the Danube at Vienna’s airport. I was amazed at the miles of fishing shacks and cabins lining the banks with big Chinese-style fishing nets. I wonder what they catch with those nets?  If there is some seasonal fish run they use them for? I got dressed when I thought I could see that we were approaching the newest lock below Vienna. I was premature but stayed out front and up top until just before dinner as we were exiting the lock. It was different technology than we had seen before. We couldn’t see the water source filling the lock and there was a rotary gate at the upper end. It had traditional swing gates at the lower end. I love locks! I believe Simona said this one raised us 12 meters. I believe she also said there were something like over 60 locks between Budapest and Amsterdam.

Dinner was Viennese. It was good there was a pumpkin terrine appetizer with ham that was quite tasty. The soup was so-so. The Wiener schnitzel was pork with potatoes and was quite good. They served a Gruner Veltliner with it so I was happy. Tomorrow is supposed to be a Viennese buffet dinner. I don’t know what that will entail. We’ll see. We have a very long and full day tomorrow.

For unknown reasons, we didn’t sleep too well last night. I don’t know why because we got to dock alone last night without any extra boats tied alongside. The alarm woke Clay this morning. I had been more or less awake for the previous 2 hours and just resting. We found the Internet wifi was down this morning. The front desk was supposed to get an IT guy out of bed to get it back up but it is 1pm now and it is still down. Hopefully, it will be back up soon. We had a morning bus and walking tour. I am so glad that we spent extra time in Budapest and had spent nearly a week here before because we aren’t getting much of an experience through the river cruise. How are you going to experience central Vienna in a couple of hours? On Sunday morning! We left this dock well North of central Vienna at 8:15am. It was 8:30am before we started driving because it took that long to walk past all the other docked river boats to reach where the buses could park. Then they had to drive down one at a time to turn around and then leave in a crowded single lane. We drove for a long time before we reached the area where we passed a couple of dozen other riverboats docked during dinner last night. They weren’t too far from the Prater. I am sure it was after 9am before we saw the Ring road. Our first stop was about 20 minutes to walk to the Hundertwasser House and back to the bus. I bought a patch there and Clay smashed a 2 cent Euro coin. We learned today why there are Hundertwasser toilets in a remote part of the North Island of New Zealand. The artist/architect wanted to be buried there and was. I guess he also took the time to design some public toilets but the guide didn’t mention that. We drove around and then the bus dropped us in front of the Albertina. We had an hour. She guided us to Stephansdom and gave us about 30 minutes of free time. Nothing was open but souvenir shops and coffee shops and church was in service. We still peaked inside. Clay bought some Mozartkugels in the subway and saved 3 Euros over the price from the souvenir shops above. I bought a Starbucks mug near the Lipizzaners’ stables. We bought a red and a white Sturm from a stand set up outside the basilica. I liked the red better! Then we realized how big the servings were and how much time we had left and we bought a big pretzel to share too. I asked the guide and she claimed that Must was the first press and just juice with no alcohol (but I am sure I was drunk on it before) and that Sturm is after 3 days of fermentation with a little alcohol. It was really good in either event. We were back to the ship by noon for lunch. We didn’t even check the restaurant this time. We just went right to the lounge for the light buffet. They had spicy fried noodles and Alfredo rotini. I am going to regret eating pasta for lunch every day! I told Clay that 3 out of 3 is a miracle and I am sure to run into something I won’t eat there soon. We leave for our afternoon Schonbrunn Palace tour at 2pm. We should be back by 5:30pm. Dinner is an Austrian buffet from 6 to 8pm. We leave again at 7:15pm for a bus transfer to the Sound of Vienna concert in the cheap seats at the Kursalon. We are expected to be back aboard by 10:30pm and the boat sails at midnight for Durnstein.

5:30pm and back from Schonbrunn tour. It took 45 minutes driving each way to get there and get back so it was a quick tour. You’d have hated for this to be your time in Vienna! You’d have thought that at least they would have arranged to pick up the people who wanted to stay in town from the morning for the afternoon tour, but no. After Bratislava and Vienna, I am very happy I guess that most of these places coming up we’ve already been. I’m also prepared for disappointment in visiting some of the places in France that we’ve never been. I don’t remember feeling like port time was this short on other river cruises before. You can’t see anything of a major city in a couple of hours!

Internet is still out or the wifi is anyway. It sounds like they have no hope of restoring it at this point, so I’ll keep typing up these notes, but I have no idea when these entries might get posted to the blog. Sorry. No Internet access is inconvenient for us too.

We enjoyed the Kursalon entertainment last night. They had a small 12 piece orchestra with a male and a female singer and a male and a female ballet dancer. The singers and dancers never performed together and some songs were just the musicians. It was lively. They played about 50 minutes then had a 15 minute intermission where they provided a glass of either orange juice, bad champagne or water and restrooms, then part 2 lasted about the same amount of time. We were back onboard Amadeus Silver II by 10:30pm. I think we sailed around 11:30pm. We were well under way when I got up to look at midnight. The weird thing is that a number of people took off at various points in the day to get a chance to spend some quality time in Vienna. It was a good idea since we spent the bulk of our day busing back and forth 3 times! But Simona said on day one that departure times were rigid and inflexible, to know before you leave or they’ll leave you if you’re 5 minutes late. The program said departure/all aboard was midnight. When we returned in the morning, they had out 2 signs that said 10:30pm. Now keep in mind that at least half our bus did not come back on the bus this morning! After lunch, the signs had been changed and said 11:30pm. Still the people who stayed in town are working form the midnight time in the program! I hope they left after the last passengers reboarded! So much for departure times being rigid though. If they change the time and announce and post it after you have left the boat I don’t know how you can be responsible for being on time or late!

It is Monday morning and still no Internet.

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Bratislava, Slovakia

Saturday, October 3, 2015

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So we seemed to get into higher water levels over night as they were running all out most of the time. Occasionally, the engines slowing would wake me up so I guess those were the low spots, but it was clear we were trying to make up lost time for Bratislava in the morning. We also went through a very tall lock and that woke me right up and I went and looked out. We were only about 30 minutes late arriving in Bratislava. We docked during breakfast instead of by 7:30am. That meant that we were up and had the curtains open about 7:10am when we entered a narrow debris and islet strewn section of the Danube that was covered with birds! Mostly large white birds. We got out the binoculars and they were mostly swans. It was amazing. We’ve only seen that many swans in one place before during the overwintering near Lake Mattamuskeet. We also saw a lot of ducks, a coot, seagulls and quite a few egrets. I took a chocolate coffee from the Amadeus Club to breakfast because I like it a lot better than the brew they serve in the restaurant. I also ordered a ham and cheese omelet today. It was huge. I didn’t finish it. That would definitely only be a weekend meal. Today’s special item on the buffet was sautéed mushrooms. I will hope for something I like tomorrow!

Today’s tour started at 9am. We left at the first call to exchange our giant key fobs for giant landing cards and to get our audio devices and tour tickets. When we got to the lobby it was very chilly and people were bundled up. I started to back up and ran into Clay. I said let’s go back and get jackets. He said after and so we went on to the desk. Then we started back down the hall again when we realized we didn’t have keys and couldn’t get back in the cabin. So, we crossed on through the first 2 moored boats and found our purple guide on the dock. He wanted us to stay there while he rounded us all together. That was unfortunate because it was really windy and a biting cold wind. Finally, he either called time or reached 33 and we left and walked about a block to the bus. We are docked right under a bridge with a restaurant called UFO atop it! We are right below Bratislava’s castle and parliament as well. The bus tour drove us through the hill top ambassadors’ residences among other big view homes to a hill top monument to killed Soviet liberators from the Nazis. There was a 15 minute or so photo stop there for the views. Then we drove down to the Castle and had about 40 minutes there for photos of the view again and restrooms for .70 Euro and some free time. I got a Slovakia flag patch for 1 Euro and used the toilets. Then we drove on into downtown’s pedestrian district. We got out there are walked for about 30 minutes and then had 30 minutes free time to make our own way back about 3 blocks to the boat. It was a nice morning. The sun shone brightly and it did warm up to around 70F but the wind stayed chilly if you caught it. The guide told us about their local cookies or pastries that were crescent shaped and stuffed with either poppy seeds or walnuts. We found some and got one of each. They were all right, but no chimney cakes! We got back onboard about 10 minutes to noon which was all aboard and sailing time. We didn’t sail for at least another 20 minutes. I don’t know what the delay was. We had to get disengaged from the other 2 boats. We went up top to watch. Then we went and checked the lunch menu and decided to eat the light buffet in the lounge again and so did our table mates again. I had the pesto linguine. Dessert was Black Forest cake and I hate chocolate and cherries together. We could see that we were approaching a ruined fortification and the CD said it was by a river that marked the entry into Austria. So we went back up top and since it was chilly in the wind I got a hot chocolate for my dessert from the Amadeus Club on the aft one floor down. The water is very low!

Oh, I had asked about my name spelling and the train ticket. They say they will correct my name but blame me for not providing it correctly. I assured them that my final cruise documents had my name spelled correctly but they don’t care. Simona told me the tickets came to her by email and there is nothing she can (or will) do to change them. Clay and I understand that she did nothing about it. She said it was an email from their home office and I guess she can’t be bothered to contact them. OK. She and the receptionist both assured us that no one would compare my name to my passport for the train which gibes with our experiences this spring in Schengen. Simona told us to ask the car attendant on the train to see if we could sit together. We figured that already or ask someone sitting near one or the other of us if they’ll switch. But, honestly for the money we paid Amras Cruises, we expected a lot better effort.

We have the entire afternoon free. Basically the entire evening too. There is a Viennese tea/coffee, which I will skip since I don’t love either apple strudel or Sacher torte. This is followed by Simona’s talk on Viennese coffee house culture. Since we spent hours in them in 2003 I think we already get it so I’ll skip that. Dinner is supposed to be Austria. I expect schnitzel. We should dock around 7:30pm. There is an optional pub hopping evening tour that last we heard did not have the minimum 20 person enrollment. We planned to stay in anyway. Tomorrow night is an included Viennese music program after a day of touring. We need to rest today while we have the chance. I haven’t had a nap since we got to Europe almost 3 weeks ago. I have a plan…

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Sailing Amadeus Silver II - Day 1

Friday, October 2, 2015

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Clay had set an alarm for 6am. He was up first and woke me with the tablet in bed again. I don’t know how or when he woke up. Sometime after midnight last night we got dock on the starboard side up against the Amadeus Brilliant. We heard the creaking where we are up against them during the night. It also blocks any light or view. Breakfast buffet was at 7am and we were there. Assigned tables are for the entire duration. So, we sat at table 23 again with our assigned partners. We only ate from the buffet today. Our waiter that spilt water on me last night was still mortified and groveling so we just left him there and went to the buffet. But, there is a menu for fried eggs and omelets etc. Maybe tomorrow. From 8 to 11:30am we had a bus tour of Pest and Buda with about 30 minutes of walking and free time. I would have hated it if that had been the entirety of my visit to Budapest. They did though buy tickets and enter Matyas church and the upper level of Fisherman’s Bastion in Buda’s castle district. They had us back to the boat by 11:30am for lunch. It turned out that all 4 of us from table 23 shunned the big lunch in the restaurant and ate together again in the lounge from the light buffet. It was still pretty heavy. But you could serve yourself and eat at your own pace. As Clay said, if we’d gone to the 3 course lunch they’d have kept us there from 11:30 to 12:45. At one pm, we depart on buses for Szentendre & rejoin the boat in Esztergom. I hate missing the first locks and the sailing the Danube bend, but I don’t want to miss new towns in Hungary either. So, it is the tour. If we ever give this another try maybe I’ll get to cruise it.

Well, it is quite past my bedtime and we’ve just gotten back from dinner. But, here goes. We loaded the single bus for the afternoon tour on time at 1pm. We drove north out of Budapest. The boat was to sail a half hour behind us and we have to assume that it did. We drove about 40 minutes I guess to get to Szentendre (pronounced saint andre). The guide led us from the bus parking to the town square and told us what to see and look for and how to get back and when as well as about local crafts and goods to shop for. We had about an hour of free time. Clay and I walked the rest of the breadth of the town and found a chimney cake being cooked over a coal fire. It was the most expensive one we have seen yet, but it was a little different and good. We walked down and looked at the arm of the Danube on the Szentendre side of St. Andrew Island to observe the low water. Our local guide pointed out from the Buda side of the Danube as we drove out of town “the starvation stones” that are traditionally a sign of drought in the summer growing season and that they won’t have enough food for winter. She pointed it out again as we entered this town. There is no question it is low. The guide told us that she has another group to guide tomorrow on a different cruise line and that she knows they won’t be cruising. She was not looking forward to that as they will be in a very bad mood. We got back on the bus and drove about 20 km more to Visograd. This is at the Danube Bend, an S-curve in the river, with some castle or fort ruins on a high bluff above the river. King Matyas once imprisoned Vlad Tepes (or Dracula) here. The guide tried to time our arrival at the top view point to when Amadeus Silver II should have arrived, but it never came by. We walked back down to the bus and reloaded for another 20 km or so ride to Esztergom. This was a former capital of Hungary and home to the largest Catholic basilica in Hungary. We toured the basilica and walked around the old fortification walls and watched the sun set over Slovakia across the Danube. We watched for our boat since this is where we are to meet it, but it didn’t come. Finally as it was about to be too dark to make the rough walk back down to the bus the guide told us to go back to the bus.  We did and about the time people started to get pissy, she told us that she was taking us to the Primas Pince or Archbishop’s cellars for a glass of wine to wait for the boat to arrive. Dinner was originally supposed to be served at 7:30pm. That was about the time we reboarded. Dinner started at 7:45pm. There was a Captain’s Welcome Party and next day port talk that were missed (by the people out on the bus anyway! It is not clear what happened to those people who stayed onboard. They were all dressed up and waiting in the lobby when we arrived.)  They handed us each a glass of champagne as we entered the restaurant and we were greeted by the CD, Assistant CD, Captain and Hotel Manager and then offered hors d’oeuvres before we got to our tables. Dinner service was slower this evening, but without mishaps. When we arrived back at the boat in Esztergom, it was tied up alongside another boat and we had to walk through their lobby. As soon as the last passenger returned, we cast off and set sailing at a pretty good clip. The captain had a few words about our patience being appreciated as we navigate extreme low water conditions and being flexible. He told us he had an able assistant piloting the boat in the dark.

We came straight to the cabin after dinner. Our dinner companions were among the 25 or so on the bus with us today. It seemed like only people who bought their cruises with included excursions went off this afternoon and the majority stayed aboard for the sailing. Since that would be mostly French speakers we did not hear how they fared all afternoon and early evening. When we got back to the cabin we found train tickets for Amsterdam to Paris. My first name is misspelled and we are not sitting together. I went to reclaim our passports at reception and ask about this but was told to find Simona, our CD, sometime tomorrow and bring it up with her. My final documents have my name spelled correctly. I did not see it misspelled until today, our first full day aboard. First on the train ticket and then on the passport form they had me sign to recover our passports. I don’t know why they would need to issue those train tickets so soon anyway. They are for the 15^th. We don’t think the misspelling will make any difference but we are bothered by not being seated together!

Good night!

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Budapest - Day 5

Thursday, October 1, 2015

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Well, we had a final breakfast at the Royal Park Boutique Hotel and checked out before 10am. We set off by Metro to the House of Terror Museum at 60 Andrassy Street. We were there early and I was reading the displays they had outside and I didn’t notice that a line was forming about a half block long. When I saw it about 10 of 10am, we hustled over and got in line. It didn’t matter because we wound up in the middle of large groups of teenagers that were clearly some kind of school groups. It was dramatic and incomprehensible. Not just because it was primarily in Hungarian, but like all of the Nazi, Holocaust, KGB, Soviet Gulags, etc. The real mystery is that every guide we have had since we arrived and I believe most were too young to have any real memories of life under Communism or as they like to call it Socialism has been quick to point out that it was not all bad. There was much to appreciate and like about it. For example, yesterday’s guide talked about the Soviet’s rebuilding everything and even improving Hungary with industry and factories. Yet this museum pointed out that was done with slave labor from conquered from nations like Hungary!

We took the Metro back to the riverfront and found a place to have lunch. We ate at Szamos Haz. Clay had another Dreher draft and another bowl of goulash. I had a Coke Zero and a Crocque Madame. We walked over to Gelato Rosa for flower shaped ice cream cones at my request since it was sunny and warm enough today to enjoy one. I had lavender white chocolate with plum sorbet. Clay had pistachio and hazelnut. We rode Metro Red 2 all the way to the end of the line to kill time. That was interesting because the last 2 stops were all above ground and we saw the blocks and blocks of plain apartment buildings. We crossed the platform into the waiting train for the return journey and went back to Keleti for a final time. We got back to the hotel about 10 of 2pm. We had requested they arrange a taxi for us to the river boat dock at 2pm. Somehow there was some miscommunication and the driver and we all sat in or around the lobby waiting for each other for about 20 minutes before Clay went up to the reception desk and asked the girl he had made the arrangements through. She said oh he’s here! He was in a plain black car, not a taxi. We left. He did not speak or understand a single word of English! He didn’t ask either of the front desk people where we wanted to go. He made a phone call and handed it to Clay and that person tried to tell the driver where to go. Thank God we had already been down here last night and knew exactly where it was because he was at the river but probably more than a mile away from the boat! I gave him the sheet of taxi directions that Amras had sent, but he was more confused by the map it seemed than by our directions and pointing and waving him on. It isn’t that big a city or waterfront! Anyway, we arrived and the fare was half what we expected so there is that. We were waiting for the outbound people to clear the long steep gangway ramp before starting down with our luggage when a couple of people with Amadeus pins on asked what we needed. We said we were boarding and showed them our documents. The man took our rolling bags from us and had us go on board as he followed us. There was a mass of luggage and people speaking foreign languages in the lobby area. Of course, there was another Amadeus ship attached to Silver II’s port side so not all of them may have belonged to us. Another woman stopped by and I asked her if we should check in or what. She asked where our luggage was and I pointed it out. It was 2:35pm and our documents had said that the cabins would be ready by 3pm. She said the cabins wouldn’t be ready until 4pm and to either leave and come back or wait in the Panorama Lounge. We headed all the way to the top deck and sat in some loungers at the back of the ship in the bright sun instead. A bit before 3pm, they announced that cabins were ready and we could check in. There was a bit of pushing at the front desk before we submitted our passports and got our giant tasseled magnetic key fobs. When you want to leave the boat, you exchange this for a landing card and vice versa on return. Clay says the landing card is laminated with your name on it and equally ludicrously large and unwieldy. It won’t go in a pocket!  He also learned that we have Internet included. Now if it just works! We found the Amadeus Club in the back and one floor up where we can fill an ice bucket 24/7 so right now we’re pretty happy. They gave us a slip of paper with a table assignment when we checked in so that may yet make us unhappy. The cabin is great. It feels spacious and light and the storage is great. The bathroom is great as is the walk in closet. We really like the switch that opens and closes the window wall forming a balcony of the entire cabin. Clay is bummed that while the gym on the first deck is open 24/7 that it has no treadmill so he probably won’t use it anyway. I didn’t realize it even had one. There is space for using the yoga mats they have in there but I didn’t bring my yoga routine with me. Well, it is almost time for the boat drill so I’ll stop here.

I’m back and well past my bedtime! The safety briefing lasted until dinner time at 7pm. Then there was a Hungarian folkloric show in the lounge. Then we unmoored for a scenic night sail upriver and back to our dock at Mahart 7. As yet we haven’t turned back and we’ve gone one bridge past Margrit and its island.

Dinner was ok, not great. It was supposed to be a Hungarian meal. But, it wasn’t a very tasty or authentic one. The waitstaff were all wearing authentic embroidered shirts though. Even the one who dumped Clay’s water glass on my lap! At least it was only water. We are at a 4 top with another couple from the US. They are on with us through Amsterdam and Paris to Normandy and back. They aren’t doing southern France. There are only 2 other tables that are labeled Amras. We don’t know how many are on for the full month or even all the way to Amsterdam. This segment ends in Nurnberg. Our dining companions just flew in and their luggage didn’t make it. They were informed at dinner that their bags should meet them in Wien on the 3^rd.

I am going to post this now. We have a punishing schedule coming up with not a lot of free time unless we just skip some tours or something. Oh well.

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