We’re headed towards Bratislava, capitol of Slovakia. We left the dock in Budapest right at 7:30 p.m. Monday evening (last night) while we were having dinner. The boat has been cruising up the Danube river ever since. It’s currently about 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Outside it is a beautiful, clear sunny day with temperatures of about 45 degrees. We passed through a lock about an hour and a half ago when we reached the first dam on the river. This was the first of sixty-eight locks on this cruise. We went into the lock while I was in the shower. It took about 20 minutes once we were in the lock for the water to fill up and raise the ship to the level needed to sail out of the lock. We’re now on a long reservoir feeding the power plant around which the lock was built.
The server at home went down last Thursday. Of course there’s no way to do any repair work while we’re here in Europe. I’ll need to figure out how to be able to get these systems back up and running when I’m out of the house. That’ll be the project when I get back home. I’ll probably need to put in place different computers since a couple of them have to be switched back on manually when they loose power. That’s probably something I can’t do remotely! Because the server is down, I can’t post to my weblog. So, I’ll keep the weblog in this document until I get home and will then make the updates as though they had been posted as we went along.
Budapest was a delightful city and we spent a very good time there. We arrived on Friday in the mid-afternoon. Bobby and Duane’s flight from Amsterdam was about a half-hour late, but they also arrived without incident. I had a rental car arranged, but it wasn’t quite big enough to put all the luggage in the back. We probably looked pretty weird with luggage stacked everywhere. The map from Avis showed how to leave the airport and then showed the city with a big gap in between. Unfortunately, the information in that gap proved to be pretty crucial. We missed a turn that we should have taken and ended up wandering around in Budapest for a couple of hours trying to figure out how to get to the hotel. Even after stopping to ask questions twice, we were only getting closer without actually being able to arrive. I finally bought a detailed map of the city and we were then able to pinpoint exactly where we needed to be. It made for a very long afternoon, particularly for Bobby and Duane who had been up by that time for more than 24 hours.
Nina and I took the hotel shuttle bus into the city on Friday evening. We strolled down a walking / shopping street (Vaci Ut) and discovered at the far end a large group of restaurants. The weather was quite pleasant so we sat outside and had dinner. One of the deserts listed was noodles with poppy seeds. We couldn’t figure out how that could be a desert, so we ordered one to share. It turned out to be quite delicious. The noodles were round and fairly thick. Each noodle was about three quarters of an inch long and were a little sweet. The sauce was dark with a lot of cinnamon and sugar. Also included were a small pieces of fruit. It made a very good end to a very nice meal. By taking the shuttle bus into town and back to the hotel, we learned the way into the city, which allowed us to drive back and forth over the next couple of days.
Saturday morning two people that Duane had worked with in Hungary about six years previously met us – Eva and Monica. Eva’s husband Oscar came along as well. We drove through town and then about a half-hour north and a little west of Budapest to Szentendre. We visited an open-air museum there built to represent various areas of Hungary and the style of living over the years in each of these regions. We spent several hours there including eating a late lunch in the museum’s restaurant.
In the late afternoon we drive into town to do a little shopping and sightseeing. We went the other direction on the walking / shopping street and bought a few postcards. We then drove northwest out of the city through Tatabanya to the small town of Tata. When Duane and Bobby had been in Hungary some six years previously on business, they lived near Tata while Duane was working at a new plant in Tatabanya. Monica and Eva both worked at the facility as well and that’s how they came to know each other. Monica is about eight months pregnant with her second child. Eva is about three months pregnant with her first child. They were most gracious hostesses and we had a wonderful time with them.
Monica and her husband Tibor had recently built a home in Tata. We visited their new house and then we all went to dinner for another authentic Hungarian meal. The restaurant had great food. About 30 women who were having a class reunion populated the tables behind us – they were very loud!! That made conversation out our table difficult. We had a good conversation with Eva and Oscar but weren’t able to talk very much with Monica and Tibor.
We were not able to figure out where Church would be on Sunday. No one answered either of the two telephone numbers available to us. I did get an email from the Mission on Monday with a little bit more information, but still was insufficient to figure out where Church met. There are supposedly three Branches in Budapest meeting in three different chapels. The Mission and District could definitely use some help with publicity and Public Relations! So, instead of Church we drove downtown and verified where the Viking Neptune was parked, our boat-home for the next two weeks.
We packed up and left the hotel about 1:45 p.m. Avis wanted the car back! We drove to the boat and dropped off the luggage, Bobby, and Nina. Then Duane and I took the car back to the downtown Avis office. Finding anything in Budapest is an adventure. We had to ask three times for directions to find this place. What looks like a major street on the map often is nothing like what I think a major street should look like. The car rental office turned out to be down a narrow street that looked more like an alleyway in a gas station.
The boat is very nice. There are about a 150 passengers on the ship. Our room is on the right (Starboard) side of the ship on the middle level. The window is huge with a great view outside. The front of the ship has a large lounge with seating for all the passengers (most of them are here now as I’m writing this). A sun deck goes the full length of the ship upstairs. There is a restaurant in the back of the ship with seating for all the passengers as well. Breakfast is a buffet. Lunch has a salad bar and the rest is served at the table. Dinner is served at the table. The restaurant is open seating (no assigned tables). The food has been excellent.
Monday morning we were still docked in Budapest. We took a bus tour of the city including stops at Hero’s square (a breathtaking place) and then up to Castle Hill (where there is no castle). We really enjoyed getting an overview of the city and both Nina and I decided we could spend some time exploring the city on a future trip. We returned to the ship for lunch and then took another tour out to a horse farm for a show of Hungarian horsemanship. That was also quite fascinating. We enjoyed the drive out of the city and through the countryside. We were back to the boat about 5:30 p.m. We cleared immigration, had dinner, and were underway.
I’m really enjoying this type of a cruise. There is a lot to see – there’s always something along the shore to see. We’re coming up on a bridge in Bratislava in just a few minutes. Some of the bridges are going to be very low – such that everyone has to leave the sundeck and the wheelhouse hydraulics lower it into down to the ship so we can clear the bridge. There is another boat coming our way, so we’ve slowed way down as we approach the bridge.