Grand and Glorious Curmudgeon

When we woke up, we were in a lock, hard up against the port side. What was odd is that we were going down rather than up as we had been doing for the entire trip. If you refer to the previous chart with the dotted yellow line which illustrates the continental divide. We were past the peak and descending towards the North Sea.

It was a very tall lock, probably a 15m one. There was one more tall lock before we docked near Nurenberg. Interesting side note: I asked Grok what the difference was between -berg and -burg. (see the link above)

Our scheduled tour of Nurenberg doesn’t start until after lunch so we caught an early bus downtown. It was about a 20-minute bus ride to downtown. We got walked down to the central square and turned loose for about two hours.

We walked through the Easter Market in the square and Kate bought some souvenirs.

In one corner of the square was “Schöner Brunnen” or Beautiful Fountain. It was completed in 1396 and has been restored several times.

Overlooking the square is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). It has a famous glockenspiel, but it only goes off at noon and we missed it today.

We made it back to the bus and returned to the ship for lunch. After lunch we boarded the bus and did our driving tour of Nurnberg.

First stop was the Zeppelin Field; the site of the Nazi mass rallies in September 1933-1938 (1939 preempted by invasion of Poland).

As you can see much of the stands are being refurbished. The next stop was the old coal fired power plant for the grounds.

The building was kept but if you look closely through the trees, you can see where the Eagle and Swastika were chipped off. The building has been completely gutted and now houses the local Burger King franchise.

That completed the WWII portions of the tour, we then drove up to the Nuremberg Castle(s). Although heavily damaged by the bombings and occupation by the US in WWII, it has been restored with the original 4 round towers and gates into the city.

With that done, we were again dropped off for a couple of hours of free time before the bus back. We stopped and got some gingerbread assortment and had some coffee and dessert in a store that specialized in desserts.

We then drove back to the ships and shortly afterwards got underway heading for Bamberg.

I’m back, I was only down for a day and some, the good news is that I apparently gave it to Kate, but since she already had the medicines in hand the got a head start on it.

After breakfast, we pulled into Regensburg. We were only going to be here thru lunch, so the walking tour got started at 9:00. Before you hear it in exaggerated form for someone else, I did take a minor tumble in front of a bus who was trying to squeeze by as I inched up the rather steep slope, I lost my balance and danced back in front of the bus before executing a graceful tumble to the ground. I was immediately pulled back up to my feet by Kate, the tour guide, more embarrassed than hurt.

For the tour we walked upstream towards Stone Bridge“

The bridge was built in just 11 years from 1135 to 1146. It was the only river crossing between Ulm and Vienna which made the city, and it’s merchant princes very wealthy.

The little green shop near the foot of the bridge sells sausages and has since 1374. It was probably based on a canteen that served food to the builders working on the bridge.

With the rise of East-West trade with the bridge and North-South trade up and down the Danube the merchant princes were basically able to print money. The merchants built these 6-storey houses (typically only two stories above the ground floor were occupied. See the 4 floors above the first two have been blocked off.

This is the Goliath House; this is actually the third variant which gets repainted every few hundred years to allow each artist to interpret the scene. The original was painted in 1573 by Melchior Bocksberger.

St Peter’s Basilica which is very similar to the one in Cologne further downriver. The weather was much nicer today, not the sunny patches.

On the way back to the ship, we passed a clock store, so I went in. I got a traditional cuckoo clock driven by descending weights but in a blonde color rather than traditional walnut.

We stopped at the Regensburg locks to pick up one group who had and afternoon excursion and then at Kelheim were we waited for the last group. It was here that we departed from the Danube River to cross over through the RMD Canal. The canal was finally started in 1966 and only completed in 1992.

You can see Kelheim on the bottom of the map where we start up the canal. We’ve already passed two of locks going up and the dotted yellow line marks the “continental divide” where the water flows north or south.

Tomorrow morning, we should be in Nuremberg;

Today’s entry was done by Kate since I crashed hard last night with a horrendous cough, congestion, etc. etc. I was down hard for about 36 hours while we drove to Melk and stopped at the abbey. Today we are in Passau. More about that later, but here is Kate from yesterday.

Kathryn here, pitch hitting since my dad has come down with a nasty cough & spent today mostly in bed. Over the night we went through several locks as we continued our way upriver. After breakfast we were treated to about a 2-hour commentary by our cruise director about some of the sights we were seeing on the different banks of the river.

We came across DÜRNSTEIN. Known as the “Pearl of the Wachau Valley,” Dürnstein is a medieval town built on a rock platform, which protects it from floods. The baroque Dürnstein Abbey stands out along the river, thanks to its iconic blue and white church tower. Notably, King Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned in Dürnstein Castle in 1192, commemorated by a statue of Richard and a bard named Blondel.

We then came to the Wachau Nose. The St. Lorenz ferry station in Rossatz-Arnsdorf features a white sculpture resembling a giant nose. The Wachau Nose is a local landmark symbolizing the importance of the sense of smell in wine tasting and the changing aromas of each harvest season. It is said that the feature was modeled after the nose of the mayor’s son from the town of Rossatz-Arnsdorf.

Next we came to Weissenkirchen.

Weissenkirchen is the largest wine-producing area in the Wachau Valley, home to more than one-third of the region’s vineyards. The town’s centerpiece, the White Church —a Gothic building with a red spire and a beautiful white tower-dates to the 14th century. The church’s courtyard hosts the annual Wachau Festival and the Riesling Festival to celebrate the region’s culture and wine. We learned about ice wine and how in this area it is only able to be produced about once every five years, leading to the high price. But in Canada they can produce it more regularly.

I think the highlight for me this morning was St Michael’s Church.

Built on a Celtic ritual site, St. Michael’s Church is believed to be the oldest church in the Wachau Valley, dating to the late 10th century. The current building dates to the early 16th century and features fortifications and a distinctive white tower. The church has an intriguing legend about seven hares that turned into stone sculptures on the roof during a stormy winter.

I am now off to lunch before we dock at Melk to tour the Abby.

In the afternoon, while I was still hard down, Kate went on the tour of the Melk Abbey. She brought this back so I wouldn’t lose out.

Meanwhile, we are in Passau for a partial day, we expect to get back underway at about 2:30pm. We are docked right in the middle of Passau as shown below.

As you can see you walk right off and into the town. It’s warmer, and not as windy today but I decided to rest and remain on board, while Kate went into tow to explore and stop by a Drug Store to get some more cold medications

The weather in Vienna is cold, windy and overcast/raining. This made the morning trip to see Vienna problematic. We started off with a bus tour of Old Vienna. Since Vienna was the seat of the Hapsburg Dynasty, it ruled for centuries up until the end of WWI when it was dismembered under the League of Nations.

In the second half of the nineteenth century the old city walls were torn down and the Ringstrasse was built and a broad wide circle of streets around the old central core of Vienna. It was originally constructed in the thirteenth-century using the ransom of Richard the Lionhearted who was captured near Vienna. It was later strengthened and featured in the Siege of Vienna.

With the Ringstrasse, came many of the huge buildings erected by the Hapsburgs, both government buildings and private residences. See Kate’s pictures for many of them.

We decamped from the bus and walked a few blocks up the street to St Stephens Cathedral. We ducked inside (see cold, rainy, windy comment above) only to find the end of Palm Sunday Mass. There was a huge crown of tourists in the back.

We walked along the street, stopping at a couple of souvenir shops, since it was Sunday all of the other stores were closed since Austria is nominally a Catholic country. We rode the bus back to the piers and retired to warm up and take a nap.

This afternoon there will be a lecture in the lounge about Vienna, and a look forward to tomorrows stop, Melk.

After that dinner will be served and we can relax until we get underway about 23:30. I’m not sure how successful it will be, but I plan to try to call in to the family call. It should be (assuming iPhone has figured out the time) about 01:30am tomorrow morning.

So, we got underway a little after 6:00pm and over dinner we left the outskirts of Budapest and got into the dark countryside. About 6:30am we hit our first lock. It turns out that over the entire trip we will go through about 67 locks in total.

Entering the first lock. It took about 30-45 minutes to complete the cycle. During about 5 days, as we make our way from the Danube to the Main River, we will go through about 50 locks. There are some low bridges, so the Sun Deck is actually closed, and they drop all the handrails and awnings so we will fit under them. After the lock, the river was even broader with a fair chop from the strong head wind. See the photo below:

Notice the significant chop, with the spray wetting the deck (and the starlink-mini on the deck). There are some islands in the distance.

The included feature of Budapest was a bus tour of Pest followed by a stop at the Buda “castle”. Since Kate was taking a ton of pictures, I will just provide commentary and let you go to Kate’s google page (https://photos.app.goo.gl/SFQh7Ypfb1WZgcDx7) for actual pictures.

Hungary, until after WWI, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was started when the Magyars, pushed out of modern Russia by other tribes, settled in what is now Hungary in 895-6. They peaked under the Austro-Hungarian Empire during their anniversary circa 1896. There was a huge building boom where they laid out broad avenues through Pest with great houses being built. Even though a majority of the grand buildings were damaged/destroyed during the war, most of them have been lovingly rebuilt since.

Given that it was cold & rainy and I only had an unlined thin jacket, both Kate and I sprung for dark blue Helly Hansen jackets (sold onboard) and they were well worth the nosebleed prices.

We loaded up the busses at 8:30am and headed out for a tout of Pest. The streets are well laid out (compared to Prague. We drove around the old Jewish quarter and down Andrássy út (Andrássy Avenue), known as the “Champs-Élysées of Budapest”.

After the tour of Pest, the busses drove us up to the Buda hills, to the Buda Castle. We debarked and walked around the area. There is actually a community, stores, etc. up on the hill. We got a tour of the Cathedral up on the hill. During the 150 years of Ottoman occupation the church was converted to a mosque and then re-consecrated to a church. We had about an hour and a half after the church, so we wandered around and Kate bought some paprika at the grocery store.

After the castle, we rode the bus back to the ship, arriving in time for lunch. We get underway this afternoon, about 6: 00pm.We will transit overnight to Vienna.

As we got into Hungary the traffic seemed to increase, and we would pass long lines of trucks stuck in the right lane, often stopped. We would eventually pass the beginning of the line, and each truck would accelerate back up to speed and we would continue. Several times both lanes would stop, and we would sit for 20 or 30 minutes until the traffic would start up again.

The bottom line was it was almost 4:oopm, or 8 hours since leaving that we finally started to pull into Budapest. Budapest is a combined city, with the old Buda on the east side of the Danube River, often higher and hillier that the west side. Pest (pronounced “Pesht”, is on the flatter west side of the river and was settled later. After they built the bridges (7 in total) the towns were combined into Budapest.

Speaking of bridges, while Prague was virtually untouched by the ‘late unpleasantness of the 1940’s’, Budapest was devastated. About 60% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed and the Germans dropped all of the bridges to try to slow down the Russians advancing from the West across Pest. The bridges and many of the building were lovingly restored after the war however.

Here we are about to cross the Danube into Pest. It was rainy and dour, but the city is much more open than the narrow streets of Prague.

Passing under one of the restored bridges.

A view across the river to the Buda “Castle” There was an actual castle until the Turks reduced it in 1541. The high-water point for Ottoman conquest was the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. The Turks ruled Buda and Pest for 145 years. It was rebuilt as a grand mansion, although you can see some of the walls around the base.

This is the Victory Statue erected after WWII.

This was the first bridge built over the Danube, the Chain Bridge. You can see another river cruise boat heading upriver. See Kate’s pictures for a night view of the bridge all lit up. We got checked in to our room (214) and collected our stuff and went up to the lounge to wait for the mandatory safety briefing.

This was a very civilized Emergency Drill and Safety Briefing. All the passengers fit into the Lounge, and the crew went over everything while we settled in with drinks, etc.

After briefing it was time for dinner. There was just one sitting with tables for six. They have a selection of steak, chicken, etc. but they have a featured selection what the chef recommends. I opted for that and had Fish Soup (thin tomato based but very good), Hungarian Goulash (of course but it was very good, much better that the lunch version) and a sponge cake and walnut ice cream.

Now it’s about 6:20am and breakfast is at 7:00 so I will close this out. Today is our second day in Budapest, we leave at 5:30pm to head upriver to Vienna.

So, we got up early and were waiting in the lobby at 7:00am for the trip to the bus. There were 4 of us to transport to the other hotel to board the bus. By about 8:00am we were underway for the 6-7 hour trip to Budapest. Of course, we immediately ran into rush hour traffic. Once we got clear of Prague, we headed down M1 towards Brno.

Most of the freeways in central Europe are two narrow lanes, freeways like the above are exceptions in major cities. It is somewhat helped by limiting trucks to the right lane, but of course that leads to huge truck backups in that lane.

Halfway through the Czech Republic we climbed to 2,000 feet altitude and we had a bit of snow, but the roads stayed clear. Once we drove through Slovakia, we got into Hungary where we stopped for lunch. I had a bowl of genuine Hungarian Goiulash.

It was about the same as Czech goulash I had the night before. It’s now after 2300 so I will leave this here and continue the rest of our arrival in Budapest tomorrow.

We went out for dinner this afternoon. I saw several places along the way that offered Goulash in a Bread Bowl”. Since I was a fan of clam chowder in a bread bowl from Cannon Beach, OR and also beef stew in a bread bowl at Johhny J’s in Casper I had to try the trifecta.

The bread bowl was brown bread which makes sense in the context. The goulash was very hot, but once it cooled slightly was quite tasty and the bread was very good. Of course, now I’ll have to compare it to actual Hungarian Goulash in Budapest tomorrow.

I was a little stiff waking up in the morning, we did a fair amount walking yesterday – by Kate’s smartwatch 7.4 miles. Again, we had a leisurely breakfast about 8:15am and headed back across the Charles bridge and down to the town square.

This was interesting because it is an atypical way to show a halo. Rather than circular, it’s more of a helicopter-ish view. We continued on to Town Square. but we had to wait a little until the Easter Fair and Municipal Ticket Office opened. The tickets for the lift up the tower were half-price before noon, and we got a subsequent discount for the hop-on/hop-off bus pass. The elevator up the medieval tower was shiny new and modern.

The round completely glass elevator is descending. We rode up and the view from the top was amazing.

A slightly out of focus view towards the mini-Eiffel tower created after the one in France, but as our tour guide proudly noted, 3 meters higher than the original (due to the hill it sits on).

The view to the far ridge with a TV tower on it, probably a great view for next time. After we rode back down se strolled back towards the river to pick up the Hop-on/Hop-off bus for a ride around the city.

We passed a car that apparently was severely overparked. Apparently, there is no active over-parking enforcement. I want to mention the sidewalks. Like the streets, they are cobblestone, but with small dark grey and white blocks about 2-inches square.

These sidewalks are all over the city, there is very little poured cement, just endless varied patterns of grey and white brick. As we were walking down to the ships last night, I saw several spots, a foot or so square, where the stones had come up and I snagged one.

We hopped on the trolley and rode all around the city while listening to the commentary on an app in the iPhone. It was interesting and easy on the feet. Fortunately, there was a stop just 2 blocks from the hotel, so we avoided the hike back across the Charles Bridge. Tomorrow, we get up early for the van/bus ride to Budapest, about 6 hours or so. (Link here)