And we’re off! I’m going to try and update this travel log throughout our grand European adventure! Today we are traveling from Little Rock to Houston to Frankfurt to Budapest. Budapest is where we are boarding the Viking river cruise. The flight from Houston to Frankfurt is about ten hours. I’m a little nervous to be in the air that long! The airport in Houston is not great and the international terminal is busy!

We arrived in Budapest, Hungary this afternoon. We had enough time before we had to gather upstairs to get settled into our room. Of course, Jason is prepared with every gadget we could possibly need. The rooms are tiny, but super nice. We have a “French balcony”, but we are currently parked between two other ships. They assured everyone that is not the case at every port. After we settled in, we went to the terrace for a wine and cheese tasting and then to a required meeting that informed us all of the procedural details of the journey. After that we were able to take a quick thirty minute nap before heading to dinner. For dinner we had traditional Hungarian fare including chicken paprikash. After dinner we did a tour called Budapest at night. The city is divided into two main parts, Buda and Pest. Buda is the hilly section where they are mist know for hot water springs and baths. Pest is way busier and according to the tour guide the more lively, party area. The city is beautiful and indeed the “city of lights of the east”. Te architecture is amazing. We saw hero’s square and parliament all lit up. At 10:00 all the lights go out, and we were there to see that which was interesting. After the tour the took us to a beautiful restaurant where we got to sample Hungarian sparkling wine. So far, the people are nice and I haven’t experienced any major language barriers (mostly they speak English). Our boat holds around 190 people and there are only about 160 people on this trip. Of those 160, 120 of us are American. I heard there was another couple from Arkansas on board, but we haven’t met them yet. \240There are also travelers from Australia, Canada, and Great Britain.

Today was a wonderful day in Budapest! In the first picture you will see our view when we woke up this morning. The green bridge was designed by the same guy who built the Eiffel Tower. We ate too much at breakfast and then did the panoramic bus tour of the city. That tour took us to the Matthias church in the castle district which is in the “Buda” section. We got to tour the church which was amazing and then stroll around the area. We had coffee and a strudel in a little park and people watched and took in the beautiful architecture. They then brought us back to the boat where we skipped lunch in favor of a little nap. After our rest, we went out on our own and walked through the “pest” portion of the city. We rode the Budapest eye Ferris wheel which provided a great view \240of the city. We walked about 6 1/2 miles today! The buildings are amazing here. There is a lot of construction going on as they are making repairs to the buildings that were damaged during WWII that were never repaired while under the communist regime. Our tour guide said they are in year four of a ten year project and the effort is a pretty controversial issue here. Some folks thought the money better spent elsewhere. After seeing it all, I’m glad they are restoring them because they are truly works of art like I’ve never seen. Enjoy the pictures!

Day three we were mostly traveling on the river to Vienna. We started the day on the top deck watching the ship as we went through a lock. We took a nice nap as we watched the river banks of Slovakia. Each day there is some sort of informational session or demonstration which is neat. Today we learned about Viennese coffee and how to order it and watched the chef make strudel. I bet Jason tries to make some when we get home. The food in the ship is good, but I need to convince myself I don’t need to eat every time a meal is available! When we arrived in Vienna, we had dinner (schnitzel) and then we went to PALAIS AUERSPERG for a Mozart performance which was lovely. Tomorrow we get to tour Vienna some more as we don’t set sail until 11:00pm. Again, the architecture here is amazing.

Today we started out with the “upclose tour” of Vienna. With this tour we took the subway into the city center. Holy moly! The grandeur of the architecture is breathtaking. It is crazy to think that these beautiful, detailed buildings were built in a time where tools were still so primitive and importing marble and other textiles happened by horses and boats. It makes me sad that things aren’t built like this anymore. The shopping district had all the major players from Gucci to Louis Vuitton to Tiffany’s. We also saw the Lipizzaner Stallions and ate a Sacher torte and had fancy coffee at the cafe in the Sacher Hotel. The city center was super busy and they are in the process of decorating for Christmas, which is apparently a very big deal here. I bet it is going to be beautiful when it is all done.

This afternoon we toured the summer palace of Maria Theresa, mother of Marie Antoinette and 15 other children. She was a Habsburg and was the archduchess of the Habsburg dominions from 1740-1780. The palace is called Schönbrunn and has 1400 rooms and over 400 acres of gardens. It was almost as grand as Versailles with tons of gilded molding and furniture. The paintings and tapestries were amazing and still so intact. Sadly, they didn’t allow us to take pictures inside. We almost didn’t take this tour, but I am so glad we did. It was simply amazing!

Scenes from the Danube…

Though today was mostly a travel day, we did stop in Melk, Austria to tour the Abbey. Once again, the art and architecture took my breath away. Baroque is just so extra and unlike anything we have in the US. the chapel had so much gold, beautiful 15th century paintings and even some catacombs of saints behind glass.

Passau

Regensburg

Bamberg

Nurenberg

Bamberg

Würzburg

Wertheim, Germany. Today was lovely. We took a little “train” into town from the port to the most picturesque little German village. It was exactly what you think of when you think of a German village. The bottom of the building are made of sandstone and the top of them are made of wood. They have a history of flossing in the little village so the sandstone bottoms help when flooding happens. The guide said most of the houses have been in the same families forever and they just live with the reality of flooding. When a flood is predicted they just move everything upstairs. Sometimes they even flood their own interiors with water from the house after put sandbags on the inside. This keeps the flood waters (full of mud) out and the clean water in. Crazy. We had coffee and pastry at a bakery that had been in the same family for 13 generations. There was also a big Lutheran church in the town which was one of the first ones to change from catholic to Lutheran after Martin Luther’s 95 theses. Their priest was sent to meet with him and then returned to convert everyone. We also went to a glass blowing shop that had also been in the family for generations. This town is rather famous for blown glass, everything from decorations to precision medical devices. One of the artisans actually came on our boat last night and did a demonstration while telling us all about the history. It was fascinating.