Questions About Our Trip Answered

 I have been asked many questions about our trip, how we liked it, how Viking treated us, and is the ship like the pictures one sees online.

Even though we did not get the full cruise experience, we loved our trip. Viking did whatever they possibly could to make the experience wonderful. They added free excursions, gave us a rebate on our trip,  rebate excursions that we could not take due to the level of the river, gave us a rebate on other items we paid ahead for as well. They added special meals, and onboard entertainment as well. 

I will say that when we do our next cruise it will definitely be with Viking. Perhaps not a river cruise, but they do lots of ocean cruises as well. I believe that will be our next holiday. 

There were two places for meals and we usually used the main dining room for our breakfast, and then the other more casual place for our afternoon and evening meals. They served pretty much the same items for those meals, plus the more casual eating establishment had things like hamburgers or panni sandwiches. 

There was a coffee area just outside the lounge where one could get coffee or tea or hot chocolate whenever one wished. There was also a selection of freshly baked goodies to choose from. 

As far as the computer center, there was two computers one could use, but the WIFI was awesome throughout the trip. There was an excellent if small library and many games to choose from if one wanted to play cards, scrabble or even do a puzzle.

The lounge was open all day and in the evenings a piano/singer to entertain us when no extra entertainment was brought in. 

On many cruises the shopping overtakes many areas. Viking has a very small area of shopping. Like one or two racks of shirts and jackets and just a small amount of jewelry. That is a big plus as no one accosts you to purchase things. 

Our room was a bit smaller than we thought it would be, but with the outside balcony was okay. There are bigger suites, but since you really are not in them for very long size is not really a problem. There was also storage space under the beds for our suitcases. 

Laundry is available, but on a river cruise is usually paid for. This time however they were willing to do laundry for nothing if one chose to use this. We didn't but a lady we met did take advantage of the service. 

The sundeck of our ship was not as well set out as another Viking ship that parked near us. While we had lots of covered chairs and lounges as well as shuffleboard and a putting green, the ship that parked beside us had pretty much the same plus a small pool. Mind you considering the heat we faced I am not sure a pool would give us any cooling properties. Harvey and I did take advantage of the walking track early and would on the days we did not have an excursion sit under the shade. 

All in all, I would definitely recommend Viking cruises to all who read my blog. Oh and if you have ever seen an ad where there are two people on the steps walking down them.... Definitely true, those steps are a plus for your voyage.

However do not take a river voyage in the middle of summer. I would do so in the spring or late fall.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Bus Journey to Bucharest and A Final Tour

We caught our bus at 8 in the morning and since we would need to get up at 2 am, cut out the tour we were going to take and did the shorter one arriving at our hotel at around 6. No supper as we had a late lunch at a restaurant while on the tour.

Here are the last of the pictures from our trip.

Sorry for the reflection on the photo, but this is a picture of the Romanian parliament built by Ceausescu. There are 8 stories in the underground of which I think I remember the tour guide saying 3 are flooded. Ceausescu was pulled from the balcony and killed by the people. His wife had her own palace about a block away.

We were entertained by dancers while we were eating our lunch.

This is the canal that travels through Bucharest. Under this canal runs the power and a subway system.

Bucharest is a contradiction in architecture, there are brand new buildings, and then all of a sudden there are the apartment blocks built during the Soviet occupation. Then there are the beautiful older buildings from before the occupation and the Second World War that survived. 

The roads were wide as well, in some sections and very narrow and winding in others.

Slept until it was time to get up and then headed for the airport, where once again we were met by a Viking rep and helped through the check in lines, she also told us how to get to the security section. Got through that fairly quickly except once again I had a bit of a problem with one area. Nothing that kept us from getting on our plane. 

Vienna was strange as the plane stopped on the tarmac and we needed to catch a bus to the terminal. We crossed our fingers and got off when everyone else did, which was the right decision. Found our next gate and soon were on our way home. Well to Canada at least. 

I will try and answer questions in my next post.

Everyone have a wonderful evening. 

God bless.
 

Last Full Day On The Water

 Early this morning we had what could be considered our last walking tour of the voyage (we did get a bus tour the following day). 

Here we visited the Roman runes and a museum of archeological finds after passing through the Iron Gate the day before.

Here are a few pictures of the locks. I could not fight my way to the front so just took pictures of the locks operating as we passed through.

It was really interesting watching the level of the water drop. Notice the top line where the water was when we entered and how far it dropped before we passed through. This happened on all the locks.

The valley leading into this area had very steep sides, more like cliffs with a few homes and a monastery hanging on the side. 

We docked for the night and as I said early next morning we got up for our tour.

The ladies in the picture dressed in their communities traditional Romanian clothing were there to teach some classes on traditional arts and fiber crafts. Oh, how I wish I could have joined in those, but it was not to be.

The above are pictures from the museum. Lots of Roman items.

This is the remains of the only bridge to cross the Danube for many years. Built by the Romans and the footholds still stand on both sides. We were told it took the soldiers just one year to build it. Amazing if true.

We went back to the ship rested, and had a talk by our program director as to how we would be leaving the ship for Bucharest the next day.

My menu seems to be changing daily right now due to harvesting so I am going to redo it and will post it tomorrow along with our last day excursion and bus trip to Bucharest.

Everyone have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Orsova, Romania

 This city was entirely rebuilt in the 1970's. When the dam was built the old city was completely flooded (which happened to many of the small towns and villages at that time). We actually stayed on board once again as I was tired and a bit sore.

We played shuffleboard for a bit and rested on our deck. Later that evening we got our details about disembarking from the ship and the number of the bus we would be on. 

There was also a talk by the Program director about the excursions that would be happening the next day. 

Supper about killed us as far as food and alcohol. We were served two different brandies from Romania, a Romanian wine, three appetizers, a typical Romanian salad, then our taste of Romania main course. To finish all off there were 5 small desserts for each of us. So full I could hardly walk once done (okay slight exaggeration). Later in the evening we went to the lounge and took part in a movie quiz, listened to George play and sing. 

Some pictures of our meal. I seem to have missed the desserts. We left for Turnu Severin at about 5 and docked there at 9 pm. 

Tomorrow we have an excursion early and then head through the Iron Gates. A series of locks to lower us to the rest of the river.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Golubac, Serbia

 This is the gateway to the Djerdap National Park and is the beginning of the Iron Gate of the Danube. 

The Golubac Fortress was built in the 14th century by Slavic Serbians and became the object of many conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and Hungary. The fortress fell to the Turks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Serbs and Austrians until it finally returned to the Serbs in 1867. Despite all these changes of hands the fortress actually repelled more than 120 attacks through it's history. 

It was very interesting to see all the artifacts that were found by archeologists. Small cannon balls, arrow points, spear points and even chainmail. 

Notice in the bottom picture the large gateway. For awhile the highway traveled through this opening. The opening only allowed one vehicle at a time to pass through, which made the drive sometimes take hours. A new highway was built through the mountain finally and the fortress was saved from even more degradation from vehicles.

The fortress and its 10 towers were restored to their former glory in the 2010's. However one of the keep towers is out of bounds due to the dam which caused the water to flood that tower.

We then got on the bus for a continuation of our tour, the second one we paid for.

We traveled through the park and went to Lepenski Vir. This is an archeological dig that was just wonderful.

Lepenski Vir (Serbian Cyrillic: Лепенски Вир, "Lepena Whirlpool"), located in Serbia, is an important archaeological site of the Lepenski Vir culture (also called as Lepenski Vir-Schela Cladovei culture^[2]). It includes Mesolithic Iron Gates Hunter-Gatherers period and transition to Early Neolithic Early European Farmers period of Southeastern Europe.^[2]

The latest radiocarbon and AMS data suggests that the chronology of Lepenski Vir spans between 9500/7200 and 5500 BC, divided into Early–Middle Mesolithic, Late Mesolithic, Transition and Neolithic.^[2] There is some disagreement about when the settlement and culture of Lepenski Vir began, but the latest data indicates that it was between 9500 and 7200 BC. The late Lepenski Vir (6300–6000 BC) architectural phase saw the development of unique trapezoidal buildings and monumental sculpture,^[3] related with the admixing of Iron Gates Hunter-Gatherers with newly arrived Early European Farmers.^[4] The Lepenski Vir site consists of one large settlement with around ten satellite villages. Numerous piscine (fish) sculptures with human-like faces and peculiar architectural remains have been found at the site.

I copied this from Wikipedia so as you would all know what the site was about.

Such an interesting place, but being as it was really warm and the glass magnified the heat we couldn't spend as long as we would have liked in the main portion of the site. 

Back on the bus after about an hour and off to a small eating establishment, where we got to try fried nettle for the very first time. Pretty tasty.

A lovely garden surrounded the establishment filled with wooden sculptures. We followed the path to the lookout where I managed to get a picture of our ship traveling to our next stop.

The scenery was just so amazing and I wish my phone had been working better for pictures.

I am sorry that I haven't been to visit any of you lately, but once the garden is in, I promise to catch up with all of you.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.