Downhill to Budapest

After reaching the canal summit, soon we'll be on the 'Blue Danube'. Here in the forest the views are spectacular and the canal is very narrow for this size ship with only 15-ft on each side!

The size and depth of these locks are amazing. In this lock we're ready to drop 30-ft down. Then below, we are exiting onto the Danube - it's downhill the rest of the way to Budapest!



Today we are in Regensburg, the oldest city on the Danube and one of Bavaria's most beautiful...even though we had light rain off and on. Our walking tour included St. Peters Cathedral, a prime example of Gothic architecture in Bavaria. The towers are 350 ft high.




We walked around and saw the ruins of ancient Roman walls as well as a Roman bridge over the Danube.  This is a stone bridge that is very old and beautiful.  We only got to see parts of it because they were refurbishing it and there was a lot of construction stuff around it, so we didn't even get a decent picture of it.


The town had many lovely narrow streets and cobblestone walkways.  There are also several towers as well.



After our tour Karen and Carla did a little shopping - Carla bought some shoes and the guys walked around town as well.  During dinner it started raining hard for a while so we were glad to be back on board.  Tonight we sail for our last port in Germany - Passau.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Around, Around and Around We Go!

Image
Good morning all! This morning we woke up to a beautiful sunrise from our cabin as we approached our Rome (Civitavecchia) port which is approximately an hour and half from Rome.  You may be wondering what the mystery was about Rome that I indicated in yesterday's blog.  Well, since we've all been to Rome, we decided we didn't want to brave the crowds and congestion of Rome, so we pre-arranged a tour guide to take us into the countryside where one of the previous Pope's had lived (Castel Grandofo).   As we departed the port and approached a roundabout, we decided we didn't need to visit that location. After several around, around and around again in the roundabout and discussion with Matteo (our guide), we decided to go to Orvieto, a beautiful hilltop village. It was a long ride through the beautiful Italian countryside with a few villages along the way.   At one point we saw a sheep scampering along the highway all by himself.  We hoped he got back to his flock, and
Read more

Slowly arriving in Cannes

Image
 The first leg of our cruise is from the port of Tarragona, Spain to Cannes, France.  It is such a short distance that we traveled very slowly.  At one point the monitor in our cabin said we were traveling at .05 knots.  So, at a snail's pace we arrived at Cannes.  It was a beautiful day and it looked like someone sprinkled glitter on the ocean. Cannnes is a tender port which is always a challenge, so we did as we were told and waited in the theater for tickets to get on a tender.  Their organization left a lot to be desired and required patience on our part.  Finally, we got on a tender and when arriving at the port we met up with our private tour guide, Edith.  We jumped in her van, and she started driving through Cannes informing us all along the way about Cannes.   Cannes There was a lot of road construction, and we were glad to get past that and enjoy the beauty of the beach road as it left Cannes behind and brought us to the 16th century town of Artibes.  The town is surround
Read more

“The Most Beautiful Spring Garden in the World”

Image
Today was a gorgeous, sunny, chilly day. This was our last adventure on this cruise and our last tour where everyone got to attend the annual tulip festival at Keukenhof Gardens - “The Most Beautiful Spring Garden in the World” . The gardens cover over 100-acres and are covered in spectacular tulips everywhere you look. Nearly 1-million visitors a year attend this event and today was not the exception. We arrived from our ship at 9:15am – like arriving at Disneyland when they first open on the weekend – and boy were we grateful to beat the noon time crowds! It was hard to make much progress walking around because we were lured into stopping every few steps to take a picture.   It was so beautiful.   There were millions of tulips of every variety and color, so hopefully you won’t get bored looking at tulip pictures.     Between the 3 couples, we probably took over 100 pictures and sorry you can’t smell them. On our last night at dinner, we reminisced about our week together on
Read more