So Many Dishes

I mentioned in the title of my previous post that the Danube isn’t blue. The color blue is associated with the river because of the title to Johann Strauss’ famous waltz, On the Beautiful Blue Danube, which was taken from a line in a poem. The water color depends on your location on the river, the light, the depth of the water (really low right now), and other factors. It’s still beautiful.

And we were, in a way, waltzing on the river. The Viking tour we were on is called the Danube Waltz. They have another, similar itinerary called the Romantic Danube. There was, however, no waltzing on the ship.

We spent our last three days in cities: Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest. I’ll admit that I prefer the smaller towns, but we enjoyed all three cities, for very different reasons.

Everything in Vienna feels massive: huge buildings, the Hofburg palace that just seems to go on and on. There’s no question that there’s a lot to see, but we had just one must-do for Vienna: coffee.

Our included coach/walking tour included about an hour of free time. We found a cafe on the cathedral square to enjoy coffee and share a pastry. The pastry choices all looked enticing, but I had my heart set on apple strudel. Clearly, sharing is common. The plate arrived with two forks. It was served with a vanilla sauce that I think should always be served with strudel. It was the perfect combination. Our coffee order was very basic, just decaf Americanos. Yes, decaf in Vienna. The waiter didn’t blink at our order. It was a delightful experience.

We’ve learned to pace ourselves on these trips. Although there were several optional excursions in the afternoon and evening, we chose to spend the rest of the day on the ship, relaxing.

We were docked right in the Old Town at Bratislava, and we took advantage of the location to walk through this lovely city. It reminded me very much of Prague. As with every other stop, our tour included the cathedral, but just outside the cathedral is the city’s holocaust memorial, on the site of a demolished synagogue. The platform it stands on is inscribed with the word “remember” in Hebrew and Slovak.

Our final day was spent in Budapest. Our tour was in the morning, so we didn’t encounter the crowds for Budapest Pride, which took place that day. But, later in the day, we could see the crowd lining the river bank as far as we could see, in both directions, from the ship. Our tour took us to the Castle Hill district on the Buda side of the river, after a coach tour of Pest. We enjoyed walking through the area, taking pictures from Fisherman’s Bastion, and buying a few souvenirs.

So that pretty much wraps up the travelogue. The less said about the journey home, the better. Not that it was awful, it just was l-o-n-g, and I have a bone to pick with the baggage handlers at MCO. It’s not that big an airport; why did it take almost an hour until they started loading bags on the carousel? I’ll have one more post about the food on the ship, and then we’ll get back to cooking.