Let me sum up…

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Photography

I am so sorry this has taken me so long. I am back with my final summation of our entire European trip this month. As usual, I will break it down into some categories so it doesn’t look like you have a massive block of text to read all at one time. I welcome any comments about my views, but please realize that they are based on my experience.

We loved Lisbon!

If you read my Lisbon reports, you know that we loved it. It was like the early days of travel for us—just the two of us having a great time in a great city. If there was one thing we didn’t like, it was living out of a suitcase. We loved our tours, the food, the hotel (especially the hotel) and pretty much everything else. It is also a very inexpensive place to visit. Oh, we didn’t have a very good time at our Fado dinner. There must be better places. But that was just a minor annoyance.

Our flights and airport experiences

Again, I have detailed these pretty well in this post in my huge rant about Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris. All the rest of our flight experiences were excellent. We really liked our flights with Delta much more than we did a year ago when we flew with them home from Barcelona.

Prague—ice and cold

Bathed in snowy white.

After we flew to Prague from Lisbon, we became Viking’s problems as this was part of our pre-cruise extension. Read and see all about it by clicking here. It was an OK extension but we could have done without the ice and snow. I know that Viking can’t do anything about ice and snow, but they can figure out a way for people who are not great walkers when it is dry and warm to see some of the city’s sights. Viking offers an “included excursion” for every day of an extension and for every port on a cruise. But to only have an excursion that on a dry and warm day would be “challenging” leaves out a huge part of their clientele and those that shouldn’t attempt it but do hold back those that can handle it.

But other than my complaint about shore excursions, we loved Prague. It was a great hotel with a great breakfast; we found a super place for dinner, thanks to a friend here in Redmond, and the tours we were able to take were pretty darn good.

Nuremberg—worst hotel, best tour of the entire trip

Nuremberg’s lousy hotel

Viking should immediately stop using Le Méridien Grand Hotel. Yes, it is very well situated, but it is so old and out of date, they need to find something better. Our room was tiny and felt like a cell, not a room. There was one elevator to serve more than 200 rooms. The restaurant was never open to guests for lunch or dinner, so we ended up eating in the bar (where the menu was as small as our room). Their breakfast was good, but that can’t make up for the rooms and the fact that there was no place to eat. If you do any pre-extension with Viking, make sure to pre-book your restaurant reservations for dinner yourself. If you get there and find you can’t get into any place, check with your tour manager (who works for Viking) and see if they can find you somewhere. That worked for us in Budapest.

But in Nuremberg, I went on the best tour of the entire trip. If you go, do the WWII Nuremberg tour. If you can get Werner as your guide, you will have hit the jackpot. His knowledge and understanding of the topic are encyclopedic, and he was great with the delivery—a born storyteller.

The Cruise—from Regensburg to Budapest on Viking Gulveig

Now that’s a long ship. Maybe that’s why Viking calls it a longship.

This was our first river cruise, and I have to say we truly enjoyed it. It is quite different from an ocean cruise, and we are looking forward to our next one on the Douro River in Portugal next October. It will be a really different experience than the ice and frigid cold we experienced on this one.

The cruise (as you may recall) was billed as Christmas on the Danube—Europe’s Christmas Markets. I don’t know what I thought the Christmas Market thing would be, but it wasn’t that. My expectations were that once we were in Europe, we would be Christmased to death. We weren’t. If anything, it was almost the opposite. As much as I loved the ship, it just wasn’t very festive. We saw a lot of other riverboats/ships, and 90% were better decorated for Christmas than ours was. And there was little to no Christmas music on board. The piano player would drop one or two holiday tunes into his nightly repertoire, but that was it.

And the Christmas Markets were pretty much all alike. The ones we saw in Lisbon were our favorites, followed by the ones in Budapest, but otherwise, they were all about the same. The same merchandise, the same foods, the same crowds, the same drinks. It truly was a case of if you have seen one, you have seen them all. And Viking felt we wanted to see them all for three or four hours. I don’t know what I was supposed to do at a Christmas Market for that amount of time.

Getting back to the ship, our stateroom was excellent. We had a typical verandah, which is tiny by ocean ship standards (205 square feet with the verandah), but it was so well-designed that we barely noticed. The bed was much more comfortable than the bed we had on our Viking Ocean cruise in October 2022. We had plenty of storage, and by the time we got to our stateroom (after being in three hotels in the last ten days.

Things we loved about the cruise and the ship

  • Embarkation was amazing and easy. We arrived from Nuremberg, got off our “luxury motor coach,” and went right onto the ship. We (about 40 of us coming from the extension) gave them our credit card info and got our room keys in less than 10 minutes. Then, every person was escorted directly to their stateroom by a crew member. We got Natalia from Poland. She later turned out to be one of our servers in the dining room. She was so great, showing us how everything in our stateroom worked and telling us how to get help if we needed it. She stayed and talked for about 15 minutes, asking about us and seeing if there was anything else she could do for us. What a treat! Best embarkation ever.
  • The main dining room was surprisingly spacious. But unlike ocean cruises, you better like to meet people because there are NO tables for two. There aren’t even tables for four. There are tables for six, eight or ten people. That’s it. But that worked for us. We were thrilled to have meals with new friends, especially our new friend from New Hampshire, Carol.
  • We never had to wait for an elevator. Because we really didn’t have to. There are only three levels on a Viking longship. And the only reason to go below level two is if you have a stateroom on deck one. We were on deck two (stateroom 213), so we never went down to one. The main dining room is on deck two as well, so we could have eaten all our meals and never even gone upstairs if we didn’t want to. But the top deck had the only lounge and a small buffet. We went up for drinks most nights and to hear what Debra, our Program Director, told us what was on tap for the next day.
  • Dinner times were interesting. By that, I mean that they were later…or earlier. They changed every day. They were usually close to 7:00 pm but, one night (because of an after-dinner concert in Vienna that many attended), dinner was at 5:30. Other nights, if there was a late shore excursion coming back to the ship, it might be as late as 7:30 (which is really late for us).

Things we would love to see changed

These things are going to be really picky. Why? Because Kathleen and I could only think of some minor annoyances that we didn’t like.

  • The pianist in the lounge was too loud! Why do cruise lines, restaurants, and pretty much every public lounge or bar think we want to hear loud music every single second of the day? We met some great people on this cruise—people we would have loved to have traded travel stories with. But most of the time, when we were in the only lounge on the ship, we couldn’t hear people sitting directly across from us talk. The pianist thought that louder was better, and he played one of those electronic pianos that made him the entire band, and he liked to show it off. Not to mention the fact that he barely played any Christmas music. TURN HIM DOWN PLEASE!  During the rest of the day there is excellent recorded music playing in the lounge. At a low volume. Low enough that you can have a conversation. We would have loved to have that in the evenings. If you read my review of our ocean cruise on Oceania’s Vista in October, you know I complained about that on that ship as well. On Viking Ocean ships, there are many places to go and. have a nice, quiet drink with conversation. But river ships only have one lounge, and if Mr. Loud is playing the piano, you are screwed.
  • Laundry service was highway robbery. By the time we boarded the ship, we had been on the road for ten days. We needed to send some things out to get clean. We knew there was a chargeable laundry service on the ship, but not one that charged $4 to wash a pair of socks, $7 to wash a pair of jeans or $6 to wash a tee-shirt. We ended up sending out six items, and the bill was $42. That’s HORRIBLE!
  • Rafting was fine, except once when it was UNSAFE! If you aren’t familiar with rafting (as it pertains to river ships), it is when two, three, or four of these very long ships tie up to each other. Then, if your ship is the second, third or fourth ship out from the dock, you cross through the lobby area of each of the inside ships to get to yours. It’s not a big deal, and you can look at the other ships a little. But this kind of rafting only happened with other Viking ships. The one time we were rafted with a non-Viking ship, we had returned from Munich, it was very dark and we were not allowed to cross through the other ship’s lobby. We had to climb to the top (observation/sun) deck, cross over and climb down into our ship. This meant climbing some slippery stairs, crossing over an icy deck, then onto a very narrow gangplank between the ships (three stories off the water) across our ship’s icy deck and then back down some more slippery steps. This should not happen.
  •  The lunch on embarkation day was just wrong. We left Nuremberg at 11:00 am (too early for lunch). We arrived at the ship at 2:00 pm and were told that there was a buffet lunch in the lounge on deck three. That lunch was really sparse. And really poor. They need to improve this situation. Better scheduling (leaving Nuremberg earlier or later) would help.

As you can see, we are nitpicking here. It was a great cruise with four tiny blips. All of them are easily fixable.

Viking Shore Excursions

I have already mentioned that our pre-cruise tours were outstanding. And our post cruise tours were even better when we got to Budapest. But I want to run through the ports really quickly. You can always go back for a more in-depth look in previous posts.

  • All the tours on this cruise were better than any of the tours we took on our Viking Ocean cruise in the Mediterranean back in 2022.
  • The worst guide was the guy we had in Regensburg. His job was to show us around the city in about 45 minutes. What he did was get us off the ship on back streets, told misogynistic jokes as we walked, took us to see nothing really interesting and then left us in the middle of town saying, “The river is over that way. Just get there and turn right.” WTF? He should never be used again.
  • The second worst was the guide who took us to Munich. He was just okay as a guide, but what he or Viking did to us was not. This was the day that we enjoyed going to the BMW headquarters and then downtown Munich and then a very nice lunch. But after that, we were just told we had three hours of free time and no place to go to get out of the cold. That was WRONG! No one needs to shop for three hours, especially on a Sunday when all the shops in the old town core were closed. The only real option for shopping was the Christmas Market but how many ornaments can you buy or how much mulled wine could you drink (and still find your way back to the bus). This needs to change.
  • Some of the excursions were just “fine.” They were nothing to write home about. The tours on the extensions were much better than those on the cruise, except for maybe the “Panoramic Budapest” tour that we took with the hilarious Barbie. The rest were either bad (like the first two above) or just “fine.”
  • It would be VERY hard to do private tours. On an ocean ship, we would just have done private tours, but I am just not sure if you could do that on a river cruise. The reason you would have a hard time doing that is that you never know where the ship is going to be. For instance, we went to bed in Regensburg with the knowledge that the next morning, we would still be in the same place. If we had been doing a private tour, we would have told our guide to meet us there and then found out where we could rejoin the ship. But when we got up, we were miles down the river because the ship had to move quickly to get under some low bridges just outside Regensburg. This was NOT Viking’s fault. The river levels cannot be controlled. When we got up that morning, we were going to Munich. The ship just pulled over, tied up in the middle of nowhere, and we got off and met our “luxury motor coach” on a very rural road.
  • I make jokes about “luxury motor coaches,” but that really didn’t apply to the buses we rode on during this cruise. They truly were luxury motor coaches: great seats, lots of legroom, places to put anything you carried. We had been dreading the long bus rides from Prague to Nuremberg and from there to Regensburg, but they were very nice. And they planned restroom breaks when needed. I would have no problem taking them again. Much better than on our Viking Ocean cruise in October 22.

The Food

Our last ocean cruise on Oceania’s Vista in October 2023 was all about the food. The rest of the cruise was nice, but I wrote a lot about the food, as I do on many of our cruises. On this cruise, we had very little to complain about food-wise. Our servers were outstanding. Breakfast in the dining room was a buffet, but you can also order from a really nice menu.

We had only one complaint about the food in the entire cruise. Jamie and I ordered fish and chips one day, and we sent it back. The fish had sat too long and had turned to rubber instead of being crisp. That may have been more of a service thing than a cooking thing. We do wish that the chef had some heartier soups. When you come in from a cold excursion and go to have lunch and all the soups are just broth, you kind of wish for a nice clam, corn or potato chowder.

Other than that, the food was great. Lots of variety, lots of interesting dishes. My brother said it passed the “Steve Test.”

Beautiful Budapest

If you have been following along for the last three weeks, then you know we LOVED Budapest: great tours, a very nice hotel with an amazing view, and a super tour coordinator. Only one guide was truly horrid, and we have already forgotten the horrible Lazlo. If you missed my detailed reports on Budapest, they start here.

The Final Word

And that does it. I hope you have enjoyed coming along on this trip. We had a great time; it only felt like we had hit a wall a few times and would do it again (but NOT a Christmas Market cruise). We are going back to do another river cruise in October. But for my faithful readers, stick with us. We are off to England, Scotland and Norway in June for almost a full month. And, of course, a few posts before that.

Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.  —Louis E. Boone.

The Lights of Budapest

by | Dec 19, 2023 | Photography

This is the first post of this trip that I am writing from our own living room. We flew back yesterday on another nightmare of a day of flying (a birthday I won’t soon forget). It is 2:43 am, and of course, I am still on Budapest time, where it is almost noon. But I shouldn’t complain because jet lag is always easier to handle at home. I will get into our flight day as soon as I am more coherent, but I will say that it was another bad one and that we will never fly through or to Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris again. If we have to go to Paris (we are not planning on it), we will fly to Amsterdam and take the train.

In the meantime, I will give you the photos of Budapest at night that I promised would knock your socks off. After spending three and a half days there I can say with total certainty—this is the most photogenic city I have ever had the pleasure of visiting—and it’s at night when it really shines. On the first night, we were in port. I was going to go out after dinner and take pictures, but with the sun setting so early and it getting really dark by 5:00 pm, I went out before dinner. It was truly a photo walk I will remember. You are going to see 25 photos in the gallery below. I took 346 on that early (very cold?) evening walk. Well, enough narrative; here are the photos. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

There is nothing like walking that riverbank at night. Every single place you look, you see something you HAVE TO TAKE A PICTURE OF! What an amazing place to be a photographer. I sometimes wonder if the people who live in Budapest end up getting jaded by these views. I am sure they do, but I hope they don’t. I hope I wouldn’t.

Editor’s Note: My plan is to do two more posts about Budapest (we were there for three days), one about our flight day and then do a summary of the cruise, what we loved and what we didn’t like so much. And I have been getting some questions. So I will try and answer those with the follow-up. I really want all this wound up before Christmas, but that will depend on three things: a cut/crack I have developed on my ring finger that makes it really hurt to type (you never realize how much you use any individual finger while typing until you hurt one). How much time do I sleep versus writing as I finish up with jet lag? And how much time it takes to get ready for Christmas?

Photogenic is a stupid, nonsensical word, but it is also a great mystery.   —Blaise Cendrars

 

Saved the Best for Last–Budapest

by | Dec 16, 2023 | Photography

My good friends Mike and Cathy took this exact cruise with Viking last year at about the same time. Well, it was not exactly the same cruise; they went the other way. Instead of sailing from Regensburg to Budapest (BTW: we have learned that the name of this city is pronounced Budapesht; they don’t want to be a pest ?). We did the opposite. And now that we have arrived here, I am so glad we did it that way. Our cruise started with the worst port, and every one after it got a little better until Thursday morning when we arrived in this incredible city.

When we visited Sydney, Australia, a bunch of years ago, I thought it had to be the most photogenic city in the world. From just about anywhere, you could see either the bridge or the Opera House, and if you could get either of them into your photo, it was gold. I now believe Sydney is number two. This city is number one.

We were warned the night before by our wonderful Program Director Debra that we would sail into Budapest around 8:30 am and that if we wanted to see one of the best sail-ins ever, we should be up and watching. So we were! I was on the top deck. (where again it was freezing in the wind) as we sailed in. And as you will see in my photos, it was worth it to be out there in that cold. I am going to say one more thing before the usual warning—if you think Budapest looks good in the daylight, wait until you see her in the dark ?. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Until I started doing research for our trip, I had no idea that Budapest was really two cities—Buda and Pest. Buda is on the right side of the river as you are going downriver. Buda is built on a hill. Pest is on the left side of the city (where the Parliament Building is) and is pretty much flat. Both sides are equally beautiful and photogenic.

Soon after, we were tied up in just about the best moorage in all of the city—we were at the base of the Chain Bridge. This Bridge, which is closed to all but transit and pedestrians, is right in the literal heart of the cities. And it is a beautiful bridge.

After our sail-in, we left almost immediately for our first tour of this incredible city. Viking calls this tour “Panoramic Budapest.” And to make things even better, we had maybe the best tour guide we have had so far on the cruise (remember, Werner in Nuremberg was not part of the cruise—just our pre-cruise extension—he was the best of the trip)—Barbie. And even though she wasn’t wearing pink, our Barbie was young and cool and even had a ponytail. It really is the year of Barbie. She was both a great guide and hilarious to listen to.

When you go on a “Panoramic Tour,” that usually means you get driven all around the cities and get out a few times to look at stuff. When we did this in Munich, most of it was a big snore. Here, there is way too much to see, so as our “luxury motor coach” drove down the road in Pest, my head is like a swivel chair going from side to side. For me, it was making a list of the things that I wanted to come back and take photos of without a bus window between me and the scene.

Then we drove to the top of the hill in Buda and went for a walk with Barbie. We saw the main cathedral you saw in the photos above and then went to the amazing Fishermen’s Bastion. According to the interwebs, it is called The Fishermen’s Bastion because “it was the section of the Buda City Wall entrusted to the guild of fishermen, but more likely to the Danube side settlement, Fishtown (Halászváros) also called Watertown,” where there were so many incredible views, I just couldn’t stop shooting them. In the four hours of this tour, I truly believe I shot more than 500 photos. You don’t have to see them all but here are the best of that tour. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After we had gotten our fill of photos from up on the top, we were back on the “luxury motor coach” and headed back to the ship. That was followed by lunch and a chance for Kathleen to take a nap and for me to sit in the Lounge on the ship, look out at this incredible city and review my photos. We had three full days in Budapest, so I knew I could wait for Kathleen to rest up and get to see the photos before I headed back out.

That pretty much covers our first day in Budapest but not the night. The night is when the real beauty shows up. Yes, this city gets even more incredible when the lights come on. But you will have to wait until later or tomorrow to see it as I need to go upstairs and get ready for our last full day here. We have a private tour, a traditional Hungarian dinner and an early night so we can be up and at the airport for our 6:20 am flight from Budapest to Paris and then on to Seattle.

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest, you think you are in Paris.  —Gyorgy Ligeti

 

Vienna in the fog…

by | Dec 14, 2023 | Photography

Vienna, Austria, is known as the city of music…and a few other things. When we first arrived here, I thought they should name it the City of Fog. As you can see from my photo above, upon arrival in Vienna, it was shrouded in clouds. But that was OK; we were on vacation, and at least it wasn’t raining, and there was no snow or ice, so after breakfast, we were off on our “included” Viking overview of Vienna.

Viking gives you one excursion per port as part of your cruise fare. I kind of find it funny that they usually call that excursion “panoramic” something (insert name of where you are. here). I keep trying to figure out how driving to someplace, getting out and walking for two hours is “panoramic.” But today’s was a little different as our “luxury motor coach” took us on a drive, not only into the city but around Vienna’s Ring Road, which pretty much encircles all the places you want to see. I should note here that in Vienna, you do not dock anywhere near the center of the city (unlike many of the places we have visited so far). The river itself is about a one-hour walk from the old town section of the city. So a ride on a “luxury motor coach” is a must.

After we drove around the entire Ring Road (which runs the exact route that the old city wall used to be built on), seeing all the incredible Hapsburg Empire buildings, you stop and get out with your guide, and you are off on a walk into the center of the old town to see St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Well, the outside of the cathedral, anyway. It is interesting to me that Viking’s included tours always seem to take you to a cathedral or church but never into it. You are left to return and go inside if you want to. That’s OK as I have my buddy Mike’s pictures of the inside of every church in Europe (or maybe the world) to look at. For instance, if you would like to see what the inside of St. Stephen’s looks like, click here to see it on Mike’s website. His pictures are gorgeous. We had 30 minutes of free time, and that was not enough to get to the restrooms, buy a souvenir and take pictures of the outside of the cathedral. If we wanted to see the rest, we would have to come back later. And if you read yesterday’s post about my feelings on the opulence of churches, you know that going inside was not high on my list of things I “have to see.”

After walking the square around the cathedral, we were walked back to the bus (Kathleen and I were taking the “easy” tour) and we drove to…a Christmas Market! Oh boy! I will say that this one was much nicer than any we had seen before—more homemade crafts, better-looking food, etc. But it was still the same thing. So far, we have been to eight Christmas Markets, and we have not spent a cent in any of them—just nothing we want or need. We kind of made a vow that after cleaning out the houses of deceased parents, we would continue to get rid of things rather than add new ones. (At this point, a little voice in my head is saying, “Shut up Jim…you are the one who took a Christmas Market cruise.”) 

After an hour at the Christmas Market (where I walked around, but Kathleen was able to keep warm on the bus), we headed out of the fog-shrouded city back to the ship for lunch before we were to embark on our afternoon tour of  “festive Schönbrunn Palace.”

Of course, I took some photos while we were walking around the old city so here they are. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Our afternoon tour was at Schönbrunn Palace. This was the summer home of the Hapsburgs and (probably) another wonderfully opulent place to visit. Kathleen decided to stay on the ship and read while Steve, Jamie and I went to the Palace. I had almost convinced myself that I would stay behind as well, but Kathleen said I should go because I might find something cool to take pictures of. So the three of us boarded our “luxury motor coach,” and off we went.

Our guide started the tour as we drove away from the ship with three rules for the Schönbrunn Palace. I don’t remember what the first two were, but when he got to the third one, I got off the bus. Seriously, when he said, “No Photography is Allowed,” I asked if I had heard him correctly, and he said yes, so I asked the driver to pull over, and I got off the bus. I am sure the other people on board thought I was a total nut job, but Kathleen had talked me into going because I might grab a great photo or two, so if I can’t take pictures, why go?

You probably think I am nuts as well, considering this is an optional excursion and, therefore, an excursion that we chose to go on and paid additional money to take, and here I was, just giving up a $149 excursion because I couldn’t take pictures. And Kathleen had skipped it as well so we were out almost $300. But we weren’t, and we really didn’t choose this excursion. You may remember that back when I started this trip, I mentioned that this was a trip that we had planned and paid for in 2018 to take in 2020 and then got canceled because of COVID. Well, Viking offered us either our money back or 125% of our cruise fare to use on another cruise in the future. That’s kind of how most of the cruise lines survived. Enough people were willing to do that, and we were two of them (actually four of them).

But there was a catch to their 125% offer. You had to use it all on one cruise. You could not use part of it on one cruise and the rest of it on another. You also had to spend it just on the cruise itself. It did not convert to onboard credit that you could spend along the way. Any part of it that you didn’t spend before the ship left the first port reverted back to Viking. This meant that we had a lot of extra money to book optional shore excursions. Shore excursions we would not have taken it without having that extra 25%. In fact, I just checked, and the only optional shore excursion we booked on the original cruise was a visit to the Spanish Riding School here in Vienna to see the incredible Lippanzer Stallions (more about that tomorrow because we saw them yesterday). So, any shore excursion we walked away from was not really costing us money.

At this point, I am off the bus and walking back to the ship. Thankfully, the bus had just been getting out of the riverside area, so I didn’t have far to walk. Once I got back, I decided what I really needed was to take a long and FAST walk. When you tour, you walk slowly, stop and look at things, and then you walk slowly again. You might take two hours to walk a little more than a mile. At home, I walk somewhere between five and seven miles a day for exercise, and I walk them at a 16-minute-per-mile pace. So, really, I have gotten no real exercise for a week, and at that point, I didn’t realize how it was affecting me. When we do ocean cruises, I always find time to do at least a four-mile walk onboard the ship on sea days.

I know all of you have heard of endorphins. You know, the chemicals that your body produces when you exercise that can produce an “analgesic effect.” At home, I get those all the time, and it certainly improves my mood by about a thousand percent. But this week, I have gotten none of them, so part of my lethargy and tiredness comes from having done a lot less exercise than I usually do. I should add that it has also been the reason my clothes are getting tighter by the day (Viking’s food has been outstanding). So I changed into my sweats, and I was off for a quick four-mile photo walk (I never walk while traveling without my camera) and sure enough, I was right to have taken it along because I got some photos I truly like. You can see them below. Sorry, no churches, cathedrals, government buildings or Christmas decorations of any kind. Just some photography that I can experiment with and some wildlife that I encountered. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

I also wanted to experiment a little with black and white. I hardly ever shoot with the intention of creating black-and-white shots as the final product. But on this day, with the flat sky and the fog, I thought it might work. So here’s my study of the banks of the Danube in black and white. If you aren’t a fan of “artsy” photography, you can skip this slide show. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

I think that about covers the day. When I got back from my walk, we changed for drinks and dinner, and then it was back to the stateroom for bed before our second day in Vienna. See you tomorrow.

Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly.
—Frederic Chopin

Sailing the Wachau Valley and seeing an Abbey

by | Dec 13, 2023 | Photography

Yesterday was a big day. We did a bunch of stuff that basically wore us out. And we had even more scheduled that we ended up canceling due to my getting a horrible headache and not being able to get warm.

First, the Valley

Our schedule on Tuesday morning was to sail down the beautiful Wachau Valley. This is a stretch of the Danube with some pretty amazing villages, castles, monasteries and low bridges. The best way for me to take you there is to show you my photos and have you read the captions, so here they are. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The village of Krems

We reached the end of the valley early. It was like we had gone through at jet speed, and as the Captain explained, we kind of had. Because of the rapid snow melt and the rain, the river was running very fast, so we were being pushed much faster than normal. He even told us that, at one point, he was running the engines in reverse to slow us down. We were supposed to arrive in the village of Krems just in time to board the buses that would take us to Gottweig Abbey, high above the valley. But because of the river’s speed, we were docked in Krems almost an hour early. So they let us get off and wander the town.

I decided to take a walk because the sky was finally clearing up. Besides, I wanted to see if those were two churches or one. It turned out to be two, as you can see in my photographic journey in Krems. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

High on a hill was the Gottweig Abbey…”Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo” (think The Sound of Music—I couldn’t resist)

Our afternoon tour (for pretty much the entire ship) was a visit to Gottweig Abbey, which sits on a very high hill above Krems. It is really a pretty impressive place. While we toured Gottweig, the ship moved downstream to Tulln, where we would meet up with them later. More about that after I tell you about Gottweig in photos. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After Gottweig, we had a bus ride to meet the ship in Tulln, where they would pick us up for about a two-hour sail into Vienna. We were scheduled to go to the Opera House to see a performance of Mozart and Strauss. But by the time we left Gottweig, I was starting to feel incredibly tired and strangely cold. I also had a really bad headache. This morning (while writing this), I had to ask Kathleen about that 45-minute bus ride because, to be honest, I slept through the entire ride. We got on board, and I went to bed, hoping that a nap in a warm bed would help. I got up for dinner an hour later, feeling slightly better, but by the time dinner was over, I was done. We had to skip the concert, and I went to bed at 8:00. Slept for almost a solid 12 hours (which is really out of character for me), and that’s why I wasn’t up and writing yesterday to get a post online. Sorry.

Later, I figured that I must have been zapped by all the time I had spent standing on the upper deck taking photos as we sailed down the Wachau Valley. I got so cold I just never warmed up. It was the temperature as much as the wind chill. What a guy will do for his art ?.

One final thing…

Something has been bugging me on this trip. The trip to the Abbey really helped me to figure it out. I want to say up front that I know that the beautiful cathedrals, incredible abbeys, and marvelous churches represent the art of the times they were built, but frankly, they bother me. The amount of money, time and effort that went into building them at the expense of the poor who had nothing while the rich (and sadly the churches) drained the economy to build these edifices just ticks me off. And the amount of money that is currently keeping them going while the poor and homeless are starving in the cold…I have no words. When I heard the guide tell us that this HUGE abbey with hundreds of rooms was “overbooked—we have too many monks here now for what our facilities can handle,” my first thought was, “there must be hundreds of monks living here—good for them for taking in so many. Then she said there were 34. THIRTY-FOUR???!!! That was it for me. This abbey, with more than 30 buildings and hundreds of thousands of square feet, can’t hold 34 monks. Are you kidding me? Someone asked her why that was overcrowding, and she said it was because in the sacristy nave where the monks sit during church services, there are only 30 chairs, and having an extra four monks means that some have to sit on regular chairs—the height of arrogance. These people are supposed to be serving their god. They took an oath of poverty. Sure, they don’t drive fancy cars, but their lifestyle is pretty good. All day, they can contemplate heaven, pray for hours, and drink the wine that others make in their abbey…sounds like a pretty good life to me.

And it’s not just that. When we went into Vienna yesterday and heard about the things that have been built just since WWII, and I think about the homeless or just the number of people who are killing themselves working 12 hours a day in a coffee shop, it truly bothers me.

It all reminded me of when we visited the Russian Summer Palaces while in St. Petersburg. When you see those, you understand why the Russian Revolution happened.

Ok, I will get off my soapbox now. I just wanted to explain why I am not as impressed as I probably should be by the churches, cathedrals and abbeys. The ones I like best are in small towns and are kept up by local parishioners. Like the ones I saw when I was in Krems.

I grew up in Austria, and for me, real comfort food is Wiener Schnitzel. Wiener Schnitzel and mashed potatoes because it reminds me of my youth… It reminds me of when I grew up, and it feels very comforting.  —Wolfgang Puck