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

 

Vienna Clears Up–It’s All About Horses!

by | Dec 15, 2023 | Photography

As I write this, I am sitting in a darkened lounge looking out across the Danube at the Buda side of Budapest. So much has happened in the day since I last wrote (our first day in Vienna) and today that it is hard to take it all in and put it in order. But I shall do my best. I only hope I get this online before 6:00 am as we have to be off the ship today by 9:45 for the last time—our cruise ends today. We are transferring to the Intercontinental Hotel for two nights, and then on Monday, we fly home.

But back to day two in Vienna. When we got up, the skies had cleared, and there was no fog. After posting and breakfast, we really had nothing we had to do before lunch and our afternoon excursion, so I decided to take another walk. This time, instead of staying on the side of the river our ship was moored on, I walked to the big bridge ahead of the ship and crossed over to an island that turned out to be pretty cool. I took the panoramic shot at the top of this post from the middle of that bridge.

On the way, I found some colorful workers, a lighthouse, and some modern landscapes (Vienna does have skyscrapers, but they are limited to being far from the old city. It’s like the modern city on one side of the river and the old one on the other), a beautiful park, strange statues, a sandy beach and Kathleen. See the pics below to find out how I saw all that on an early morning walk. 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 my walk, it was lunchtime, and after lunch, we were back in the Old City for the only paid excursion we had signed up for on our original trip (we didn’t take) back in 2020—visiting the Spanish Riding School and seeing the Lipizzan Stallions. If you have no clue what I am talking about, then allow me to tell you. Found in 1572 by the Hapsburg Dynasty and brought to Vienna from Spain, the Spanish Riding School trains Lipizzan stallions to perform. Suffice it to say that if you really are intrigued after seeing my photos, make sure and check out the linked website. The horses and the organization are truly amazing.

How did we find out about them? A long time ago…(1963), there was a Disney movie called “The Miracle of the White Stallions.” It was all about how the Spanish Riding School had saved their beautiful and incredible white stallions from the Nazis. When we were kids, Kathleen and I had both seen it, and these incredible horses were something we have always wanted to see ever since. And on Wednesday, we got our chance. And not to see them perform but to go backstage to meet them and get to see (and smell?) them close up. Check out the photos below and the captions for the story…or go watch the movie (because of the limitations of the WiFi on board, I can’t check to see if it is on Disney Plus, but you can buy the DVD at the link). Or just look at my pics. 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 our backstage tour of the stallions, we had a little bit of time in the area of the Imperial Palace, and we went to have coffee and cake at a small Viennese Cafe in one of the museums (OK, it was a cafeteria, and the coffee was cold and cake stale) but that meant I had time to take a few photos of buildings that had been fogged in the day before and I really liked some of the shots I got of this opulent city. 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…

And then we were back on the “luxury motor coach” and headed into Viennese traffic for our ride to the ship. As soon as we were on board, the captain untied and set sail for our final cruise destination—Budapest! More about that tomorrow. I have to go take a shower, put my bags out (unlike ocean cruise ships, on a river ship, you don’t put out your bags until 8:00 am on the day you get off), have breakfast and be out of our room by 8:00. Our time to leave the ship is 9:45 for our transfer to the Intercontinental Hotel which will be our home for the next two nights. I will try to post again tomorrow, but if the weather is good, I am going to bundle up and go for a pre-dawn photo walk so it might be two days. You never know.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that’s where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.   —Paul Engle

 

Trains, “Luxury Motor Coaches” and Boats

by | Dec 9, 2023 | Photography

We are finally onboard our Viking Longship, the Gullveig. Yesterday was kind of a little bit of everything day. We woke up in Nuremberg, had breakfast, I went across the street to one of the largest train stations in Europe to take some pictures (below), and then at noon, we boarded a “luxury motor coach” (which really was very nice) and headed to Regensburg, Germany to board the ship.

Here are the photos I took before we left Nuremberg. 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 need to take a second here to thank someone. When you do a pre or post-extension, you have a tour coordinator who is with you the entire time. That person just takes care of you. They know the schedules; they tell you when and where you need to be; they schedule buses and organize tours, and so much more. They even wind up loading luggage. Being a tour coordinator is all about logistics. And ours was amazing. Our tour coordinator was Victoria, and she always had a smile on her face. One of the nicest and, for sure, the most organized person I may have ever met. We just want to thank her here for taking such good care of us.

We arrived in Regensburg around 2:15 and were met by our Hotel Director, JP (that’s what he told us to call him because his name is amazingly hard to say) and his wonderful staff. This being our first river cruise, we were kind of expecting that embarkation would be easier than an ocean cruise, but we never knew how much easier it would be. In the space of 10 minutes, they got us off the “luxury motor coach” and onto the ship, looked at our passports, had a crew member escort us to our room, and we went up to lunch. We could have done it in five if we hadn’t chatted so long with Natalia, who took us to our room.

The chef and his staff had prepared a “light lunch” for everyone. We were not impressed. It was sad that this would be our initiation to Viking food. Lunch was just OK. Not a lot of food. There were salads, but the empty bowls were not being refilled when 30% of the incoming guests had not had lunch yet. The food was fine but not really that great. There was a broth with very little in it, half a Rueben sandwich that was grilled but sitting out so long it was cold, and that was about it. I am happy to say that dinner was much better.

After lunch, we went back and unpacked in our stateroom. If this trip has made one thing perfectly clear to us, it is this: WE HATE LIVING OUT OF SUITCASES. This might just be the biggest reason we cruise. We like getting someplace and unpacking, and that’s our home. And it moves every day. It was so wonderful to be able to put things away. And what really amazed us is the amount of storage in our fairly small stateroom. We put all our clothes away and still had empty drawers.

Speaking of the room, it is incredibly well-designed. It is (I am sure) smaller than the room we were in last night in Nuremberg, but it is so well-designed it actually feels bigger. The lighter colors help as well. Here are some pics of stateroom 213, our home for the next week.

After our little lunch and unpacking, there was a short, free, guided walk around the old parts of the city by a guide named Hubert Koenig. He was under the impression that he was not only a guide but a comedian and Olympic sprinter as well. He made the worst (and in some cases very sexist) jokes about everything, and as soon as he would tell one, he would race off, leaving most of this group behind—the EXACT opposite of all the guides we had had in Nuremberg and Prague.

He also just walked us to the middle of the city and left us. That was fine for me, but others got totally lost and ended up taking some strange and mysterious routes back to the ship. And the spot he left us was right next to a department store. If he had walked us up a half of a block, we could have seen one of Regensburg’s Christmas Markets (which I am glad that I found). Here’s the photos I took following this “wonderful man” around Regensburg.

After getting back to the ship, we had a wonderful dinner (the food was excellent for dinner, and there was just enough of it). All the tables in the dining room are for groups of six or eight, so you always have someone to have dinner with. We were joined by Carol from New Hampshire who is cruising alone after losing her husband since they purchased the cruise. She is a hoot. We look forward to sharing more meals with her in the coming week. Our server took a photo for us, and at the last minute, the head chef stuck his head in as well.

After dinner, we were off to bed as we had a full-day excursion into Munich tomorrow. The ship was scheduled to stay in Regensburg overnight, but changing river levels forced them to move us down the river during the night, and we are now south of Regensburg. Excursions to Regensburg will still go on, but they will have to be bused back to Regensburg. Right now they are scrambling to bus folks back that way. I will see you tomorrow with a report on Munich.

You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.  —Donald Rumsfeld

And We’re Off!

by | Aug 28, 2022 | Air travel

It’s almost time to start our big journey. Just before 2:00 pm on Monday, our good friend Marjorie is going to pick us up and take us to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport where we will check in with Delta and wait about three hours until we are scheduled to take off on flight 144, a non-stop to Amsterdam at 5:20 pm (just about 24 hours from when I am writing this). We did a COVID test this morning and we are good to go. Our meals on the plane are ordered and after we eat dinner, I will get our boarding passes printed out.

We are supposed to get into Amsterdam at 12:20 on Tuesday afternoon (that’s our route above). Hopefully, we will be on time and picked up at the airport and transported to what we believe is the greatest hotel on planet Earth, The Banks Mansion. By the time we walk into the “Living Room” at The Banks, my brother and sister-in-law should be sitting there having a drink (free bar!!!) and waiting for us to join them.

We are then headed to a traditional Dutch dinner at Moeder’s. Probably going to have stamppot, a traditional Dutch dish. According to Wikipedia, it’s Dutch comfort food. We had it the last time we were in Amsterdam and it was wonderful.

We will spend the next day (Wednesday) touring Amsterdam, going to the Van Gogh museum and having dinner at Restaurant ZaZa which we loved on our last visit to Amsterdam. Then early next morning we will all head to the busiest airport in Europe, Schipol, where we will catch our 12:20 pm flight to Athens, Greece. Hopefully, we will arrive pretty close to when we are supposed to, meet our other traveling companions (my sister-in-law’s sister and her husband) and hopefully head to dinner at a traditional Greek restaurant I have reservations for.

The next day we will tour Athens with Alexios from Tours By Locals (a tour company we have used before and I love). Then another dinner in the Plaka district. The other thing we have to do on Friday is to take a COVID test. Here’s a strange situation. Greece requires a COVID test to LEAVE their country. I get it when someplace wants to keep COVID out of their country by testing those coming in. But to require a test only for people leaving their country makes no sense.

Then next Saturday, we will board the Viking Sky for our 21-day cruise. Viking calls it the Mediterranean & Adriatic Sojurn. Here’s where we are going.

For Kathleen and I this will be a chance to revisit many places we have been. For the rest of our group, this will be their first time in this part of the world. Although we have been to most every place after we leave Sicily, we have never been to most of the stops in the Adriatic Sea. We have spent time in Venice and it has always been one of our favorite cities. It was really the first place we ever went to in Europe. Luckily for us, we have almost three full days in Venice. Our good buddies (and always neighbors, Jayesh and Lisa) were there last month and did some scouting for us, finding us some amazing restaurants to try. We can’t wait to try.

So I want to invite you to virtually follow us on this journey. I will do my best to post here on a very regular basis but with not a single sea day on this trip, I might run a little late. And of course, it also depends on the quality of the WiFi on the ship. So make sure you have subscribed so you can keep up with the ports. You know how much I love to share our travels. See you soon, right here.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—St. Augustine

Why Viking?

by | Aug 18, 2022 | Uncategorized

Since my last post was about why we are leaving Celebrity Cruise Lines after 25+ cruises I thought I would give you a quick explanation of why we have decided that the first cruise line we will try post-Celebrity (other than some HAL, RCL and Azamara cruises we have already done) will be Viking Ocean.

The first reason is that one of our closest friends (who we met when we started working at our original Expedia office) has been on a bunch of Viking cruises and has many more planned. She sold us completely for a lot of reasons. For us, it pretty much comes down to what Viking has but maybe it is really more about what they don’t have.

Here are the things we love about Viking and why we can’t wait to board the Viking Sky in about two weeks.

  • No one under 18 can cruise on Viking. (It’s not that we don’t like kids; we took our grandkids on Royal Caribbean. That’s where kids belong.)
  • No smoking. Anyplace. We are vehement anti-smokers. I get the worst headaches when I breathe cigarette smoke.
  • No art auctions.
  • No casinos. These two normal places on most ships take up room that Viking uses for rest and relaxation.
  • No charge for beer or wine with lunch or dinner.
  • No ship photographers in your face all the time selling photos no experienced cruiser really wants.
  • No upselling in the spa.
  • No charge for internet access.
  • No charge for specialty restaurants. You are guaranteed two reservations per cruise and long-time Viking cruisers tell us it is no problem getting in to the restaurants on more nights than that once you are on board.
  • Viking includes one shore excursion in every port. These are usually walking tours of a downtown or coach tours of the surrounding area…or a combination of both. There are also other excursions you can purchase at reasonable prices.
  • All staterooms are at least verandahs. There are no inside (no windows) or outside (a window that does not open). There are also a few suites, but about 90% of the staterooms are verandahs.
  • Every stateroom has a minbar that is included. You know, like the ones in many cruise staterooms or hotels where a candy bar costs $5. Depending on the type of stateroom you are in, yours get restocked every day or every other day. Also depending on what stateroom you are in, you get alcoholic beverages in your minibar. In our Penthouse Verandah stateroom, ours will be refreshed every day and we do get gin, vodka, whiskey and one other liquor as well as mixers.

  • A couple relax inside a penthouse veranda stateroom on board the Viking Star

    All the staterooms are large staterooms. The smallest class of staterooms on the ship are 270 square feet. By comparison, the smallest staterooms on a Celebrity ship are 170 square feet. We are in a Penthouse Veranda (not a suite) and our stateroom is 338 square feet. That is only 40 square feet smaller than the Neptune Suite we were in last January on Nieuw Statendam. I am going to post a video tour of what our stateroom looks like once we are onboard. Based on what we have seen it is very comparable to what we had on Celebrity Flora.

    Penthouse Junior Suite Bathroom

  • The staterooms have huge bathrooms with heated floors and a gigantic (for a cruise ship regular verandah stateroom) shower enclosure and we get both a couch and a chair around a coffee table.
  • Only 928 guests on the entire ship. There are 465 crew members which is about a 2-1 ratio—above average for most cruise lines.
  • Their smaller ships can get into smaller ports. On our cruise next month we go to a lot of small towns in Greece, the Adriatic, Spain, France and the back side of Italy’s boot that a big cruise ship could not get near or would have to tender into.
  • Viking focuses on ports and traveling. Our cruise is from Athens to Barcelona with NO sea days (my next post will show you our complete itinerary). It will be exhausting but at least there are four overnights (Athens before, Venice, Livorno and Barcelona post-cruise).
  • No formal, fancy chic or “whatever cruise lines are calling it now” nights. Dress in the dining room is fairly casual. They just ask that you don’t wear shorts or jeans. That means less packing.
  • There is a full laundry on every deck. so more reasons you can pack less. There is no charge to use their laundry. All soap and fabric softener included. If you have clothes that need ironing, those are available too. And if you are in a PV or higher stateroom (like we are) all pressing is free.
  • No waiting in lines because there are so few guests and the ship is so well designed.
  • No nickel and diming. You can have a great cruise without paying an extra cent. Everything is included except gratuities and we pre-paid ours.
  • Much more interesting food. The menus look amazing as do the videos we have seen about the food.
  • The ships are gorgeous—a clean Scandinavian design. We have seen so many pictures, read a bunch of descriptions and watched a ton of videos.
  • No caste system. If you are in the lowest category of stateroom or the highest suite, no one will know what category you are in after you are on board. Everyone has access to everything. No special places/restaurants/sections for suite guests.
  • Longer cruises in more exotic places. I refuse to fly all the way to Europe for a 7-night cruise. Other than the Baltic, that’s about all Celebrity (and most other cruise lines) do anymore. Most of our Celebrity European and Down Under cruises were 14 nights minimum. Viking has 7, 14, 21, and 28-night cruises. That’s worth going to Europe for. And we are. Watch for our itinerary announcement early next week.
  • We have been told that their televisions play Downton Abbey on repeat. We LOVE Downton Abbey so we will be all set ? if we are stuck in our staterooms. I plan to watch the entire series all over again in between shore stops.

I think that pretty much covers it (as if that weren’t enough). And yes, it is more expensive. A Viking Ocean cruise is not cheap but we believe it is a great value. I priced out our 21-night cruise on Viking Sky against three seven-night cruises on Celebrity (they don’t have any 21-day cruises). When you add in everything we get and that they don’t have—Viking wins hands down. Come on along with us over the next few weeks and find out if we are right.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. —Warren Buffett