Sorry about the time between posts but we departed on June 7 for a vacation in Europe (Viking river cruise as detailed below) and returned yesterday June 24. Since we’re no longer in the RV I don’t post when we are leaving town ahead of time since it’s like advertising for the break in artists…but we did make preliminary arrangements with the fellow that fixed our lanai screen to come and install our storm shutters if necessary but given its early in the storm season we figured it was unlikely to be needed although Neil did bring in the lighter lanai things to the garage.

We’ve got pictures and I’ve already written most of the word parts of the blog posts so expect more posts detailing our trip in a little while…but today I’m just going over the getting there part of the trip.

We also tried out a new go to the airport thing. Normally we drive and park in long term parking at $11 per day…that requires a shuttle ride both to the terminal with your luggage and another one on return. Connie happened to notice a fellow St. Therese parish member who advertised on the bulletin that he does airport rides to Fort Myers, Punta Gorda, and Miami. The price to and from the airport here including a $20 tip was just a bit more than half of what parking would have been…and he drops off and picks up at the terminal so it’s a much easier time, particularly on the return trip.

We had an 0545 pickup for our flight to Dulles near Washington DC, then switched to business class via Austrian Airlines overnight to Vienna Austria and then another short flight to Budapest Hungary arriving around 1000. Viking arranged our flights and we included a 2 day pre cruise add on to both give us a bit of time to recover from jet lag (6 hour time difference from EDT) and to cover any flight issues that would have caused a delay. 

Viking had an employee there to meet us at the exit from baggage claim/passport control/customs to take us to a van which whisked us into the city to the centrally located Matild Palace Hotel which is under the Marriott umbrella…and it was pretty darned nice…at least 4 and maybe 5 stars. The only drawback was that it was about 1045 and checkin wasn’t until 1500. So the hotel stored our luggage and we wandered around the neighborhood of the hotel and had lunch, getting an email that our room was available about 1330 so we went back and got checked in. After an afternoon nap we headed out to dinner at the rooftop on the hotel where we had a nice bottle of wine and some appetizers for dinner before heading to bed early as we were in the 40ish hours since we got up Sunday morning time frame. We arrived at the bar at 1800 and stayed until about 2000 for the sunset. The bar is named the Duchess and was designed and built for Archduchess Maria Klotild as a meeting place for the city’s elite where they could meet and party away from the peasants. It was designed during what was locally named the Decadence Movement…and yeah, it was decadent. There is no street entrance, it has a private elevator inside the hotel, and is still reservation only although one no longer has to be elite, just have a reservation. It is about 2 blocks from the river and the Elisabeth Bridge named after Elisabeth of Bavaria (nicknamed Sisi)…she was the wife of Franz Joseph 1 which made her the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary and was instrumental and well liked by the Hungarians during the negotiations for the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 which established the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. Dinner was a bit on the pricey side…but then it was the rooftop bar at the most famous hotel in the capital of Hungary.

Tuesday we had a self walking tour of about 2.5 miles, walking across the nearby bridge from the Pest side of town to the Buda side of town…they were actually 2 different cities but in 1873 joined into a single city (along with Óbuda or Old Buda which was the original Roman era settlement of Aquincum) to form Budapest. Buda is the older, hillier administrative and royal side of town while Pest is more the commercial/business side and that is mostly still true today. Tuesday evening we headed out to an Irish pub but it turned out their kitchen was closed so we ended up at the British Pointer Pub directly across the street from the hotel.

Wednesday morning we had another excellent breakfast at the hotel restaurant (breakfasts were included in the extension) before packing up for the bus transfer to our ship which turned out to be less than a quarter mile as the crow flies but was a 3-4 mile bus ride as we had to get first onto the upper embankment (which rarely floods in the spring) and then onto the lower embankment which floods about 2/3 of the time but not usually excessively damaging as the embankment businesses and infrastructure was built with flooding in mind.

Our ship was originally scheduled to be the Viking Gymir which is a 443 foot long 190 passenger ship but earlier in the month (or maybe late in May but it was never clear) the section of the Danube between Budapest and Vienna was closed due to low water level trapping the Viking Gymir upstream of the closed section and our eventual (and identical) Viking Egdir…the previous cruises they had to swap passengers via bus to get around the closed section. We boarded the Egdir around 1100 or so and unpacked our luggage for the duration…making Wednesday Day 1 of the scheduled 15 day cruise although it was day 4 of our trip and I will stick to our day numbers for the upcoming posts. The remaining portion of Wednesday was devoted to Happy Hour, dinner, a safety and orientation briefing in the evening and then some light entertainment before going to bed.

Next up…another day in Budapest on excursions seeing the city via bus and walking tour but that’s another post.

No images today because (a) it was only traveling through various airports and (b) Neil hasn’t processed anything yet, it’s our first day back and we’re recovering from jet lag but we do need to run down and get some groceries.

Cyas.