Pat and Norm's World Cruises and other adventures

November 4, 2019

The morning we arrived at our last Austrian city, Melk. We were divided into groups to tour the Melk Abbey. The Walk and Discover group is always #4, so we had the last tour. It is a lovely sunny day and we took a bus up the hill to the Abbey. This charming town has only 5000 residents. The highlight is the Abbey which starred life as a Hapsburg Palace. It has been a monastic school since the 12th century with a library that is world renowned for its extensive collection. It was reconstructed in the Baroque style in the first 40 years of the 18th century. The building has 468 rooms and 1365 windows! It contains a high school for 700 students. Mozart has performed concerts here.

Reinhold was our guide through the courtyard and the museum areas of the Abbey which highlight the history through the years. Unfortunately no photos were allowed but we later bought a small book with explanation and pictures. I put two on Facebook along with pictures I took of the outside and the views.

The whole place was just spectacular- the library contains 100,000 documents, many rare manuscripts and all the books were re-covered to look the same. The church is the most beautiful I have ever seen and I have seen hundreds.

After our visit we walked through the town and through a forest area and returned to the ship for lunch. We left this port at 1:45. We will travel next to Passau in Germany and it is fun to watch the beautiful small towns and experience the many locks along the way. I had the opportunity to have a wonderful hot stone massage followed by tea with a special apricot Austrian dessert… Just had to try that!

November 3, 2019

After our previous 2 full days in Vienna, we were looking forward to returning, and we were not disappointed. After breakfast, we joined a one hour bus tour of the city around the Ringstrasse, the ring road that surrounds the historic section. This is where the original wall stood, encircling the old city and the ring road totally replaced it by 1960. The magnificent St. Stephen’s Cathedral is in the very center of the ring. We saw many of the sights that we had explored last week including the beautiful Opera House, which is the largest in Austria and considered one of the best in the world. Like so many historical buildings, it was largely destroyed in WW II, rebuilt and reopened in 1955. Our guide, Michelle, was a wealth of knowledge.Then we had a walking tour and we explored the Hofburg Palace with its 18 courtyards (we didn’t see all 18)! The Palace has thousands of rooms but we did not tour the inside. It is also the home of the crown jewels, relics of the Holy Roman Empire, the Vienna Boys Choir and the famous Spanish Riding School. It houses the world’s 4th largest art collection.We saw the Lipizzaner stallions in their stables and I did get some photos of them. Beautiful. The new riders start with the oldest horses to learn as the horse teaches THEM!

The city is known, of course, for music and the main composer is Johann Strauss. Every concert here includes the Danube Waltz. Vienna remains the last great capital of the 19th century ball with over 200 still held every year, some with as many as 9 live orchestras! We were fortunate to have attended 2 concerts previously and had an extraordinary string quartet on board after dinner too.

The city has 1.8 million people and it is quite large in area, 4 times larger than Paris. There are really no slums since the city has ordinary housing in amongst the beautiful historic buildings and this works well.

After our walking tour (many items covered in my first Vienna post), we ended at the Cathedral during mass. I walked in just to hear the music. Then we returned to the ship for lunch since we were on the Walk for Discovery tour in the afternoon.

What an experience that was! I wrote that it is the first time it is being offered. There were 26 of us in the group. We went on a 1 hour bus ride back towards Bratislava to a small town called Hainburg. We were met by two guides in traditional dress. The town is on the banks of the Danube and the ride here was beautiful- thousands of windmills, many vineyards and views of the river too. The wind generation of power is one of Austria’s biggest industries.

The hike took us along the river, to the ruins of the castle of Rothelstein and then into the forest and up to Braunsberg, a limestone massive rock overlooking the Danube and the views were stunning. (Posted some pics on Facebook). It was windy at the top and many families were flying kites up there. It was a strenuous walk, but the group made it! We will see how many continue on the next 4 of these special events! Our guides entertained us with history and legends all along the way. We ended with a short walk to the center of Hainburg where we heard some of the bloody history near the old city walls. Then our guide entertained us by playing the hurdy gurdy in the shadows of the ancient wall. A great way to end the day here.

It was dark on the way back to the ship and also a bit rainy- we were glad it held off all day.

After dinner, a string quarter came on board for a one hour performance which was just wonderful. Tomorrow is our last day in Austria – the town of Melk.

This afternoon I have to say we had our cell phones tuned to the NY Marathon site where our son Adam was running in his third NY! We could follow his run and were so proud of him. Congratulations, ✨ Adam. ❤

Our other son Mark and his wife Ramsay are on the first leg of their 2 month honeymoon. 🎊💕

Adventures all around in our family. Stay tuned for more.

November 2, 2019

Bratislava is Slovakia’s largest city and its capital. It is only a 1 hour drive to Vienna which makes these two cities the world’s closest capitals. It is the only national capital that borders on two independent countries – Austria and Hungary.

We arrived about 1 PM today after our trip on the Danube from Budapest. We passed through one of the 66 locks that we will encounter on our trip to Cologne, Germany.

Our guide here was Maria and she was excellent. We first took a small train to the Bratislava Castle which was a fortress in the 9th century and became a Renaissance castle in 1562. It was rebuilt in the 17th century in the baroque style, was destroyed by fire in 1811 and was in ruins until the 1950’s when it was rebuilt. It is on a hill and the wind was very strong so everyone was shivering! But we enjoyed the castle and the gardens. The statues of soldiers on the two archways have no arms or heads since the ruler at that time was making a statement against wars.

The town is a delight, with a town hall that dates back to the 14th century. St. Michael’s Gate is impressive as are the churches, opera house and Presidential Palace. We had free time and went to the oldest shop to purchase local wine and Slovak pastries. Yum!

Maria shared a lot of history including what it was like in Communist times – they seized power in 1948 – and took over many buildings, changing them to the stark Soviet architecture. Some still exist today. After the fall of Communism in 1989, Czechoslovakia became a democratic society. The “Velvet Divorce” occurred in 1993 and the country split peacefully into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Maria said that the decision was political and that if there was a referendum, probably 75% of the population would have voted against it.

We are on a riverboat that has almost all British passengers, so they chuckled at the mention of “referendum” given what they are going through with Brexit! We have heard there might be one other American couple but we haven’t met up with them yet.

There is a bridge with an observation area on the top that they call the UFO. We could see people above it outside, it must have been really cold up there.

We are enjoying life on board the Emily Bronte which is part of the Riviera Cruise line. We enjoyed the hot tub yesterday with the sights of Budapest at dusk in the background. The food has been excellent and Jessie and Gabor, our cruise director and concierge, are very good. The only disappointment is the wifi, as I have mentioned in a previous post. So I have posted some pictures on Facebook when we are on shore and I can get fast wifi. Too cold and too packed of a schedule to add photos here though, my apologies for that. I will try to fill in when I can.

Tonight we leave for Vienna and since we spent a couple of days there last week, we are looking forward to our return. We joined in an optional walking tour package in 5 ports and the first one is tomorrow after our regular sightseeing tour. Apparently this will be hiking in the forest near Vienna. This is the first time they have offered this option and will be wanting our feedback. 28 of us have signed up. Should be fun.

Every evening after dinner Jessie gives us highlights of the next port. There is also a pianist in the lounge. No casino of course, so my evenings end earlier than on the world cruises!

November 1, 2019

We were glad that we had 3 previous days in Budapest because today was a national holiday and a lot of places, including all shops except those run by families (very few) were open. Even the City Market was closed and it is something to see, we had 2 meals there. CNN rated it one of the best markets in the world. Hungary is known for paprika and goose liver pate and there are many shops that sell both.

The tour with the cruise was an excellent one. Unfortunately the WiFi is still too slow to post pictures but I will give a narrative of what we did and what we learned, and add pictures at a later time (maybe even when we return home!)

Hungary is now 1/3 the size it once was and has a population of 10 million of which 1.7 million live in Budapest. This capital is really 2 cities, Buda and Pest pronounced Pecht. 2/3 of the population lives on the Pest side and our hotel before we got on the river boat, was on that side overlooking the Buda Palace across the Danube River. The Buda side is richer.

Our guide spoke flawless English and said that she learned it in secret under the blankets of her bed in Communist times…. From Michael Jackson! English was not taught and was forbidden to learn in Communist times. It is said that Hungarian is the second hardest language in the world after Chinese.

The tour was by bus and ended at Buda Castle, which we had explored a couple of days ago. we still walked around that area as it is huge and beautiful. The buildings are all museums now. We wanted to see the Hospital in the Rock, but it was closed so we only saw the outside. 2/3 of this city was bombed and destroyed so much has been rebuilt since WW II.

The synagogue here is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world. It was designed by Catholic architects and because of that it has an organ which is not typically part of synagogues. Outside of the synagogue is a cemetery and a tree of life in silver commemorating the 600,000 Hungarian Jews that were killed during the Holocaust. There are 600 leaves each engraved with the name of a family member killed. We revisited the synagogue and had a guided tour on Wednesday. It can hold 6000 people, 3000 sitting and 3000 standing!. And it is beautiful inside and out. It was rebuilt with generous donations from Tony Curtis and Estee Lauder both of whom were born here.

Hungary has the richest geothermal springs in the world and there are 24 spas here. They have to actually cool the water before it can be used in the pools!

Like in Vienna, coffee shop culture is big, dating back to the times when people lived in very small apartments with no heat or electricity and so they went to coffee shops for much of the day and evenings. Most buildings had a coffee shop in those days and it is still very popular.

As really had a chance to see so much of the city in our 4 days here. We enjoyed their food, wine and hospitality. We planned to do the hop on hop off bus on Wednesday but the concierge at our hotel advised against it because Putin was coming to Budapest and the traffic would be bad. So we walked everywhere that day. And we got stopped along the street for about 30 minutes because his motorcade was going to pass and the police would NOT let us cross. We have never seen so many police in a city before- they were everywhere.

So we did the hop on hop off on Thursday after taking our bags to the riverboat. It was fun and we did have an overview but our guide on Friday was much better.

it am writing this as we travel the Danube on our way to Bratislava, Slovakia. We just passed through a lock. There are 66 locks on our way to Cologne!

I will write more from Bratislava. On we go!