As I had mentioned in a couple of earlier posts, real life has gotten in the way of timely blog posts this fall. While I have the opportunity, I am determined to catch up the the actual day and time - but while writing I am going to pretend it's still the last week of October. So please do your best to suspend your disbelief and come with me to the 23rd of October.
My best friend and her husband (celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary) and I left last night on our flight to Budapest, Hungary, heading toward our "Romantic Danube" river cruise. Actually, last night we left Boston for Zurich, and this morning we left Zurich for Budapest. We arrived at the Budapest airport early afternoon today, and were met by reps from Viking who led us to our transportation that then took us to where our Viking longship ATLA was docked.
For those not familiar with river cruising, the ships are MUCH smaller than most ocean ships. The Atla carries a maximum of about 200 passengers. I had actually booked one of the two 'Explorer Suites' due to the fact that I had a voucher from the cancellation of an earlier cruise I had booked, and had to use it for one trip and only on myself. The suite has a pretty good-sized living room area and a separate sleeping area that can actually be completely closed off. As a result, we were able to turn my living room area into our 'hospitality suite', available to any or all of us when we wanted or needed a separate place to hang out for a while.
Many of the passengers were already on the ship by the time we arrived, either having done a pre-cruise extension in Budapest or somewhere else nearby, or having arrived on earlier flights. Once onboard, and once our luggage was delivered to our cabins we had a little time to get settled before heading to the Lounge for a drink. The mandatory safety drill followed, and then the Welcome Briefing back in the Lounge. Dinner is served each night in the Restaurant, but also usually in other spots, including tonight when it was also served on the Aquavit Terrace/in the Lounge.
One of the nice things about Viking is that there is a free excursion in every port in which we stop, and there are also optional (paid) excursions. There was one of the latter this evening called "Budapest by Night", but it was fully booked by the time we considered it prior to the cruise. And perhaps just as well, because since none of the three of us actually sleeps on planes, we had been up for well over 30 hours by the time the excursion was leaving the ship. Instead, we all retired to our cabins shortly after we finished dinner!
Here are some pictures of the city at night (full disclosure - from my my prior visit since we didn't go on the excursion this time):
We have more time in Budapest tomorrow, so good night for now!
Thank you for the background on the Viking cruises--I've seen the commercials on PBS, but they don't provide much detail. Also, the night pictures are wonderful. Did you need any special equipment, like a tripod for a long exposure?