St Stephens Budapest

Best inside Cathedral we saw on the whole trip and we went to a concert there later when we were back on our own

Budapest--wet city tour

it was wet for the tour organised by Gate 1 but we went and checked out the city. Looks like it'll be easy to find way around with the Danube splitting the high side off Buda from the flatter side of Pest. So its pretty easy to steer by the river when you walk anywhere. First impressions are pretty nice place and we will definitely want to do the baths when we finish with Gate 1 after our 2nd night in the crappy Flamingo Hotel. Surely it must have been last choice by Gate 1 !!

Arc De Triomphe

Lots of water from the sky this morning and after the La Pariseanne run we had a look around the village and one of the sponsors was Ireland Tourism so we saw some dancers and heard a few Irish songs  and then we found our way by metro to The Arch de Triomphe and Champs Elyssee for the fashionable walk and the climb to the top of the A de T and the great view down the 12 avenues radiating out from this Arch

Vienna-night of Mozart and Strauss

nice to listen to a great orchestra play The Blue Danube Waltz in Vienna. It was in the room where the Emperor used to do exactly what we were doing. Strauss's music is so lively and fun and even Mozart livened up a lot with his Operas and these singers did a great job and the dark haired girl hit all those high soprano notes perfect. The conductor was fun and lively--all in all a great show loads of fun

Vienna

See this is what I mean. A great place like Melk replaced by a walk in the market in Vienna and we had to buy our own subway ticket. In the afternoon we did the scheduled guided tour of the city so that was better

LOW TIDE ON THE DANUBE

We had heard rumours about problems with low water levels on the Danube. I guess there was a price to pay for the beautiful weather we have had since coming over to Europe from the UK. Our trip on the boat was terminated at Ravensburg and we had the choice of taking a part refund and taking off on your own or sticking with the tour  by bus. For us sticking it out was ok because 2 nights in Vienna sounded fine and 4 nights in Budapest---well thats probably a day long and there are some issues there with refugees occupying the train station but our guides who are Budapest locals say there is no danger so we are off to Budapest in a few hours. Shame about that cruise and a couple of nice stops at Passau and Melk were deleted. I think they could have made a better effort to show us those stops by bus  On the drive to Vienna we drove right past the Melk Monastery about a km away! The big bosses in USA maybe trying to make up the expense of all those hotel rooms they had to buy in hotels!!!

Regensberg

We crossed the range of hills that always defeated previous attempts to join the Rhine to the Danube and in fact its a tributary of the Rhine called the Main that the canal starts from and the first 100 km to Nuremburg was finished in 1972 and was considered too commercial and boring so they have made an attempt on the section we used to make it more beautiful with some widened sections and variations in bank structure and putting of curves in to make it more like a natural river. We seemed to spend a lot of time in locks going up and not quite so much coming down but it was nice to be on the water and moving to our 1st destination of Regensberg. The next morning we went on a tour of this city which has some Roman remains because they had a huge garrison here to protect against the Germanic tribes and secure the Danube down to the Black Sea. Also great viewing of the Old Town Hall, the Dom of St Peter and one of the oldest stone bridges built over the Danube but unfortunately it was having a huge makeover so couldn't see much of it. In the photos notice the statue in the street of Charles the 5th's illegitimate son who became a great success leading the navy against the Turks and the smiling angel in the church which is very unusual