Days 24-26

Days 24 and 25 were travel days.  Our journey on Day 24 was from Rovinj to Zagreb, Croatia, by bus.  In past visits, we had rented a car as we were going to the airport.  This time, we were headed to the center of the largest city in Croatia to be ready to take a train to Hungary.  It turned out to be a good (or lucky) choice as it poured rain and a professional driver who knew the route took care of getting us to Zagreb.  While in Zagreb, we got word that the river cruise, which was to start in 36 hours, was going to be converted to a bus tour due to flooding on all the rivers we were to cruise!  

This is the Danube in Budapest 

We had been watching the news in Europe for several days and wondering if and how the cruise could take place.  Other river cruise operators had canceled their cruises.  Ours, unfortunately, waited until the last minute, and several people traveled to Europe with no idea that the cruise was about to change to a bus tour.  Included in that unfortunate group were our traveling companions, Jan and Dan Studer.   We tried to forewarn them, but they were already on their way and didn’t have a phone or computer.

When we got to Budapest on Day 25, we got a first hand look at the worst flooding in Central Europe in 400 years!  We would have much preferred not being part of this history.  The cruise ship boat launching docks were inaccessible due to the flood water. This picture shows where we were to have boarded our Viking river boat.

It was great to tie into Jan and Dan.  We were walking to the hotel from the subway station and they were headed to dinner in a city of almost 2 million people.  We were very lucky to find them a few blocks from our hotel and quickly headed to a dinner reunion.

Someone claims that the French stole the recipes they call theirs from the Hungarians.  All we can say is the food was mostly excellent as evidenced by this fillet mignon wrapped in bacon and served with miniature dumplings and mushrooms with a cheesy-meat gravy.  

None of us was pleased with the late cancelation of the cruise.  We recognize and understand natural disasters, but we don’t appreciate the late cancelation that Viking made when the rivers had been flooded for several days at least.  For Dan and Jan, they had just flown to Budapest to start a vacation, and the news was worse for them than for us as we’ve been on vacation for almost four weeks!

Jan and Shari looking for the cruise boat to board.

As we have done in the past, we adapted.   Budapest is a very interesting and BEAUTIFUL city - more in the next post!  We were to stay in our hotel, the Starlight Suites, a four star hotel only one block from the Danube, for only one night, but now we are staying for a few days.  

Those of you into pickleball have probably heard us discuss sandbaggers a time or two.  Rarely have we captured a sandbagging moment in one photo, but here it is:

We will do our best to make lemonade (or limoncello) out of lemons.  We always do!