A CRUISE ON THE DANUBE!Who would of thought that I would come halfway around the world to see new places and experience wonderful music and on first night I sit down to dinner I meet a couple from home. River cruising has become so popular there are hundreds of ships on the Danube at any one time.
There are way too many coincidences on this trip, but the couple from home are the icing on the cake. It is great seeing and doing things from a similar perspective...but there are many, many people doing the same thing.
After dinner we had an early evening and as the water of the Danube sloshed by alongside...I drifted off to sleep with visions of Vienna Austria, concerts and beautiful palaces and gardens to see.
This is not the 1st time I am in Vienna. I was here years ago and I must say there are still as many tourists here as I saw in Paris a few days ago. It is reassuring that so many people still want to come and see the beautiful churches and hear the wonderful music of Mozart and Beethoven and see and be seen in Europe.
When we land in port we are not the first ship here. As a matter of fact...river cruising is alive and well on the Danube. This is almost like the Nile where the hotel ships line up one alongside the other. To disembark, you get a tour of the lobbies of several ships on your way to the dock itself. This is not all bad.....but today there are a total of 8 river ships docked here. Needless to say....Vienna is crowded.
But this is a city of huge parks, wide avenues and pedestrian streets. There are gold leaved monuments around every turn and photo ops are continual. Representatives of various concert halls dot the corners spreading information about the wonderful musical entertainment available in this city of music. These are cute young men dressed in period dress complete with white wigs and leggings( yes and also the pants and silk coats).
As are most cities in Europe, Vienna is a walking city and we are no exception. They drop us at St. Stephens Church, and give us a chance to visit on our own. Such a lovely city, but even now in the "off season" there are busloads and busloads of tourists from those same river ships that we had to walk across to board our bus.
We head back to the ship in time for dinner then board the bus once more to head off to the old Vienna for a concert of the masters most well known pieces. We are in a line of buses like the old "gravy train" commercial on TV. In the building, there are guides with signs pointing to where each ship has seats. The more you pay, the closer you get to the musicians.
Back on the boat, my head is filled with the lovely music as we slosh along to the next port on this amazing Danube cruise.
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