1: Cruising the Danube.

    The first time I traveled on the Danube was in 1996, when I was with my Dad on a high-speed hydrofoil while traveling from Budapest to Vienna. The seats were comfortable and the 5 hour or so journey was very pleasant. I was accompanying him on his last World Tour; he was 87 years old at that time.

    This time the journey was slower and more luxurious. We were on the m.v. “Maria Theresa” of Uniworld, named after that formidable, and also the last, empress of the House of Habsburg. She lived in the 18th century, and was, besides being the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, also Queen of Germany, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Queen of Hungary and Croatia. Unfazed by these duties, she still managed to bear 5 sons and 11 daughters. The youngest of these was Marie Antoinette, who became the last Queen of France, and by this unfortunate act lost her head to the guillotine together with that of her husband, king of Louis XVI in 1793.

    Our whole nuclear family was there, which made the cruise ever so more memorable.  The ship was launched in April 2015 with a capacity of 150 passengers, replete with baroque fittings, mirrors, marble surfaces, sumptuous upholstery and a huge painting of the empress Maria Theresa in the lobby atrium. As befitting the astronomical prices they charge, service was indeed quite good.

    Well, most of the time. The first night they forgot to serve dessert to our table, and we only got coffee and tea by going out and looking for a waiter, who always seems to vanish when we needed one. And on the last night, at the Captain’s dinner, our menu showed a cheese plate as dessert. Well, we waited a long time at the end of the dinner, but no cheese plate appeared. Neither did any of the waiters (unfortunately, we already gave them their tip) offer us the cheese plate.  So we had to go out to hunt for a waiter who could get us a cheese plate. We should have asked the tips back we gave them.

    We were on another Uniworld cruise the year before, sailing on the Rhône, on the s.s. Catherine, which was just as nice; and just as pricey. The crew on both these vessels were of diverse nationalities, mostly from Eastern Europe because, I presume, they can be paid less. So, on these ships the lingua franca was English, because only the Americans and British are crazy enough to pay these inflated prices. To be fair, these prices include, besides room and board, also a choice of very interesting shore excursions at the ports where we anchored.

    Last year, when we were in France, I thought I should be speaking French to the staff; most of the time I would see glaze coming over their eyes and a vacant smile on their lips. So back to English.

left: The restaurant on board of the m.v. Maria Theresa.

    The one-week cruise I am covering in this chapter started in Budapest, and featured stops in Bratislava, Vienna, Dürnstein, and Linz (with the choice of going to Salzburg on an all-day tour). Passau was where we disembarked, and a bus would whisk us to the airport in Munich for our flight back home.

   We also managed to book a tour of the ship; inside the bridge, the kitchen, the laundry room, the engine control room, and the engine room..

right: And these are the engines, which drive the ship. Small and spotlessly clean. You can also see the mattress on the ceiling to dampen the noise of the engines from the passenger cabins upstairs.

2: The m.v. Maria Theresa.

    The ship was docked at the Mahart Pier, located at Pesti also rakpart 205. Traffic was partially blocked the day we boarded the ship, because there were the Red Bull Air Races. And of course the planes flew over the river, occasionally even under two consecutive bridges The ship was moored right in the center of town and we had a front-seat row seat to watch the air show.

    In the first evening, the ship made an evening tour going north around Margaret Island and back to enjoy the lighted buildings on shore. I remember my mother had stayed on Margaret Island, when she was here in 1956.

3: The Danube Bike Trail.

    The Danube is a major tourist route for boats, such as the dozens of cruise boats now plying the waters. But it is also a major tourist trail for bikers, who believe that it is the most beautiful bike ride in Europe. The trail starts in Passau, the last town in our itinerary, and continue through Austria to Vienna, a distance of about 230 miles.