Dawn and Steve

Budapest was a city that was every bit as pretty, in terms of architecture, and interesting, for the history, as Prague was. It's hard to pick a favorite place, but judging from the number of pictures we took, it has to be a tie between Prague and Budapest. Of course, we spent additional time before and after the river cruise in these two cities too, which may be the reason why we have so many more pictures of these. I am glad that we decided to do that, since we had the ability to go out and see more of the city during the days in the hotel than we would have if we had just had the days on the boat. Plus, if you are anything like me, and don't always feel up to walking, ... read more

We set our alarms to wake us up early this morning, as we were scheduled to sail through the scenic Wachau Valley in the state of Vienna, country of Austria. Unfortunately, heavy fog blanketed the valley, obscuring some of the farther sights, and shrouding the buildings close to the water in fog. It almost looked like the scene from a scary movie, with the old buildings surrounded by fog. Ruined castles, medieval towns, and churches, all made for an interesting and pretty cruise through this part of Austria. If you look closely, you can see some of the hillsides covered with rows of grapevines. It's winter here, so there are no leaves on the plants and they stand as bare sticks in terraced rows across the hillsides. It seems strange to me, with it being winter, ... read more

Regensburg is the best preserved medieval city in Germany, and the old town is a UNESCO World heritage site. We bundled up and had a 2 hour walking tour of old town. The names and history of all the wonderful old buildings were pointed out to us, and I promptly forgot them all. But they are impressive examples of Gothic architecture, so were still interesting to see. Plus the streets are so narrow that pedestrians have to glue themselves to the side of a building to not get squashed when a car drove by. That was amusing for the first one or two times. After that, not so much. All of the streets and sidewalks are cobblestone, which is harder to walk on for extended periods of time than you would think. Especially when the streets ... read more

The second day in Prague started off with an early walking tour of all the major sights in and around old town, and across the Vltava river at the Prague Castle. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling well, so I decided not to go with them (3 1/2 hours of walking just sounded too much for me), but Steve still went, so he got lots of nice pictures. I have to tell you that it was really difficult to pick out just a few pictures for this blog from the over 200 that he took. Unfortunately, it was overcast, so they aren't the best pictures ever taken, but hey, we are only here for a few days, so we have to take what we get. I will try to fill in the names of the buildings on any ... read more

One of the nice things about our condo here is that our second floor balcony looks over a small lake that is stocked with fish, and is teeming with birds. I love sitting out on the balcony watching the birds. We have both great blue herons and little blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, cattle egrets, ibis, various ducks, and lots more that I don't know the names of. There is even a bald eagle that takes a bath in the lake sometimes, but I haven't been able to catch it with the camera yet. We also have cormorants and anhingas (diving and swimming birds) that hang out fishing in the lake, then they hop up onto the fake geese to dry their wings out. We caught a great blue heron with a fish that was ... read more