The ship, the GluWwien and the Wieners

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Gutten Tag

Greetings from Vienna. We are on day 4 of our cruise and are seriously drinking and eating our way down the river. I have cut myself down to toast for breakfast, a small lunch and then dinner. There is so much food on this boat and you could seriously eat all day and night if you want to.

Budapest Christmas Markets

There were two markets in Budapest to explore one at St Istvan’s Church (St Stephen to us) and on in the town square. I managed to purchase some lovely decorations for the tree.
The market was a mixture of both Hungarian food and Hungarian craft. Greg and I puttered round at night and managed to sample Gluh Wien, a huge pretzel and a 12” diameter potato Rosti. I managed to purchase a few Christmas trinkets, some extra Christmas card and surprise, surprise a couple of brooches.

Scenic Crystal

We joined our boat at 3pm on 30 Nov and were instantly made at home with drinks and shown to our cabin. The cabins are well appointed and feel spacious, especially as your empty luggage can be stored under the bed which can be configured as two singles or queens. For all you menopausal ladies out there, one of the best things is that even with the queen bed, you have your own separate doonas, no fighting for the doona, no sharing the heat of a man who is a raging furnace…. You can snuggle under it or kick it off to your heart’s content, with no complaints from they who share your bed. The shower has a coloured light show if you want it…

You can have early breakfast, breakfast and late breakfast, morning tea, lunch afternoon tea, dinner and supper. There are so many options to choose from and of course… alcohol, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and soft drinks on tap.

On day two and day four we cam back to our rooms to find the housekeeper had made a swan, and an elephant respectively and put it on our bed. The elephant was even wearing one of my. brooches

Scenic has it’s own tour buses which follow us from town to town.

The locks,
We have been through two locks on our 23 hour cruise from Budpest to Vienna, but there will be 68 locks in all to go through before the end of our trip. The first one we came to at 6.15 in the morning and like the loons we are…we dived out of bed, threw our thermals and many layers on and went up on the top deck (covered with frost and ice) to watch the process… we were the only boat in the lock and the water took just 15 minutes to fill up the lock and for the gate to go down and we were on our way down the very huge man made canal that runs parallel to that part of the Danube….it is quite freaky to look to the side and see the last couple of foot of a church spire above the canal wall.

The second lock was just before Vienna and we were squeezed in the lock with two huge double barges and another boat, it was very, very, very, very tight.

The barges on the river are wonderful and where you would have semi or a road train in Aus, the barges do the work. They all carry a car, or a motor bike or push bike, so the captain and crew can get about when they dock. We saw one motor by today that had about 80 small cars on it, think of how that would free up the roads… I wonder if we could double the width of the Yarra (and quadrupled the length).

Vienna.
Last night we went to Lichtenstein palace for a concert of Straus, Mozart and Ballet. It was quite good and funny in places. The ballet was only to the Blue Danube waltz so Greg did not have to restrain me from yelling at them to say something (being a theatre person… I find ballet so frustrating…don’t mind the dancing, but hate that they don’t talk and that you have to read up on the story to understand it.



Today we wondered through ShonBrunn palace and got to see how the rich and powerful Austrians lived through the reign of the Hapsburgs… more Baroque architecture and massive overspending. We wondered out to the Christmas market and I fell in love with some Tin Christmas decorations, bought myself a Christmas tree pin and some wooden ornaments…. Some of them for prizes for my latest Facebook competition.

Tonight we hit the largest Christmas Market in Vienna and although the lights were absolutely stunning... the market was disappointing with mostly mass produced products.... not up to the standard of the ShonBrunn and Budapest markets... which were classy and full of one-off items. Greg finally got to taste local sausages...wurst etc. And seriously folk, Austria and Germany.... the only countries where you can ask your husband..."How's your Wiener" and he can answer with a straight face... "Very Tasty dear, very tasty"

I have added photo's to this blog..... but will put more up on facebook

Tomorrow it is Dernstien and Melk.... Ciao

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Photos

This is one of the beautiful light shows