Budapest day 3

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The sister ship moored tight beside us just floated away this morning - no churning water, no engine noise - it just spirited itself away like magic. We sat and watched it in awe through our floor to ceiling cabin window.



The guided tour of Budapest started at 8.30., an unfamiliar temporal territory for me! The guide was a little bit irritating at first, with a squeaky voice and false sounding joviality (nerves?), but once she settled down, and pitched her voice an octave lower, she was charming, and kept up a constant stream of interesting little tit-bits of politics and history about the streets we were driving through.



We ran out of steam about half way through, so we stopped for a cup of coffee and a sour-cherry strudel while everyone else went off on a walking tour. On our own we then explored the environs of Buda Castle, which included the very steeply sloped funicular railway. We went down it, and because there was such an enormous queue at the bottom, we chose to come straight back up, thus jumping the queue (otherwise we would risk missing our rendezvous with the bus to take us to the ship for lunch).



Throughout the tour there was splendid architecture and scenery, and there isn't enough time or bandwidth to put up all the photos!



They have a very reassuring "ship passport" system for making sure they don't leave anyone behind. As you leave the ship they give each person a credit card sized number, which you must give back to them when you return - if they don't get all their numbers back they actively try to track down the missing people (none this morning!).



This evening at 9.00. we are promised a pretty night time departure from Budapest (photos tomorrow), heading overnight to Bratislava in Slovakia, and arriving about lunchtime.

Carole says she's fine :-)

Photo Gallery

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