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Day 1 Clt to Budapest
I woke up in the hotel in Charlotte on Sat morning and took it easy until Susan and Patrick came. I left my car at the hotel and Patrick drove us to the airport. We hung out at the airport and then caught our flight to Detroit. After getting on the plane, Susan decided she needed nose spray and was working with the sprayer when it shot off. Most of it went on the seat in front of her but a bit got the person in the seat. We broke out in laughter… The rest of the flight was uneventful. In Detroit we went to our gate and then decided we should eat and just try to think of it as dinner. Our flight was to leave around 3 and so we thought we should try to convert to the European timezone. We were both complaining about how we wouldn’t sleep and would be exhausted when we get there since we would be flying during the afternoon / early evening. As we waited for boarding, there was an announcement. We are in an oversold situation and are looking for volunteers. We will give you $1K
for your seat. Off I went up to the agent. “what time can you get us to Budapest?” click, click, click. “4:20pm”. “ok, let me go check”. They put us on the wait list. I called the cruise company and they said that wouldn’t be a problem. Yea!!!!!! okay, we will do it. She was soooo happy we would. Maybe we could have gotten more but we were both happy and are already trying to figure out where we will go to use it.
After everyone boarded, they called us back up and gave us our new boarding passes and our voucher. Off we went to waste time in the airport. Susan and I spotted it at the same time – a Desigual store. Off to go shopping. Yes, I bought some shirts… we then found a place for dinner and then just wasted time until our flight. By this time, 10:40, we were both exhausted. I fell asleep immediately after we got on and slept pretty good until around 4. That’s when the guy beside me kept encroaching on my space. Maybe he was doing it earlier and I was just too tired, but now, it was VERY
annoying.. I kept asking him to move back into his space to no avail. Sigh. He was old so I didn’t want to make a scene.
We land in Amsterdam and head to the agent who pointed us to the transfer point. They gave us our boarding passes and told us to go thru immigration to our gate. We get to the immigration line and it is forever. We waited in that line for over an hour before finally making it thru. We caught our next flight and again I slept some. The Viking cruise people met us at the airport and took us to the ship. We finally caught up with Nancy and John. They arrived here a couple of days ago.
We love the ship. It is an older crowd but the crowd seems active. The river cruise is so much nicer than a regular cruise – free wifi, wine at dinner and lunch, free sodas, some activities included, water when we get off the boat,…. We also love the smallness of the ship and intimate feeling. Dinner was great and then we went upstairs and watched as the ship cruised Budapest at night. The ship then docked again in Budapest and we went to be and crashed… Yes, susan and I were tired.
We woke up the next morning and headed to breakfast. Smile – no cost for the diet coke… We then boarded the bus for a tour of Budapest (Buda and Pest) They told us the history of the area and we saw many sites. If we hadn’t taken the tour, then we would have had to stay on the ship because we picked up the ship further up the river. The tour was good. After we got back to the boat, we had lunch and now we are sitting on the top deck as we travel to Vienna. The country side is beautiful. This is very relaxing.
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