Our stately pleasure boat

And, yes, was she ever yar! (although she's not a sailboat )

I've been eagerly looking forward to telling you about our wonderful Danube cruise, and it's finally time to do so!

We have the lady in this picture to thank for this unforgettable experience. A couple of years ago, before neither of us were even retired, she signed up for this bucket-list cruise and convinced me to

yes, they even had shuffleboard

join her.

Thanks a million, again, Joan, for getting us to do this, an expense we might never have jumped into on our own.

The whole experience was amazing, as we got to see several wonderful cities and towns in Germany, Austria, and Hungary. And I'll tell you about each of these destinations in detail in upcoming posts.

But I want to start off by trying to express how much fun it was just to be on the boat!

It was Viking's Tor, one of their beautiful longboats that holds about 200 passengers and 50 crew members, and is engineered to be exactly a foot narrower than the smallest locks she traverses on this cruise of more than 450 miles. (More about the locks below.)

As you can see, the decor is simple but very, very classy. These stairs lead from the main deck, where our rooms and the dining room are located, up to the deck where the lounge is. One more deck up is the sundeck, where we spent as much time as possible, in spite of the chilly fall weather. 

approaching a low bridge (more about this below) outside of Vienna

The views from up there were stunning (and I'll show you some of them in a future post). And, of course, there were plenty of chairs for relaxing, as well as the aforementioned shuffleboard court and a walking track. You can see some passengers taking a constitutional in the picture above. And they even have a small putting green!

Unfortunately the first couple of days of the cruise the deck was closed. When we first arrived, and Tor was docked in Nürnberg, we were able to explore up there, which is when Henry tried out the green. But since the first part of our cruise was on the Main-Danube Canal, and the bridges are really low there, we couldn't go back up for a while.

We had low bridges later, too, after leaving Vienna, but in that case they left the sundeck open and just announced that we should stay seated if we were up there! Despite the rather alarming nature of this warning from Daniel, our friendly program director, we braved the bridges...not willing to give up any minutes of 360° views if we could help it!

approaching a low bridge

duck!

Another feature of the boat that's on the upper deck is the Captain's control room. It's ingeniously fitted (everything on this boat is ingenious!) with hydraulics that can lower it when the boat goes under those low bridges. Here's a look at it (that's our intrepid Captain in the red box) when it's partially lowered for those Viennese bridges...

While on the Canal, it had to be all the way down, during which time the navigation is done by radar. We got to see all this high tech equipment later, on a tour of the "bridge" (while it was all the way up, fortunately!).

the blue display is sonar showing what's on the bottom

One of the most interesting technical challenges facing the crew are the many locks that have to be negotiated, not only on the Canal, but on the main Danube itself. (There are nine on the part of the Canal that we sailed, and 16 on the Danube between Regensburg and Budapest.)

The locks on the main river are traversed when the sundeck is open, so we were able to watch once or twice when our guys smoothly sent us through. Here's an approach to a large lock on the Danube, somewhere between Passau and Vienna. The long concrete structure in the background is a substantial flood-control dam...

a popular viewing spot for gulls as well as humans!

...and here are the gates opening up as we're about to exit the lock, after making the necessary elevation change...

Marvelous engineering achievements, locks! Especially of this size, on such a large river. Our program director gave us a talk one evening that explained a lot about locks and other technical details involved in our cruise, which was really interesting. You can learn more about the Danube's lock system here.

Certainly the best views are available up on the sundeck, but when you're not there, you can still see plenty. There are floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere, from the dining room...

...to our only-the-second-cheapest-class stateroom...

Yes, we even had a TV! In addition to watching a couple of interesting documentaries in the evenings, we mainly used it to play music and to look at maps, which are among the various services offered.

But daylight hours, when not actually touring fascinating towns, were spent looking out windows, not looking at screens...

breakfast on the river

...and, of course, eating!

Cruise food is infamously abundant, and we weren't at all disappointed in the variety and quality of the meals served on board.

scrumptious breakfast buffet in the lovely dining room

But what was a little surprising was how healthy it all was, at least if you made good choices at the breakfast and lunch buffets. There were plenty of fruits and veggies, enough to make it easier to withstand the temptation to take too many sweets.

And the dinner portions, while rich and delicious, were of manageable sizes. So it was not only possible, but easy, to eat very well but never feel over-stuffed. Even when the desserts were this lovely...

I could kick myself for not taking more food pix!
It was always impeccably presented as well as yummy

It was doubly amazing to consider the quality of the food after we'd had a brief tour of the tiny galley. How they manage to make and serve so much great food from such a cozy space is a marvel.

we thought some of the Spurs
might feel a bit
claustrophobic in the hall!

In addition to not taking enough pictures of food, I neglected to take good pictures of our comfortable stateroom, which made the most efficient use of its limited space, never really feeling cramped. (Some of our friends thought the shower was too small but it was actually commodious after several of the facilities that we'd had in rooms in Italy!)

And in addition to being full of ingenious conveniences, it was meticulously taken care of. Perhaps obsessively taken care of, in fact. After dinner each evening, we returned "home" to find our pjs artistically folded (a different design every night!) and the "newsletter" detailing the next day's activities ready for our perusal...

Yes, it was pretty nice to be so pampered! And the simple luxury of not having to re-pack and unpack for a whole week was just the icing on the cake.

Except for sleeping, most of our time was spent off the boat sightseeing (and I'll start telling you about these adventures next time). But it was so wonderful to have this great homebase. Given the abundant number of great rivers in the world, this is something I could definitely get used to doing!

A library the coolest city deserves

The coolest city being, of course, Austin.

They have a brand-spanking-new main library and it is spectacular! Well worth making it a tourist destination during a recent weekend there.

The architectural plan takes openness to the extreme, which makes for photogenic views wherever you look...

I especially enjoyed the views looking straight down from the upper levels...

The stairways and other paths that let you get from one place to another in the huge structure are wonders in themselves...

Plus there are smaller touches that are also fun and worth snapping, from quirky furniture...

...to seasonal decor...

...to funky windows into specialized areas...

A not-so-small decorative element is this...clock?...that dominates a central wall. At least I guess it's not meant to be functional, since I can't figure out how to tell the time from it. Am I missing something?

the pendulum at the bottom does move back and forth

Of course there's a children's area. It's labelled with a sign that doubles as a play structure for young visitors...

Our young visitor also enjoyed one of the coolest areas of the building, the roof garden that extends almost all around the building up on top...

It offers some spectacular views...

looking across Town Lake to the Palmer Center

the nice lawn in front of the old power building

Austin downtown is really booming

I know San Antonio isn't as cool as Austin, but we do have a pretty spectacular downtown library ourselves (and, in a stat I admit is probably only of interest to other librarians, we do have about a million more volumes in our collections). But I was mightily impressed with Austin's new library. City rivalries aside, you can never have too many great libraries in the world!

Bergamo: surprising stopover

I figured that our Italian touristing and sight-seeing was over when we left Florence.

We had to get up to Bergamo in order to catch our flight the next morning for Nürnberg, where we'd meet our Viking cruise. That journey was accomplished via a nice, fast train—with a train-change stop in Milan's central station that I'd fretted a bit over (because that's what I do) but which turned out to be easy-peasy.

But I didn't expect Bergamo to be more than just a convenient stopover point, near to Milan's Oria al Serio airport. I mean, after all, it wasn't even mentioned in our Rick Steves books!

As often happens in one's travels, though, pleasant surprises await when we least expect them. Our brief stay in Bergamo was very enjoyable, and we found that, in addition to some quite worthwhile tourist sights, it has an interesting history (which is connected to the dogdish pictured above...I'll explain later!) And several conveniently-located gelaterias!

On top of that, the hotel we somewhat randomly chose since it wasn't far from the airport, turned out to be a particularly nice place, with a good free breakfast and staff that were quite helpful in arranging transportation.

They called a cab for us to climb the very steep slope to the old city, where we thought we'd look around and find dinner. Although rush hour traffic delayed the cab's arrival longer than we would have liked, it eventually arrived and there was still enough daylight to snap a few pictures. Like the one of the handsome tower above on the right, and the neat old buildings below:

Since we didn't have a guidebook, we're not sure what the buildings are; they might be part of the town's cathedral complex, as the structures in this group might also be, which were snapped later in the evening...

But of course there were multiple old churches up on the hill, and though we didn't reliably find the cathedral, we got to visit inside a charming smaller edifice. The Chiesa di San Pancrazio was right on the path of our random walk. As often happens, it wasn't much to look at from the outside, but fortunately it was open...

There were even some of the lovely stone balusters that I'd admired in several other Italian churches. And some pretty floor tiles!

On the old city's main square...

...we found our dinner at the reasonably-priced and friendly Bar Flora. They served possibly the best lasagna I've ever tasted! 

After a quick gelato dessert at a nearby gelateria, we found the funicular station for a "fun" ride back down into modern Bergamo. Unfortunately neither of us was able to get a good picture of this cheap, delightful transportation device.

The evening was pleasantly cool, and our estimates of distance on the map provided by the hotel made a walk back there seem doable, so that's what we did. There were plenty of calories to walk off anyway, and we added some more on the way home. It was our first two-gelato evening! Only fitting since it was our last day in Italy.

But what about that historical aspect that was another unexpected treat in Bergamo? And what's up with the labelled dogdish?

When I made the hotel reservation, I thought the name of the place was a little odd: Hotel Citta dei Mille. I know enough Italian to be able to tranlate: "City of the Thousand." A thousand what? I briefly wondered.

Well, as it turns out, Bergamo is extremely proud of being the city which supplied Garibaldi with the most volunteers in his struggles to unify Italy and make it independent. The hotel has a display case (shown on the left) with all kinds of historically relevant Garibaldi-related books and knick-knacks to illustrate this connection. (The Wikipedia link above doesn't mention Bergamo, but it will give you an overview of the history associated with dei Mille.)

At any rate the civic pride extends to a handy dish for canine visitors!

We thoroughly enjoyed our one night in Bergamo, but were equally excited to embark upon the next chapter in our European super-trip, when we awoke to beautiful weather for our flight to Nürnberg.

---

Although I'm very keen to start telling you about our amazingly wonderful Danube cruise, I'm going to take another short break next time and fill you in on some holiday touristing nearer to home.

Firenze/Florence: big daddy Duomo

The Duomo in Siena was fabulous, and, when all is said and done, it's probably the best church (out of thousands) we visited in Europe.

But there's no doubt that when you say "Duomo" to most people, it's Florence's that they picture. The Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, to be precise.

It is really crowded...

...and a chunk of its marvelous bulk was encased in scaffolding for refurbishment works...

...but it's still breathtakingly beautiful. From that amazing dome, a triumph of Renaissance design...

....to its spectacular Campanile tower (which we climbed in 1996!)...

If you follow the 1996 link above, you can see what the dome looks like from the top of the tower...even more spectacular than from the ground. The pictures from this trip include other great views from our climb as well.

We opted, on this trip, to forego climbing the tower. And, indeed we decided to avoid all the Duomo's paid attractions (like the Baptistery and the museum).

Yes, the Duomo interior itself is free! A nice compensation for having to spend lots of euros on many of Florence's other prime attractions.

The interior here offers some wonderful sights, such as its handsome nave:

Although, again, I found Siena's interior more impressive. Maybe I just go in for gaudy in my church decor?

But there's plenty to admire in Florence's Duomo interior...

Henry's low-light-magic camera took this

attractive candle tree

Henry took this great shot of the wall where the main doors are located. What I really liked about his composition was the...wait for it...FLOOR TILE ART! Yes! There's lots of it here (although, not as much or as impressive as that in Siena).

Most of the tile art was abstract, rather than narrative...

I was intrigued by this acronym (which we'd seen in Siena, and in other churches). Rick Steves' Duomo self-guided tour didn't elucidate, but the internet came to the rescue...

Ora Pro Animas

Although, as often happens, there's a competing definition, specific to Florence's Cathedral. I'm partial to the Latin explanation, myself.

Back outside, the millions of sculptural and decorative details are overwhelming when it comes to deciding what to photograph. Here's a sample...

We walked past the Duomo several times during our brief visit to Florence, going and coming from our hotel to other attractions. And it was impossible to pass it at any time and not snap a few pix. But I found that the best time of day might be early morning, after the sun has risen but before it peers over the complex...

You'd think the backlight would obscure the lovely details, but, at least on a beautiful morning like this one, I believe it enhances them...