Category Archives: Travel Journal

When Leslie was planning our trip through Europe the only visit I asked for was Prague. I had never been there and heard from many friends that it was mostly untouched from the World Wars, so it was a great example of old Europe. All true. The city was crowded but manageable, modern yet old,Continue reading “Prague”

The River Cruise ended in Nuremberg on November 1st. Leslie set it up for us to go to Prague. As there were 17 people of our group going Leslie rented a private bus for the trip. It was a long drive so she set up a stop half way in the town of Pilsen. FamousContinue reading “Pilsen – On the road to Prague”

The most appealing aspect of river cruising is being in a different city every day theoretically in the middle of the city as the cities all started based on proximity to the river. While the cites were great we still had too many bus rides and the ship didn’t always stay in the city allContinue reading “River Cruise – Shore Excursions”

We boarded our river cruise on our actual wedding anniversary, October 25th. The cruise started in Budapest, Hungry and finished in Nuremberg, Germany seven nights later. This was our first (and probably only) river cruise. We were on the cruise with a group of 28 (including us) and there are only 190 passengers on theContinue reading “River Cruising – Viking”

Our arrival in Budapest signaled the second portion of our incredible journey that started with our flight to Paris on October 8th. That’s because we were about to board our first ever River Cruise on the Viking Tor (changed to the Viking Var but more on that later) and had 26 other friends join usContinue reading “Budapest – October 23-26, 2019”

The next part of our journey was Budapest where we would meet up with all of our other travel friends, spend a couple of days in the city, then board our Viking River Cruise up the Danube. But first another train ride from Vienna to Budapest. The ride was only supposed to be 2 1/2Continue reading “Train to Budapest”

While we loved Dresden, we were very excited to be going to Vienna. Neither of us has been there before and we heard so many wonderful things about it. Well, it didn’t disappoint and will remain one of our favorite cities forever. Our train ride there was the longest we had scheduled as it includedContinue reading “Vienna”

Certainly one of the most pleasant and interesting stops we made on this trip, and probably the major city I knew least about before coming. All I really knew about Dresden was that it was the target of major (and controversial) Allied bombing near the end of WWII that completely flattened the city and killedContinue reading “Dresden, Germany”

This was the first time either of us have ever been to Berlin. A simple and pleasant train ride from Hannover got us there around mid-day on October 16th. The train station was about 2 miles from the hotel so we took a taxi rather than drag our bags. It was a very nice HiltonContinue reading “Berlin – October 16-18”

We loved Amsterdam, but the plan was 2 or 3 nights in each city so it was time to move on. We took the train to Hannover (yes this is how they spell it) but ran into a problem when we got to the train station in Amsterdam. I put the train tickets in myContinue reading “Hannover Germany”