Diane and I were very glad to be back from Scotland in
time for the start of the Hot Summer Nights concerts. However, we did miss two weeks while we were
away on an Olivia riverboat cruise on the Danube River which started in Budapest
and ended in Prague. We arrived in
Budapest early in the morning of June 28, 2017.
We took a taxi to the hotel where we had paid for an early check
in. The first order of business was a walk
to the closest Tourist Information Office for maps, a Budapest card,
information on hop-on-hop-off transportation, opera house tour tickets and an
ATM. In the afternoon, we relaxed in our
room and watched the small airplanes practicing for the Red Bull Air Race. Our hotel window overlooked the Chain Bridge
which was one of the bridges the airplanes were required to fly under. Yes, that’s correct, they had to fly under
the bridge or be disqualified. What fun
it was to watch!
We were busy the next day. We walked by the Ferris wheel and Danubius
fountain to the metro station. Our
destination was the Hungarian National Museum where we spent two hours learning
the history of the region. It was set up
as a two-part exhibit by time period. We
particularly enjoyed the musical instrument collection, especially the early
stringed instruments and bows. We then
walked to the Central Market Hall to look around and have lunch. At 2 p.m. we had tickets for a tour of the
Hungarian State Opera House. We followed
the large group of tourists that had gathered to see this ornate
structure. Afterward we were ready for a
snack in a more intimate setting, which we got at the Chess Restaurant. We had an interesting dessert topped by a
bishop made of white chocolate.
Danubius fountain
Display of stringed instruments
Boxes at the opera house
Chess desserts
The next morning, we were picked up at the hotel for a
Parliament tour. The guide took us to
Parliament Square, bought our tickets and then we joined the regular tour. In the museum, we enjoyed seeing pictures of
WWII damage and the red star that was above the building during the Soviet
occupation. We walked along the river
toward our hotel, but encountered the setup for the Red Bull Air Show. The bridge was closed so we couldn't go
across to Buda on
the hilly, western side of Budapest as planned. Instead, after lunch in the hotel, we set up
chairs at our windows overlooking the Chain Bridge and watched the planes
flying under it and doing acrobatics. It
was a relaxed afternoon. At 7 p.m. we
left for the first Olivia event, a five-course dinner with wine pairings at the
Kempinski Hotel, accompanied by strings playing Roma and other music.
Parliament building
Airplane flying under a bridge
We joined an Olivia group for a tour of the part of the
city on the other side of the river called Buda (versus the side the hotel was
on called Pest), and we were glad we didn’t miss Buda. It is the more historic
part of the city, also known as Old Town Budapest. We toured the Buda Castle including the
National Gallery and the Budapest History Museum. We came back to the hotel over the Margaret
Bridge. After lunch at the hotel, we
joined a wine tasting tour to the Etyek region.
That tour delivered us to our boat, the Avalon Luminary.
View of the Buda Castle at night from across the river
Parade of the Hungarian Hussars near Buda Castle
showing a female member on the far horse
Me and Diane looking across from Buda to Pest
That afternoon, we started the cruise up the Danube toward
Passau, our last stop on the river. We
passed through the Gabcikovo Lock, the only lock we would encounter on our
trip. It is part of a hydroelectric
project that produced 10% of Slovakia's electricity. We tied up in Bratislava,
Slovakia for the night. In the morning,
we joined a group of older Olivia guests and took the tour of Bratislava's Old
Town on and off a trolley car. That
evening, our boat started the next leg of the trip towards Vienna.
Gabcikovo Lock
Trolley car tour
We started our first day in Vienna with a bus and
walking sightseeing tour of the city. We
got a glimpse of the famous Lipizzaner horses known for their classical
dressage ability. In the late afternoon,
Hanna & Dorene (our friends from earlier Olivia trips) traveled from their
village outside Vienna and picked us up at our boat. They drove us into the surrounding hills for
a panoramic view of Vienna. Then on to a
wonderful Austrian restaurant, Klee am Hanslteich, where we had a table
overlooking a duck pond and beautiful forest.
Lipizzaner horse
The next morning, we visited the Private Collection of
the Habsburg Family at the Museum of Fine Arts in Vienna. Afterward, Hanna and Doreen met us out front
at the big fountain and statue of Queen Maria Theresa. She was the ruler of the Habsburg dominions
from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position in
her own right. We walked to their
favorite Vietnamese restaurant for lunch.
Then we took a tram and bus to St. Stephen's Square for several
important stops to get: (1) a Sissi chocolate, (2) ice cream and (3)
coffee. Sissi was the nickname of the
Empress of Austria from 1854 until her assassination in 1898. Then we took a tram to Bodulo (Dalmatian
Fish), a restaurant in district 17. It
was a Croatian restaurant where we were served a large sea bass encased in
salt. After dinner, we said goodbye to
our friends and took a taxi back to the boat.
Little did we know that would be the last time we would see our friends.
A Mechanical Galleon, an elaborate table ornament which
is also an automaton (it moves) and clock on display in the museum.
Statue of Queen Maria Theresa
Hanna and Dorene in trolley
Salted fish
The next morning, we enjoyed a beautiful blue sky as we
sailed along the Danube through the scenic Wachau Valley. There were vineyards covering the
hillsides. West of Durnstein, we went by
a riverside statue of the crusader Richard the Lionheart with the minstrel
Blondel de Nesle. When we reached the
village of Weissenkirchen, we walked up the hill to a market where we purchased
jars of apricot jam and then reboarded the boat. We sailed on to Melk to tour the Benedictine
Abbey. The original building was destroyed by fire and what visitors see today
— financed in part by the sale of the abbey's Gutenberg Bible to Harvard (which
was later donated to Yale University) — was completed by 1996. Monks of St. Benedict have lived and worked
in Melk's abbey for 900 years, during the Reformation (1500s), occupation by
Napoleon (1800s) and the Nazis (1900s).
Statue of Richard the Lionheart
Benedictine Abbey
The next day we went on a guided walk through Grein in
the morning including a tour of the oldest town theatre in Austria. The boat then
sailed on to Linz, the third largest city in Austria. On our walking tour of Linz, we saw many
Baroque buildings, including the old town hall (Altes Rathaus) and the old
cathedral (Alter Dom) before we reached Hauptplatz, the town’s main square. The
riverside Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz had a major modern art collection.
Celebrating the 225th year anniversary of
the town theater in Grein
Religious sculpture featuring a sunburst motif in Linz
cathedral
We just relaxed on the boat deck for our last full day
aboard, enjoying the scenery. We arrived
in the German city of Passau, but we decided for us it was too hot for us to go
on the scheduled walk. We spent our last
night aboard the boat and enjoyed the farewell dinner.
Diane and I relaxing on our last day on the Danube
We disembarked and left on the three-hour bus drive to
Prague in the Czech Republic where we checked into the Intercontinental
Hotel. We had lunch at a nearby Italian
restaurant before leaving on the bus ride over the Czech Bridge for a walking
tour of the region between the river and the Prague Castle. We saw four rooms of the Senate located in
the Wallenstein Palace. After walking
back over the Charles Bridge, we went to our hotel for dinner.
Dripping wall in the garden of the Wallenstein Palace
Crowds walking across the Charles Bridge
We rode a bus over the Czech Bridge to the top of
castle hill the next morning. A local
guide showed us the Hradcany Castle grounds and the St. Vitus Cathedral before
we went back to the bus and our hotel for a potty break. We then walked through the Jewish quarter to
the Old Town Square and viewed the Astronomical Clock at 11 am. We ate lunch outdoors in the Square and then
rested in the hotel. We ate dinner at a
seafood restaurant and then took the bus to a classical music concert at the
Mirror Chapel of Clementinum, so named because of the mirrors in the
ceiling. The interior was more beautiful
than the music.
Astronomical Clock
While attending Hot Summer Nights, we had made friends
with Gloria, who supervised the ushers.
She had moved to Prague with her Czech husband but still owned a home in
Columbia and visited often. She gave
advice to those of us who were going to visit Prague, including our former next-door
neighbors, Sue and Ken. Amazing, they
were there now. We met them in the
morning for coffee. Afterward we planned
to explore many places around Old Town. However,
it became so hot and crowded with tourists, Diane and I gave up, went to the
hotel and just rested and packed for our departure the next morning. That evening, a bus took us over the river for
a folklore dinner of Czech food and plenty of wine. The waiter served the wine by squeezing a
wineskin from several inches away. The
entertainment was hammer-dulcimer music, dancing and singing. I had a really great time. The next day, after an almost 20-hour trip
from Prague to Munich, Chicago and St. Louis, we barely made the last shuttle
of the day to Columbia. Although
exhausted, we brought wonderful memories home with us.
Sue, Ken and I (Diane taking picture)
Musicians
The next two months were very busy. We were back in time for the last two Hot
Summer Nights Concerts. We shared meals
and entertainment with many friends. The
most exciting event was the total solar eclipse on August 21st. There were many people from around the
country that visited family and friends in Columbia in order to view the
disappearance of the sun as the moon passed over it (wearing special protective
glasses). The corona when the sun was
completely covered was amazing. Angela
Karen Speck, Director and Professor of Astronomy at the University, spent
several years promoting the event and taught one of my Osher Lifelong Learning
classes about it. Our friends Karen and
Joe from Denver were visiting and others joined the group outside our house for
the viewing and then for a potluck dinner.
In the middle of September, Diane and I left for a Road
Scholar tour labeled The Best of All Five Great Lakes. This trip was easy for two reasons. The first was that the way there and back was
short. The cruise began in Toronto and
ended in Chicago, both cities having direct flights to the St. Louis
airport. The second reason was that there
would be little packing and unpacking as we spent one night at a hotel at the
beginning and end of the trip and nine nights on the boat, the M/V Victory
I. We really looked forward to the trip
as we had not explored this part of the U.S. much and knew we would learn a
lot. Plus, Diane and I always enjoyed
being on the water.
We started with the usual orientation and welcome
dinner at the Chelsea Hotel. The next
morning, we boarded a coach for a tour of the significant areas of Toronto
including the financial district, St. Lawrence Market, old and new City Halls,
Chinatown, Harbourfront and Queen’s Park.
After a late lunch at the restaurant up high in the CN Tower we boarded
the ship, unpacked, explored our surroundings and began conversations with the
other guests.
The Toronto Sign in Nathan Phillips Square
The Allen Lambert Galleria six-story pedestrian walkway
View from the CN Tower
Victory I
Toronto is on the first lake of the journey, Lake
Ontario. To get to the next, Lake Erie,
the ship had to pass through the Welland Canal which it did during the night. We left the ship at Port Colborne on the Southern
end of the Welland Canal. As ships waited in line to transit the locks, we
boarded a motorcoach to explore the scenic Niagara Wine Region on the way to
Niagara Falls. There, Diane and I watched the rest of the group board a
catamaran for a close-up view of the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. Since we had done this during our Buffalo,
New York visit, we didn’t feel the need to do it again. We observed the falls at the outdoor
observation plaza which overlooked Horseshoe Falls and the upper Niagara
River. After lunch at a local
restaurant, we explored the town of Niagara on the Lake until we could reboard
the ship.
Niagara Falls
To move from Lake Erie to Lake Huron, we sailed up the
Detroit River, through Lake St. Clair and up the St. Clair River before docking
at Windsor, Ontario. There we boarded a
motorcoach for the ride to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, just outside
Detroit. Having been born in Wichita, I
was very interested in the exhibit of a futuristic home designed by Buckminster
Fuller (of geodesic dome fame). In 1944,
with the end of the war in sight, Fuller made a deal with the Beech Aircraft
Corporation in Wichita, Kansas to produce his Dymaxion (combination of dynamic,
maximum and tension) House. Of course, that
didn’t work out. It was a fun museum to
visit before we returned to the ship.
Dymaxion House
We spent the next day on Lake Huron with presentations on
the boat and opportunities to observe the scenery. It is the second largest
Great Lake and the third largest freshwater lake in the world. In the afternoon, we attended a Road Scholar
lecture.
The next morning, we were still in Lake Huron. After passing through the rugged beauty of
Georgian Bay — sometimes called the sixth Great Lake — we reached Manitoulin
Island, the world’s largest freshwater island and home of the Ojibwe people,
part of the First Nation of Anishinaabe. Coming ashore at Little Current, we boarded a
motorcoach with a local expert and learned about the area's rich native and
nautical history. At Immaculate
Conception Church, we learned how the beliefs and customs of the Ojibwe
intertwined with those of the Catholic Church. Then, at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, we
attended a traditional “smudging” ceremony and pow-wow and explored the museum
and art gallery. We reboarded the ship
for lunch and then had free time while the ship sailed toward the next lake.
Immaculate Conception Church presentation
Ojibwe Cultural Foundation drumming and dancing
It was fun to watch while we transited the Soo Locks from Lake Huron to Lake Superior, the
largest Great Lake and largest freshwater lake in the world. We learned about
the history of the locks, their use and why they are regarded as “a wonder of
engineering and human ingenuity” passing an average of 10,000 ships a
year. We paid a quick visit to Sault
Ste. Marie, the oldest city in Michigan and one of the oldest in the
country. We heard the story of the SS
Edmund Fitzgerald, an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior
during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29
men. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's
Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk there. For 17 years, she carried taconite iron ore from
mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other Great
Lakes ports.
Soo Locks from Lake Huron to Lake Superior
The following day we entered our fifth Great Lake,
transiting through the Straits of Mackinac to Lake Michigan from Lake Huron.
After docking, we disembarked at Mackinac Island. We rode in a horse-drawn
carriage around the island and stopped at Fort Mackinac for a visit. Diane and I had stepped up onto a small
platform from which Diane was taking pictures.
I watched with horror as she decided to leave the platform, missed the
step and landed flat on her butt.
Fortunately, she felt no pain, and we went on to the Grand Hotel, a
National Historic Landmark and one of the most romantic vestiges of the
Victorian era. It opened in 1887 as a
summer retreat for vacationers and boasts the longest porch in the world. After we returned home, she found out that she
had a compression fracture of the L1 vertebra (which supports the weight of the
upper body). She underwent physical
therapy to help her heal.
Carriage rides
Grand Hotel
Demonstration of cannon firing at fort
This was a very relaxing day of cruising on Lake
Michigan. It is the only one of the
Great Lakes lying entirely within the U.S. and the fourth largest freshwater
lake in the world. We listened to
another expert presentation.
The next morning, we visited the most populated city on
the Eastern Shores of Lake Michigan, Muskegon, known as the "Riviera of
the Midwest." We toured a windmill and had an excellent talk by the woman
who went to the Netherlands and spent years learning how to use the windmill to
grind grain for flour. We then went on
to Holland, Michigan, known for its Dutch Heritage. It boasts numerous tulip gardens and Dutch
attractions. An expert guide led a field trip of the historic city center. We then reboarded the ship for our last night
aboard.
Windmill
Woman operating windmill and her flour products
Me and Diane in nearby garden
In the morning, the ship docked and we disembarked in
Chicago. The group was bused to town
where we went on an architecture river cruise with a local expert, something
Diane and I had done before. We again
heard about over 50 significant buildings and learned how Chicago grew to
become a world-class city. In the
afternoon, we had a docent-led tour of the Art Institute of Chicago. We checked into the Palmer Hilton House
Hotel, and that evening we had our farewell dinner. The next day our trip home was uneventful. We were very happy that we had taken this
trip.
Chicago architecture river cruise
The last three months of 2017 flew by. In December, we ended the year with our
shortest trip ever. We left on Friday to
attend a Marriage Reception my good friend Chao Min Hoe was hosting for her son
Kevin. He and his wife were recently
married in a small family ceremony, and Chao Min was having this event for her
co-workers at Merck and friends. We flew
to Philadelphia, rented a car and spent the night in a motel. The reception the next evening was held at
the Chinese restaurant where we had previously eaten with Chao Min. Since we came so far, we were seated at the
table with her and the honored couple.
The many courses were delicious, and it was good to see her and her
son. We drove back to our lodging, and on
Sunday we flew home.