Sunday 25 August – River Cruise (Golubac Fortress and Lepenski Vir)

Today is Golubac Fortress and Lepenski Vir archaeological park visit in the morning and Iron Gates in the afternoon.

We docked at Golubac with the fortress less than a couple of minute walk away. The fortress was a medieval fortified town on the South side of the Danube River. It was built during the 14th century by the Medieval Serbian state, split into three compounds built in stages.

The boat was leaving at the same time so we got a good view of the ship sailing past the fortress. On the walk back to the bus we had taste testing of their local wines and liquor. Then we commenced our bus ride to Lepenski Vir.

Lepenski Vir was hot, very hot. There were quite a few cats out and about lazing in the sun, so Ros had a photo taken with a couple in order to send onto Aron.

Originally the settlement was down lower towards the river, but as they built the hydro plant the height of the Danube was raised. They therefore excavated the settlement and moved it up higher on the side of the river.

We watched a video that they had taken of the original excavation and find. It was quite interesting in that they pieced together the various bits to come to the conclusion about what the settlement contained and how they lived.

On the way to find back to the parking lot to find the bus, we had some issues. The cruise director told us to go right and the bus would be up there. We went right, but there was no sign for our bus. We wandered around a little bit more (there were about 6 buses there). Carol had sent a message saying we walked directly past the bus. The driver had taken the sign off the front of the bus and was waiting at the back to direct people, but he didn’t know that the cruise director was pointing people the other way.

We still had a drive ahead of us to meet the boat in the next port -Donji Milanovac, Serbia. We boarded the boat and had to wait a bit to depart due to Customs. Finally we were underway and on the way to see the Iron Gates, on board the boat.

The Iron Gates are a spectacular set of cliffs and mountains on both sides of the Danube in which it narrows to just a few hundred metres wide. We saw some interesting sights including a face that had been carved into the mountainside. Again, some of the buildings had been moved to higher ground so they were not the original site (such as a monastery).

Just before dinner time we would pass through two locks, down a total of about 60 metres. While we waited for the first lock, we were watching the traffic on the Serbian side waiting to get across. There was a truck driver there taking a photo of the boat, so I took one of him. He gave us a wave 🙂

For dinner the standout was the lamb shank. It was huge, but I managed to finish it all.

We would sail overnight arriving at our next port early in the morning.