Wednesday 21 August – River Cruise start

We start our river cruise later today. We will be travelling on the SS Beatrice, run by Uniworld travelling from Budapest, Hungary to Bucharest, Romania. We would spend a week on the boat followed by a couple of days in a hotel in Bucharest.

We all went out for breakfast in the morning before Neal headed to the airport to pick up Rose. The rest of us proceeded to the boat. We had quite a few bags to fit in the taxi – 6 suitcases and about 4 carry on size bags (we had Neal’s bags as well). We didn’t think the taxi would fit everything in, including us, but he did. There was quite a bit of traffic to get to the boat, but we ended up arriving around midday.

We were dropped off and had our luggage taken and noted with our room numbers. They were serving lunch shortly which we could have, along with all inclusive drinks. We checked out the lounge and then headed down to lunch. They would let us know when our room would be ready, but they expected it would be around 3pm.

Rose had landed with Neal and Rose on their way from the airport. Our rooms were ready so we decided to go to the room and take a look. The state room was very nice – the bed was super comfy and there was plenty of space to put everything we had plus store our bags.

Later on we returned to the lounge before the pre-dinner talks. There were about 130 people on board. The Captain gave an address about the upcoming cruise before handing over to the Hotel Manager and Cruise Director. We were given a list of activities that we could do for the next two days. During dinner they would drop off the complete list for the remainder of the cruise. There was something every day, but some of them had a maximum number of people that could attend.

When we finished the talk with the cruise director, we headed downstairs to dinner. There was quite a line up at the reception desk – no doubt everybody booking in the excursions they wanted to do that had limits on the number of people that could join.

Our first dinner was quite enjoyable – there is a great selection of food to choose from (entree, soup, main and dessert). It is an all inclusive cruise so drinks during dinner are provided as well as anytime in the bar.

The dock we had joined the boat at would not be where we would be in the morning. The boat had a night cruise of about 10kms from the dock through to another one closer to the city centre. We got to see Budapest by night, similar to the cruise we had done two years previously on the Amsterdam to Budapest cruise.

It was very breezy up top so we used some of the blankets they had available to keep covered up and out of the breeze. After about an hour we had arrived in our final position – docked against another ship. Very important to make sure that our blinds were shut!

We all went to bed in preparation for a bus tour of Budapest along with a walking tour through the Parliament building.