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“Passage to Eastern Europe - Viking Cruise”

written by on 11/11/2016

My wife and I travelled on Viking Lif, from Budapest to Bucharest in Oct/Nov 16. Arrangements and the hotel - Hilton - in Budapest were excellent, as were the introductory excursions.

Transfer to Lif was fine and the ship was everything we could ask for. Our only criticism of our cabin - too small to be a stateroom - was that the very large, comfortable bed left insufficient room for a chair.

Kalocsa and the Puszta excursion made a wonderful start. The display of horses and riders were very entertaining - especially the contrasting, comic donkey!

Croatia was very different. Vukovar showed the inhumanity of the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the slow reconciliation and rebuilding. Very thought-provoking. However, Osijeck was a delightful, if somewhat sleepy little town.

Old Belgrade was interesting but Tito's new town seemed to add little.

Our main day of 'cruising' as opposed to sightseeing on land, took us further downstream through the very impressive Iron Gates gorge. This showed us the two big locks and was a lovely day cruising on the genuinely Blue Danube.

Vidin, in Bulgaria, was a nice little place and our journey to the spectacular Belogradchik fortress gave us an impression of a country trying to catch up to the 21st century but with a long way to go - horses and carts still being used by farmers.

Russe in Bulgaria was our final stop, showing part of Bulgaria's history and crafts. Lunch in a local restaurant was good and local folk dancers entertained us well.

Our final day took us to Romania - just across the river from Russe - and after a 90 minute drive to Bucharest, we went to the superbVillage Museum, which has hundreds of peasant houses relocated from all over Romania. Our coach then braved Bucharest's chaotic traffic to take us for another excellent lunch, also with folk dancers. Then back into the chaos for a journey to the city centre for a walking tour. This was excellent.

Our hotel was the very large and glossy Marriott, which was fine but too far from downtown to walk for an evening meal. We would have preferred a smaller hotel nearer to downtown.

Overall, we had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed our holiday. Viking's management was excellent. One topic to note is that this holiday took us to five different countries all with their own currencies. However, we were able to use credit cards in many places and sometimes Euros, but not Sterling. US Dollars seemed to be useful. We only needed to change a few Euros to buy postcards and stamps. However, we should have taken more small Euro notes for tips.