Day 3 July 4th (Budapest) in Honeymoon

It's the third day of our honeymoon and the ship has just started moving.

The ship is small compared to other river cruising ships. It holds only 150 guests and is relatively old, I think it entered into service in 1999. But it's a very nice ship... the staterooms are efficient, we have a lounge in front of the ship with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and a tiny dance floor and a digital piano, a restaurant, a library (where I am writing this now), an excercise room, and a sun deck with lots of chairs and even a swimming pool. There is even an upright in the library so I can still practice. And it even has wi-fi, backed by satellite. I just hope it has enough bandwidth to download World Cup Match of the Days.

Our stateroom is half underwater, meaning that, if we looked out the window, the waterlevel is at about our chin level. It was very neat to be able to see the water go by so close to the surface. It's nifty little ship and we are enjoying it immensely. We thought the food, included with the cruise, was going to be like "office party food" - a wrap or two, and a sandwich, and some cookies. But it turns out the food here is fancy! Just today we had the "light" lunch, and I could have had a hot dog, a burger, a salad, an apple crisp, a strawberry short cake, plus tea or coffee. It was unbelievable.

We spent yesterday afternoon in Budapest for a little bit of sight-seeing and a lot of recovery from a long flight, but today was the actual Budapest visiting day, with an actual tour guide. We went on a bus around the city to hit the tourists spots, but most of them are historical monuments, and the tour guide basically needed to give us a complete history lesson of Budapest to explain the significance of places like Heroe's Square, the Castle Hill, the Parliament, and so on. But it was also a lot of fun to visit. The building and architecture are beautiful and varied, so we had a great time. For the afternoon, we went on a "Jewish Heritage" tour, which is basically a visit to the Jewish Museum in Budapest, plus a synagoge next to it. It was a great visit, but I could have used less time in the museum - a lot of time in there were spent about talking the fate of Hungarian Jews in the second world war.

A couple from Tenessee started hanging out with us. I think they are the second youngest group in the cruise, and they are married 10 years. So i think that's why they like to hang out with us - because we are the only people younger than them. They are very nice, though.

The ship just undocked 2 hours ago, and when we started sailing up the Danube, the river was gorgeous with the light from the banks of Budapest shined at it, but once we left the city center area, it is pitch black outside.

I suppose that wil be true for many cities we visit.