Home at last.

It is said that the best part of the trip is getting to finally sleep on your own pillow. After a very long flight and a  night in Lethbridge, we are finally home. We found that it was as dry here as it was on our trip.

  We had a great time and we will remember it forever.  We tracked down a number of churches that shared the name of our local church, we found a street with my name on it, we saw more castles than we thought possible, we reached the highest height for a navigable waterway in the world, our cat tagged along for the ride, we met a lot of good people and shared a lot of laughs and stories.
  Thank you for the comments and likes. It was our intention to keep people informed as we went along rather than leaving people guessing.

Budapest for the last day

We arrived in Budapest early this morning but the rain kept us inside.

It did clear up and reached 32 by noon.  We toured both parts of the city; Buda and Pest.  Buda is the older style of the city that is famous for its thermal baths that have medicinal qualities that ar highly prized, while Pest is more modern and hosts the business district.

The rough history of the area, culminating with the communist takeover made things difficult for the people. The city gets 35% of its income from tourism.
We will be leaving early on Monday to fly to Frankfurt then to Calgary. It will be good to be home.

A day in Vienna

We spent the day in Vienna doing as we wished, and guess what, we walked. After the short downpours yesterday we are back into the heat. We decided to walk to the island between the rivers where they are having a fair and music festival.

I tried to take off my old man ears, but as much as I tried many of the bands on the smaller stages sounded like strangled cats or demented squirrels last night. As the night went on, the music did get better. Today we were too early for anything but sound checks. The fair was several Kms long and took a long time to get through. There were lots of food and beer vendors and companies wanting to sign you up for things.

There was a series of local craftsmen who would create things as you waited. We watched a sculptor create people's faces out of stone while you wait.

We are leaving this beautiful city tonight for our last stop in Budapest.

Waking up in Vienna

There was rain this morning for the first time in weeks.

We were the last boat allowed through the shallow water before it was closed. Last night we were only travelling about ten cm above the riverbed. The rain should help.

We took the subway to the outskirts of the main area to start out tour. We learned to hang on tight really quick.  There are few places with as rich a history and culture as Vienna, though it did not take long to find the most high end stores, all side by side, waiting to separate you from your money.

Melk and Krems

We entered Austria this morning and woke up in Melk.

The outstanding feature of this area is the Monk's Abbey.

It was originally built as a royal palace  in the 1100's, but was turned over to the Benedictine monks who have run it for over 900 years.
To this day there are 30 monks and they run a prestigious school for over 900 high school students.

We then left for the town of Krems where we will stop for the evening.

Leaving Germany

We are spending our last day in Germany as we are crossing the border into Austria later on.

We woke up in Passau this morning. It is located at the confluence of the Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers. The Danube is blue and the Inn is green so they form a different colour when they meet. We found out that the colour of the building shows what the business provides; red or pink is for a butcher, green for pharmacy, yellow for beer or wine, etc.

We made it to St. Stephen's cathedral which is the largest in the area. We like to visit our namesake churches to the one in Consul. This one is a little more ornate than ours.

It is surprisingly well lit since most we have been through have been dark. They have one of the largest pipe organs in the world and they put on an impressive performance for us.

Get off the boat and go

This's the view from the boat this evening.

Climate change has hit hard. The temperatures have been above 32 for a while now and as a result the water levels have dropped to a point where the boat cannot safely travel down the river. The ship only needs 6 ft to travel. As a result they had to drop us off and speed ahead before the levels dropped too far. As it worked out we seemed to be successful.

We were in Regensburg today, a small but historic centre for early trade. Many wealthy merchants lived here and their way of life was rather extravagant.

The town is very beautiful with a lot of small individual shops, but not focussing on tourists.