Doug's Photos

Friday, May 3, 2024

Eastern Europe Capitals - Danube River Cruise

In April and May 2024 we took a Vikikng Danube River Eastern European Capitals cruise with a pre-cruise extension in Prague and a post-cruise extension in Türkiye.

Click here to see some of the best pictures from this trip, or click one of the pictures below to see more pictures from that part of the trip.

Below is the map showing where we took photos. Click the picture to see an interactive map. Click any of the pins in the interactive map to see more details on that photo and a link to the blog entry.

April 2024 Danube River Eastern European Capitals Cruise

April 11 to 13, 2024 - Prague

As part of the Danube River cruise, taking us to Eastern Europen Capitals, we'd booked a precruise extension of 3 nights in Prague.

This is where the "real" Budweiser beer was brewed in the Czech town of České Budějovice which has the German name Budweis. Brewed for hundreds of years before Anheuser-Busch started using the name in 1876, which resulted in a global legal battle. Due to that, this beer is sold in the US under the name Czechvar. It's actually a pretty good beer!

2024-04-13 Terezen

April 14, 2024 - Prague to Vienna

April 15, 2024 - Vienna

Schonbrunn Palace was the main summer residence of the Habsburgs who ruled up to 30% to 40% of Europe between 1273 to 1918.

April 16, 2024 - Salzburg & Lake Region

We did a day trip tour from Vienna to Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. On the way to Salzburg we stopped this church near Mondsee Lake.

Mirabell Palace and Gardens is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the background you can see the medieval Hohensalzburg Fortress.

Our day trip to Salzburg was 3.5 hours each way and we returned late at night to find our ship was no longer where we'd left it! Since we'd left early that morning we'd missed the announcement that our boat would be moving to be behind another boat. It took us a while to find which boat our boat was now behind and gave us a scare.

April 17, 2024 - Bratslava, Slovak Republic

Our walking tour of Bratslava took us to a scenic view of Michael's Gate, built around 1300.

April 18 to 19, 2024 - Budapest, Hungary

We spent the next two nights in Budapest Hungary. Originally two cities, Buda and Pest, where Buda was the richer side and home to the Royal Palace. During the Industrial Revolution the Pest side grew exponentially becoming a commercial powerhouse. They were merged after Hungary gained greater autonomy in 1873 and made their capital Budapest.

Before becoming the capital, the combined city was usually referred to as Pest-Buda, since by that time Pest had become the more prosperous. But Budapest was smoother to pronounce in Hungarian.

Below is the site of the one of the worst atrocities of World War II. In the winter of 1944 - 1945, a Nazi-collaborating militia rounded up thousands of Hungarian citizens, primarily Jewish men, woman and children. Brought to the edge of the freezing river they were ordered to take off their shoes, a valuable commodity, so the militia could keep or resell them. They were then shot so the river current could carry away the bodies.

April 20, 2024 - Mohacs, Hungary

Our tour today took us to the nearby city of Pecs.

April 21, 2024 - Vukovar, Croatia

Our day trip took us to the nearby town of Pecs.

Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord

April 22, 2024 - Novi Sad, Serbia

Our tour today took us to the nearby town of Novi Sad.

April 23, 2024 - Belgrade, Serbia

Today we had a walking tour of Belgrade. One of our stops was at the Kalemgdan, a large park featuring an historic fortress, museum, walking path and scenic river views.

Saint Sava is the first Serbian archbishop and Serbia's patron saint. The Saint Sava Church is the fourth largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world per Wikipedia.

April 24, 2024 - Donji Milanovac, Serbia

These locks lowered our boat 45 feet to go past the Iron Gate Hydroelectric Dam. Click the picture below to see what the other side of the dam looked like.

April 25, 2024 Vidin, Bulgaria

This waterfront fortress dates to the 10th century. It was built on the site of an even more ancient Roman fortress Bononia built in the 1st century AD and whose ruins still exist in the foundation and walls.

April 26, 2024 - Pleven Bulgaria

Today we had a walking tour of Pleven Bulgaria.This included a stop at a temple dedicated to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker who is revered as a patron of sailors, travelers, bankers, and families. In case you hadn't heard of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, he's better known in the west as St. Nick, or Santa Claus.

Medieval Orthodox Temple of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker

This mausoleum honors the thousands of Russian and Romanians who died during the Russo-Turkish war in 1877 to 1878.

Chapel-mausoleum "St. George the Victorious"

Pleven Panorama is famous for its panorama depicting the liberation of Pleven in 1877. This bloody siege resulted in the surrender of Ottoman forces to the Russian-Romanian army on December 10, 1877, paving the way for Bulgarian indedepence from the Ottoman Empire after centuries of rule.

April 27, 2024 Constanta, Romania

Our river cruise ended with a day trip to Consta, Romania before flying us to Bucharest the next day.

Roman Ruins in Front of Saints Peter and Paul Church

April 28 to 29, 2024 - Bucharest, Romania

Senate Chambers in the Palace of Parliment

April 30 to May 2, 2024 - Istanbul Turkey

We'd booked a tour extension for three days in Istanbul. The first night there we had a non-Viking food tour which took us across the Bosporus from the European side of Istanbul to the Asian side.

It was a good thing we'd taken a tour the night before because all of our May 1 tours were canceled due to security concerns. May 1 in Istanbul is Labor and Solidarity Day, an official public holiday characterized by severe localized disruptions, massive police deployments, and transit lockdowns.

The next day, May 2 was super busy as we made up for lost time!

Click this link to see the top pictures from this trip or click one of the pictures above to see more pictures from that day.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Back to San Francisco

After 16 days with stops in Kauai, Oahu, Kona, Hilo and Ensenada we returned to San Francisco.

Click the picture below to see a photo album with some of the best photos from this trip. The album has a summary slide show or you can click any photo in the album and scroll through the pictures manually. The manual review displays a description for each picture. For more detailed information including date and location, click ⓘ or ⋮ during the manual review.

Click this link to see more pictures in the Back to San Francisco photo album.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Ensenada

After five days at sea we reached Ensenada Mexico. Hawaii cruises from San Francisco have to visit at least one foreign port before returning to San Francisco. In most cases that is Ensenada.

We'd been to Ensenada before and had considered not even getting off the ship. But Elizabeth found what turned out to be an excellent beer tasting tour. We lucked out even more by being the only two people on this tour, so we had a private tour for the price of a group tour. One other perk we ended up having was having pretty much the entire tasting area to ourselves since our tour started before many of the places we went to even opened. I hadn't realized how vibrant the craft beer culture is in Ensenada. They even have a beer festival once a year.

Our first stop was at Cardera and Bruer Tasting Room. Although it normally doesn't open until 1pm we were there around 11am. This tasting room is actually for two breweries, Cardera and Bruer. Their beers have won many awards and they were excellent. They were also brewing some barrel aged beers for the upcoming beer fest, but we weren't able to taste those.

Our second stop was at Chikilla craft beer. They also had an excellent selection of beers including one they don't normally serve, which was made from distilled beer. They used a beer that didn't quite turn out as they wanted, so they distilled it. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!

The beer mugs you see in the picture above are owned by regular customers. For a small price you can have your own beer mug. And of course, you get a discount if you own one. According to the website they have "18 regular beers, 14 seasonal beers and more than 10 special beers." Although the first stop had slightly better beers, if you're going to one place I'd definitely recommend this place! The first beer tasting room did probably have almost as many different beers since it was two colocated breweries, but the second stop had the advantage of being colocated with a sushi restaurant.

Our third stop was actually at a deli to taste the beer of another brewer, Wendlandt Brewing, which doesn't open until 5pm, after our ship leaves. Regardless, we still tasted a Wendlandt beer at the deli and Elizabeth was able to get a cheese and meat plate to tide her over.

Click this link or one of the pictures above to see more pictures in the Ensenada photo album.

Friday, March 1, 2024

Hilo Hawaii

We hadn't booked any excursions for Hilo so we decided to walk 1.5 miles to Liliʻuokalani Gardens, with a stop at Coconut Island. On the way there we saw a turtle swimming in Reeds Bay near the shore.

Coconut Island is a small island park accessible via a short pedestrian bridge from Liliʻuokalani Gardens. If you look closely in the picture below you can see our ship in the distance.

Liliʻuokalani Gardens is a 24 acre park with scenic Japanese gardens.

We also visited Hilo Brewing Company but didn't take any pictures. Unfortunately when we were there they had been experiencing some equipment failures and didn't have any of their beers available. They did have four guest beers which were actually pretty good. They also had a separate area that sold some food. The tacos sold there were excellent!

A word of warning. Although Hilo Brewing was only a 1.5 mile walk from Liliʻuokalani Gardens, once you get away from the shoreline Hilo isn't a very walkable city due to the lack of sidewalks, narrow streets and sometimes heavy traffic. We took a Lyft from there back to the ship and if we had it to do over again, I think we would have taken one from Liliʻuokalani Gardens to the brewing company instead of walking.

Click this link or one of the pictures above to see more pictures in the Hilo photo album