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Thanks for all the good wishes guys, the trip was wonderful, but the return spoiled it. I posted elsewhere that Budapest airport had a shortage of baggage handlers and we had a 1¾ hour wait at check in. Should have been longer, but I informed the Jet2 agent that he would be faced with two unconscious and ill customers if he didn’t act. We were ‘fast-tracked’ which became a joke, as the Security team had never heard of a parastomal hernia and thought I was hiding something nasty under my abdominal bulge. Flight delayed by 1½ hours, big storms over the Pennines on the drive home, last lap of which was a huge diversion around Scunthorpe after Highways had closed 2 junctions of the M180 whilst we were away. Of course they neglected to install signage about this, until we actually drove onto the M180.
The boat “The William Wordsworth”* was great: staff, food, amenities were all really good. A mix of Hungarian, Slovakian and Indonesian crew but all were very good. I did not think much of Budapest, but loved the ancient Hungarian capital of Hungary, Esztergom. It was a very cheerful place, dilapidated in parts but not as full of cosmopolitan tourists as Budapest. Its people were friendly and most spoke English. One unlikely-looking biker type, scruffy, long hair, insisted on taking us to a place we wanted to see and told us all about it in broken English: obviously very proud of his hometown. We didn’t take part in any organised tours, as we like to get out into the place and trust locals to tell us what we needed to know. That way we were able to talk about places that others had missed. I hate those Guides and the audio sets they supply: a fast, garbled commentary with no time to stop and take in details. All in all, had a great time.
Dave, thanks for that Railbookers link. Very interesting and we will look closely at that next year, although we are currently also looking at Wales, which we both love but have not seen for too long. Maybe Wales in May, a Euro trip in August again. We like Bruges, or Brugge if you take the Fleming pronunciation.
The boat:
Moored in Linz, a city we loved, more than Vienna which had huge pedestrian works and was a bit like many Brit Cities today, dirty, polluted and full of foreigners(!)Anyone interested, here’s the link: https://tinyurl.com/yxwgyrkp
*All the Riviera new boats are named after British literary figures. William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Burns, Thomas Hardy, Emily Brontë. Newly- launched is the MS George Elliott, which pleases my Gert as she is one of 3 sisters born at the George Elliott hospital, Nuneaton.
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