December 11, 2012

Finally home after yet another wonderful trip with Viking. So glad that we spent the extra two days in Budapest, as it really let us explore some of the more out of the way parts of the city. We did a private tour Sunday that we set up with www.mypersonalbudapest.com. Our guide (Atilla) was great, and ensured we saw things that the typical tourist normally would not see. We visited two of the baths in the city, one outdoors and one totally enclosed, saw the typical touristy things, and also wandered around some of the back streets. One of the highlights was a visit to one of the "Ruin Bars". If you go to Budapest, you must visit at least one (really!).

We did have one rather frightening experience during the cruise. The wife was opening the door on the closet, when the glass suddenly shattered for no reason. Yes, the doors are glass! She was very fortunate that most of it was contained by the other door inside of the closet, but some did get out into the room. Turns out that this has happened four or five times before on the new ships, and Viking has decided to replace them with wood doors.

Our trip home yesterday while long, was not bad at all. We flew from Budapest to Brussels where we only had just over an hour to get to our connecting flight. But passport control and security was not very busy, and it only took us about 30 minutes to get to the gate. Then the eight hour flight home to Washington DC.

I will be posting a detailed review on Cruise Critic soon, and a short one on Vikings Forums as well, and as soon as I go through over 1000 pictures and pick out some of the best, will get them up online and provide a link to them. If anyone has any specific questions about the trip, feel free to drop me an email at sk8teacher at comcast dot net.