Danube Waltz Viking River Cruise
Day 2: Sunday, October 20, 2019 - Travel and Passau, Germany
After dozing off again, we were awoken by - breakfast service. Now it was only 4:15 AM ET. How much of an appetite can someone develop sitting stationary in a seat for four hours? We had yogurt with granola, a fig bar, and coffee.
Daylight was upon us. Nothing too special to see but clouds.
Eventually we were below the clouds and on approach to Heathrow.
What looks like... the Thames?
We landed at 5:08 AM EST (10:08 AM local time) at Heathrow.
We had a two hour layover before our flight to Munich, Germany.
We wanted to get to the departing gate so that we wouldn't have to worry about finding it, then we could relax there. Our departing
terminal was terminal 5. We landed in 3. Sadly, terminals 4 and 5 are in different parts of the airport. So we had to take a shuttle to 5.
And because we left the building, we had to go through security. We were on line 13/14 and we noticed Connie and Steve on 11/12. We got to
the scanners and - remember the 250ml bottle of water from dinner? - we had to drink or throw away the water. So the security agent dropped
it into the large trash barrel she was standing next to. Had it actually been an explosive of some kind, that was the best place to put it, right?!!?
We beat Connie and Steve through secuirty. On our way to the gate, we stopped in Harrahs to browse. And then another store. And another. And another. We had two hours, afterall.
Between where we were and the gate was - a Starbucks®. We got on line on one side of the Starbucks island and noticed Connie and Steve
on the other side. When we paid for our coffee, we paid in Euros. And got change in British Pounds. That certainly didn't help us much.
We took our coffee and made our way to the waiting area for the flight. We logged onto the airport's wi-fi and synched our devices,
took a selfie, and updated the time on our Fitbits.
We boarded at 12:20 PM local time, and guess who was seated across the aisle from us? Connie and Steve. We left the gate at 12:40, and taxied around for almost ten minutes. Then sat in the queue to take-off for almost ten more minutes, finally taking to the air at 12:57. This flight was at 35,000 feet.
We landed at 2:20 Heathrow time. After touching down, we drove around the airport - in the plane - for seven minutes. What's up with these pilots and their driving around the huge planes?
When we got to the European Union customs, Linda passed through without any issue. I was asked a few questions - "How long are you going to be here?" and "What do you plan to do while here?" Then we waited for our luggage. It seemed to take forever. We retreived it off the conveyer belt and started to make our way out. We were immediately greeted by a young lady holding a Viking Cruises sign as she - and Connie and Steve - waited for us. Within a few minutes, our shuttle to the boat arrived.
We had a ninety minute shuttle ride to the boat. There were some quaint towns, and solar arrays. A lot of solar arrays.
We were on a bridge going over the Autobahn.
We eventually got on the Autobahn too. And even though were were moving at about 150 km/hr (we were told), or 93 mph - we
didn't see any spectacular cars. Except for a lone Ferrari. It blew past us at well over 100 mph and was gone in no time.
We felt right at home seeing this (for those not familiar with where we live, we see the Salem, NJ, nuclear power plant almost daily).
Our first glimpse of the Danube.
An interesting building and some more river.
A similar ship to ours, with Passau in the background.
Either just outside Passau (pronounced pass-oh, based on what we were told) or just inside Passau, we spotted (what I am pretty sure was) a Lamborghini.
We embarked our ship about 4:40 PM local time.
We checked in, and made our way to our room to unpack.
Before dinner - every dinner - there was a port talk. Essentially, Daniel, the Program Director, outlined what was going to happen that night and the next day.
Also, the chef stopped in to tell us about the local fair from the menu.
We learned that one must arrive early to the port talk in order to get a good seat. During the talks, we had prestzel and nut snacks. Thrice there were also drinks to toast with, including this night as a welcome aboard jesture.
Dinner was at 7:00. Every night - except the one where we went to the concert - dinner was at 7:00. The table was elegantly laid out.
Each night, the menu offered a choice from a regional item, two or three other select items, plus two or three staples. For the
appetizer. And the entree. AND the dessert. Each one had those choices. Yes, dinner was always a three course meal.
Here is the left side of the menu - it was the same every night (part of the daily "staples" previously mentioned), that included Angus rib eye steak, poached salmon, and roast chicken supreme..
Our first dinner consisted of (something like [sorry, I didn't keep detailed notes until after the first day]) this.
Linda had crab over beets ragout for appetizer, salmon with crab glaze, and chocolate lava cake (it has a more elegant name) for dessert.
I had the crab dish too, and roast pork with potatoes and cabbage for entree, and cherry chocolate cake for dessert.
The roast pork - a staple in Germany - was the regional selection, and the salmon with crab glaze was a select item.
While you will notice the portions are not huge (unlike American style), they were certainly satisfying enough. Plus we wouldn't want to eat too big of a meal at that late hour either.
One also had their choice of beverage with dinner too. Water, soda, iced tea, beer, juice, or, of course, wine. Our servers were Kate (from Slovakia) and Randy (from Croatia).
They wasted no time refilling our glasses when they got low. It turned out that it seemed that as long as you had a plate in front
of you, the wine glass was kept filled.
We were finished with dinner and chatting with some new acquaintences whose names we do not readily recall, and I made no note of them either (the last time this happened). I blame our tiredness for our lack of diligence. We headed up to the sun deck to try to get a picture of the lit fortress - called Veste Oberhaus - on the hill on the other side of the river. Someone - who doesn't take many night pictures - forgot to change the ISO on the camera and couldn't get a really good picture, but these aren't that bad either.
We stepped off the ship and walked around the area for ten to fifteen minutes and captured a couple more shots, such as the steeples of St. Stephen and an alley. We didn't venture too far as we knew we were going to be getting a guided tour tomorrow.
It was a long day, and we didn't have much sleep, so we were tired. We made our way to our room and tried to nod off to sleep.