Enchantment of Eastern Europe

We met for breakfast at 7:30 and then had to be ready to go at 9am.

This itinerary is like going to work! – Gary D

Our guide for the day was Susan. We had a 20 minute ride to the 12th century town of Kalosca (Kal-oocha) which is the oldest in Hungary. Turks destroyed it completely when they left, but it was rebuilt. Population is only 15000 and it is situated in the Great Hungarian Plain.

The river sometimes flooded three times a year. In 1857 the Danube was regulated so the flooding ended.

In 1989 there was a regime change, moving away from communism, but I don’t know any more than that about it at the moment. Something else to investigate, I guess.

The White Stork is the national bird for Hungary.

This is the oldest church in Hungary and apparently the oldest catholic community in the county. Susan told us that Kalosca is the cradle of Christianity. This is the fourth church built here and is in the 1774 Italian baroque style. The inside is being renovated so we could not go inside. Franz Litz played this organ.

The bus took us on a 10 minute ride to Puszta horse farm. It was very entertaining and represents military training they used to do with horses.

We were served bread with paprika on it and a glass of local wine.

Back on the ship, we had lunch around 1pm and spent the afternoon sailing up the river to Budapest. I had my last swim in the lovely pool, spent some time with the group on the sun deck and did some organizing for the big eviction tomorrow.

Happy hour happened in cabin 301 at 5:45.

We attended the 6:15 port talk, where Igor the cruise director commented how interested this group was in learning about the history of these Eastern Europe countries! We adjourned for dinner and then around 8:30 we were treated to a wonderful Hungarian folklore show.

After the show we headed to the sun deck for a lovely evening sail past the beautiful lights of Budapest.

And that’s a wrap on our Emerald Enchantment of Eastern Europe River cruise. Tomorrow, we vacate our cabin and fly to another bucket list country. When we tell people we’re going there, and they’ve been there, they rave about it! Stay tuned…..