budapest to home

October 1, 2018 - Budapest - Amsterdam - Edmonton
This morning we had our suitcases outside our room by 7:00 am and headed up for our last breakfast on the ship.

The bus left the ship at 8:15 am to take us to the airport. Disembarking was very easy and just like embarking, there was little fanfare.

The drive to the airport was about 40 minutes and we saw a different side of Budapest. I stand by my "Budapest has a communist feel" comment from my previous post.

Once at the airport we had to wait for the KLM desk to open. While in line we heard people who traveled on other river cruise lines talking about their experiences. For the most part people were upset that their vacations were impacted by the low water levels in the rivers and they had to  stay in hotels and travel by bus. Fortunately, we did not have that experience. We had to bus but we always stayed on a ship. I'm sure if you cruise when the river levels are "normal" it is different than what we experienced, but we can't complain about the service we had.

The flight from Budapest to Amsterdam was uneventful. Unfortunately we didn't have much time from when we arrived in Amsterdam before we had to catch our flight to Edmonton. I love Schiphol - it's a great airport - but we had to boot it to our gate to catch the flight.

Amsterdam sent us off with a double rainbow

We made it home to our happy dogs late in the afternoon on the 1st. And that's a wrap on our 15 day Rhine - Main - Danube, Amsterdam to Budapest river cruise adventure.

The four of us talked about whether we would do another river cruise and the answer is, it depends. We enjoyed our time together and we loved all the places we visited. We especially liked our time in Delft, pre-cruise.

We are grateful that we tried river cruising but it is probably a little "slower" (especially on this itinerary with all the locks) than what we would choose again.

Our final thoughts:
- Fresh ginger tea is my new fav drink
- I'll definitely return to Germany/Austria for the Christmas market season. Not this year but in the next 5 years.
- We are grateful that our travel agent was able to gift us the silver spirit beverage package
- It's hard not to compare river cruising to ocean/sea cruising. They are very different experiences.
- Going through about five locks is interesting...more than that, it gets tedious
- Scenic cruising was spectacular
- We love the medieval towns and castles
- German wine is not the best. German sausage and apple strudel (actually all their baked goods) are THE best!
- WWII did a lot of damage. We must learn from the past. Please.

Thanks for following along with us. While we don't have any trips planned, when we returned home, we purchased a larger Airstream so we are excited to use it next camping season. We chronicle our camping adventures here

It's time to start scouring the travel sites to  plan the next adventure!

We returned to beautiful Fall weather and missed most of the Sept. snow in Edmonton