Danube River Cruise 多瑙河游
June 26, 2022
Today's main activity was doing Danube River Cruise. There are two types of river cruises, river cabin cruises and river sightseeing cruises. The river cabin cruises typically provide overnight stay cabins and involve a multi-day itinerary. The simple sightseeing cruises take passengers from point A to point B during the day. It sometimes offers simple tour guides and usually has a small café for food and drink. The river tours cost a fraction of the river cruises with cabins. We already did one river sightseeing cruise in Vienna on the Danube River and enjoyed it. We planned to do a few more on this Europe trip. We had wanted to do a multi-day river cruise with overnight cabins in Europe for a while. Now we started questioning whether river cabin cruises were worth the money.
The heat wave swept many European countries in the past few days, and the Budapest area was also under a high-temperature alert. We often felt exhausted after walking a few minutes in the city. Under this kind of weather, cruising on the river offered a more comfortable way to enjoy than walking in the city.
After having breakfast at a café near our rented flat, we boarded a river sightseeing boat sailing from Budapest to Szentendre, a small town just outside of Budapest, against the river flow. Szentendre was a tourist town full of churches, galleries, museums, and cafes. The one-way ticket for a two-hour boat tour costs only 10 Euros per person. The river view from Budapest to Szentendre was terrific, especially passing the striking waterfront of Budapest's UNESCO World Heritage, such as the Szechenyi Chain Bridge, the Liberty Bridge, Buda Castle Hill, the Hungarian Parliament Building, and Margaret Island.
After arriving in the town, we visited a few tourist attractions first. Passing by a Langos stand along a narrow alley, three of us shared a garlic Langos which was very tasty and cost only 1.5 euros. Lángos is a famous Hungarian street food snack. It's a deep-fried flatbread made of dough from water or milk, flour, yeast, and salt. It is usually topped with sour cream and grated cheese or garlic. We always like deep-fried bread, and this one was no exception.
For lunch, two of us went to a Greek restaurant while our daughter decided to try a Vegan café alone. We had grilled squids and Greek salad, and both were delicious. Earlier, while we wandered around in the old town square, we saw this beautiful ice cream store, Levendula Kézműves Fagylaltozó, decorated nicely with lavender and purple colors. We never had lavender flavor ice cream and liked to figure out how it tasted. After lunch, we went to the store and ordered a small cup of lavender ice cream. Although there was a couple of purple color ice cream in the booth, the girl behind the counter gave us a scoop of lavender ice cream, which was white, and even put it into a white cup despite many purple cups there. The ice cream didn't taste like lavender or smell like lavender. At this point, we still didn't know what she had given us. We were expecting our ice cream would be a purple color in the purple cup. It was a big disappointment, but we laughed it off.
It was hot today. The portable water mists in the town helped us cool a little bit. We didn't return to Budapest on the boat. Instead, we took the 130-year-old intercity train back to the town. There was no air conditioning in the carriage, and all windows were open. The train ride was noisy and uncomfortable as the train shook from side to side while running. It was said that these carriages had been used for more than 40 years on average. It was quite a different experience for us.
Our daughter went to a vegan shop in the city center alone. Budapest had quite a few vegan options, and she enjoyed them very much. We returned to the flat and had tomato mushroom egg soup again. After dinner, the three of us went to the riverside again and sat at the same café we were in yesterday. As watching the sun go down, we drank coffee and chatted. It was a happy family time.
欧洲游第三十七天：今天的节目是多瑙河游。在住宿附近的一家咖啡馆吃了早餐后就从布达佩斯坐游船逆水而上，大约一个半小时后来城外的旅游小镇。这几天热浪席卷欧洲多国，布达佩斯地区也是高温居下，没走几步就满头大汗。坐在船上舒服多了。到了小镇后，就把几个景点先扫了一遍。路过一家油饼小摊，三人分享了一个蒜蓉油饼，非常好吃，只花了1.5欧元。然后在河边餐厅坐下吃了个午餐休息一下之后就坐着有130年历史的城间火车回城。车厢里没有空调，所有窗都打开，车一开车厢左右摇晃叽叽嘎嘎全是噪音。据说这些车厢平均使用年已超过四十几年了。对我们来说也是一种不一样的体验。今晚我们俩又是番茄蘑菇蛋汤，女儿一人去了一家全素店。布达佩斯还是有蛮多的素食选择。晚餐后又去河边打卡，喝咖啡看太阳落山。
