Grand Tour

 Like the gentry of old, we have embarked on our Grand Tour. We had an early start so that we could be ready for the driver to collect us. The doorbell rang and as I opened it, I did a double-take. I looked at the driver and he looked at me. "Are you...?" we both spluttered. The driver turned out to be Steve, who is married to Gillian, Pete's sister. We loaded the carriage and set off for Heathrow, chatting about our families the whole way. It was a convoluted route chosen by the SatNav, but the drivers are not permitted to deviate from the route selected by the magic box.

We arrived soon after 10:00 and whistled through the check-in and security procedures before making our way to one of the lounges to await our flight. We suffered the usual inconvenience of being bussed to the aircraft and then settled down in our seats for the flight to Vienna. We hit some serious potholes as the plane climbed out of Heathrow, but most of the journey was fine (though the seats were dreadfully uncomfortable). At Vienna, we were met by the SAGA rep and taken to our transfer coach... where we waited and waited while two stragglers were eventually herded onto the coach and we set off through the rush hour traffic. We were dropped by the gangplank of our our home for the next week, boarded, and were shown to our cabin.

We are sailing on The Spirit of the Danube, which is only 2 years old. It is quite delightful and very long! It has 95 cabins and a crew of 48. We dropped our stuff in the cabin and headed back to the bar to settle down with a cold beer with Jane and Trevor. We sat and chatted until it was time to go for dinner.

Dinner was excellent with a coconut prawn cake to start and a wonderful pork tenderloin for the main dish. We followed this with a Rum Baba. The wine waiter kept our glasses topped up throughout the meal. 

Finishing dinner, it seemed like time for a walk. We met up by reception and disembarked to walk along the dock passing all of the river cruise boats lined up for the night or awaiting their passengers. 

We turned back and headed towards our boat. The Cathedral was floodlit and shimmered across the road from the dock.

FInally, we returned to the boat and explored the top deck before retiring for the night.

It has been a good first day, though the travel consumed most of it.