Danube River
In October 2016 we took a ten day cruise on the Danube with two other couples, old friends from Houston and my nephew and his wife from Corpus Christi. The cruise line was Tauck, and the theme of this cruise was “Musical Magic on the Danube”. The boat held about one hundred passengers, and we were all there primarily for the musical experience. We were accompanied by a composer/pianist and by an operatic soprano, both of whom gave us lectures and played and sang for us. We had private concerts in Budapest, Vienna and Prague, visited homes of Bartok, Dvorak and Mozart, and attended a performance of Tosca at the Vienna Statoper. The trip was fabulous. We started in Budapest and ended in Prague, with stops at Bratislava, Slovakia, Vienna, Melk and Salzburg, Austria, and Linz and Passau, Germany.
The Danube flows through the heart of Budapest.
Buda Castle, formerly home to Hungarian royalty, now houses the Hungarian National Gallery and the Hungarian History Museum.
On the opposite bank of the river is the magnificent Hungarian Parliament building.
Budapest contains beautiful parks and boulevards.
Old and modern buildings sit side by side.
St. Matthias Cathedral sits atop a hill overlooking the Danube in the Buda Castle district. It was originally constructed in the late 14th century and extensively renovated in the 19th century.
The Holy Trinity Statue commemorates the people of the city who died in two black plagues.
A closer look at the roof tiles.
St. Matthias is an active Roman Catholic church. During our time there a wedding was just ending.
The beautiful bride poses for pictures.
The view from St. Matthias.
A village on the Danube.
The ornate interior of the Melk Abbey, a Benedictine abbey on the Danube in Austria. The monks operate a school with 900 students.
Prague, Czech Republc, on a hazy morning.
To get to Prague, we left the Danube at a location in Germany and traveled by bus to Prague. This is the famous Charles Bridge over the Vlatava River. The bridge was completed in 1402.
The tower of the Charles Bridge.
Prague Castle, from the Charles Bridge.
River Scene 1
River Scene 2
River Scene 3
River Scene 4
River Scene 5
Budapest
Budapest
Budapest
Budapest Opera House
Buda Castle
Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava Castle
Humorous street sculpture in Bratislava.
Bratislava
Salzburg
Salzburg
Passau, Germany.
Prague, from the Prague Castle. The Charles Bridge and its tower can be seen in the upper right corner.
Prague
Prague, Charles Bridge.
Prague
Prague
Prague
Crowds gather every hour on the hour in Prague’s Old Town Square…
To view the complex movements of this 15th century astronomical clock.
Prague, the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn. The towers, eighty meters high, have been a part of the Prague skyline since the 14th century. Prague is a city of towers, mostly churches, but we were told that the Czech Republic is the most secular country in Europe.