River cruise

Every Sunday night at 9:00 I watch Masterpiece Theater.  Recently Viking River Cruises has become a sponsor, so every week we see an add for a river cruise. Their advertising was successful and this year Calvin and I took a cruise down the Danube from Nuremberg to Budapest.

We saw lots of medieval cities.  I liked this merchant home in Nuremberg that had a sundial on the right hand side about halfway up.  Even in the middle ages they liked to know what time it was.

 In Regensburg, another medieval city, we had bratwurst at a bratwurst shop that was supposed to have been at that location for 1000 years. It was right on the river and they had a record of the flood levels of the last few centuries on the shop.  Everyone was quite proud of their high water marks.  It kind of makes you wonder why they didn't either move to higher ground or build up the retaining wall.

 We heard an organ concert in Passau on Europe's largest pipe organ. The organ was incredible and it was a rainy day so we were happy to spend an hour out of the rain.

 We saw lots of churches, cathedrals, abbeys, and palaces and did a lot of eating.  

And we did a lot of following along behind a little red paddle with the Viking River Cruise emblem.  We used "quiet boxes" so the tour leader could speak in a normal voice and we could all hear well with our headsets.

 It appears that eating and drinking are the main features of a river cruise.  We did very little just cruising down the river looking at the scenery.  Most of the cruising was done at night.  I would have liked a little more daylight cruising. This is a small section of the river that we did cruise in daylight called the Wachau valley.

We did a lot of touring in Vienna but I liked these two sculptures in the pedestrian mall the best.  This plague column was built to give thanks to God from the survivors of the 1679 plague.

This modern installation was called "quantitative easing." Once an hour it spits out a euro for some lucky person waiting below.

 Calvin was not the lucky winner this hour.

North to Alaska

Sarah's family moved to Alaska for the month of September so Sarah could be closer for some work projects there.  I thought this would be great, she would be on the west coast and it would be easy to zip up and visit her for a weekend.  Geography has never been a strong point of mine.  It turns out that the trip to Anchorage from Reno takes just about as long as the trip to Alexandria from Reno.  Nonetheless, we zipped up to Anchorage last weekend for a wonderful quick visit.  Sarah and Toby rented a 2 bedroom condo on the waterfront with gorgeous views and a short walk to work for Sarah.  They have adjusted very well to living with what came in the condo and what they could pack in a suitcase.

As usual Sarah planned a fun weekend for us.  Friday we drove to Whittier where we caught the Klondike Express for a 26 glacier tour.

It was rainy almost all day but we put on our rain jackets and enjoyed the cruise. Calvin and Clare did a lot of exploring around the boat and the rest of us joined them from time to time.

Garrett stayed out of the rain a little bit more than Clare

We saw some spectacular glaciers and even saw one calve. 

 Like all of the other 200 passengers on board we rushed to get pictures taken in front of the glaciers.

After the cruise we spent the night at Alyeska ski resort, and took a tram ride to the top on Saturday morning.

Everything in Alaska seems to be on a scale that just can't be captured in photographs.  The resort is on a hill that rises from 200 feet to 2000 feet and has spectacular views.

So we took pictures of ourselves again.  You can see glaciers across the valley behind us in this one.

Saturday evening we returned to Anchorage, after stopping along the side of the road by Cook inlet to view some beluga whales, for a little swimming in the hotel pool, a birthday celebration for Garrett, and a long lingering Alaska sunset. What a great place.

Love Locks

There is currently a fad in Europe to commemorate your love by placing a padlock on a bridge and then throwing away the key so the lock will remain forever.  We saw some really fancy engraved and painted locks attached at any available space that looked like a bridge, but in Venice we saw what eventually becomes of these symbols of enduring love.

A good lock cutter and a five gallon bucket and it is all over.

While we were travelling Calvin and I celebrated our 38th anniversary, not with a lock but with an adventure.

I could never have imagined when we started out our life together on that August day in 1976 that 38 years later we would celebrate the day flying from Budapest on an Air Serbia flight

 to spend several hours in the Belgrade Serbia (which wasn't even an independent state in 1976) airport.  It looks like a pretty place from the airport window.

And then flying on to Dubrovnik Croatia (which also was not an independent state in 1976) for a week of sea kayaking.

What a wonderful adventure our life together has been.  Happy anniversary Honey.