Sleep7

Low water means a high climb.. never slippery though which was good.👍 Sort of looked like this?🤣🤣🤣

New this cruise was the passenger accounting system of scanning your key card in and out. Very smart!

The daily buffet breakfast was a dazzling display of delicious delights.

THURSDAY - OCTOBER 24. Good morning Kalocsa!

Back to the cabin where tomorrow's Viking Daily was waiting for us.😊

👋Hello dear Feta Cheese! So nice to hear from you.. thanks for your review compliments! It was a surprise to me as well that you were kind of on your own those 2 days but as you said it was plus to have time to try the local cuisine. Thanks for stopping by.. still more to come. Wishing you smooth and happy sailings always!🥰

The fish and the lamb.. beautiful AND delicious! The dining room staff was fantastic.. incredibly welcoming and always anxious to please.🤩

Tonight's dinner menu. On the right hand side are the dishes that change daily and on the left hand side are the "favorites" that are the same all week.

Also a new feature was each evening Executive Chef Georgi came out and described our upcoming dinner with loving detail. He was very proud of creations! Loved that.

In the lounge at 6:45 we met our Cruise Director Gabriel. He was great! Funny, charming and always very helpful!👏 Also met our Hotel Director Daniel who was the friendliest hotel director we ever had!👍

And now back to the Lofl! Top brass in tip top shape.👏

Just to circle back to Budapest for a moment.. "The Last Days" which is available on Netflix is a fascinating and incredibly moving documentary about the Hungarian Jews in the short time period of April to June 1944.

Despite first glance.. room for everything.

Listening devices all charged up and ready to go. Laundry price list.

Yay! First Viking Daily waiting on the bed for us!!

When we first walked in I said to Sam this can't be our cabin.. it must be the closet of the cabin next door!🤣 I can't say that it was particularly roomy..but it was very well designed and all of our stuff (and I brought A LOT of stuff) fit nicely with room to spare in the closet and in the drawers. I realized later that on a previous Viking river cruise we had booked a Veranda stateroom and on this cruise we had booked a French Balcony stateroom. I didn't know that the size of the cabin was different.. I just thought that the veranda stateroom had a balcony you could sit on vs just a sliding glass wall. Live and learn! It was the last cabin on the ship when we booked the cruise so we didn't have much of a choice anyways.🤷‍♀️

Fast check in and we were off to our cabin. It was the first cabin in from guest services which was very convenient for questions. I chuckled that it almost had 2 bathrooms since the public bathroom in the lobby was about 5 feet away from our cabin door.

A quick lunch on our own at The Market Hall and we were off to the ship which was docked in Kalocsa about an hour and a half away from Budapest. Since we missed lunch on the ship Viking generously credited our shipboard accounts with 25 euros each to make up for that.. very generous.😃 The sun was low in the sky when we arrived. The Viking Lofl was low in the water too.. the gangway was very steep.. not slippery though.

Last stop was a delicious slice of "Fluden" which is a layered pastry with poppy seeds, walnuts, and apples traditionally served on the holiday of Purim.

In the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park we viewed the metal weeping willow tree on which each of the leaves is inscribed with the name of a victim. Actor Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz) was a major donor for the symbolic tree as his father was Hungarian born. Estee Lauder and the Hungarian government also raised funds for the project designed by Imre Varga in 1991. There is also a plaque to Wallenberg who saved thousands of Jewish lives as well as other "Righteous Among Nations."

I found this item to be especially awful.. so calculating and evil.😔

The museum was a treasure trove of both sacred and every day objects of what was once a thriving Jewish community in Budapest. Our guide was teriffic.. meaningful explanations for everything.

Paper yarmulkes for the guests.

First stop was Dohany Synagogue, which is the second largest Synagogue in the world and the largest in Europe with over 3000 seats. From Wikipedia: The synagogue was built between 1854 and 1859 in the Moorish Revival style. The Dohány Street Synagogue complex consists of the Great Synagogue, the Heroes' Temple, the graveyard, the Memorial, and the Jewish Museum, which was built on the site on which Theodor Herzl's house of birth stood. Dohány Street itself, a leafy street in the city center, carries strong Holocaust connotations as it constituted the border of the Budapest Ghetto.

WEDNESDAY - OCTOBER 23. Last day in Budapest. Luggage out by 8am and 8000 other guests at breakfast and our day had begun! We chose the optional Jewish Tour and it was wonderful. I do think we were one of the few (maybe the only?) Jewish people on it which rather surprised me but was so glad to see the interest of others in the history. Very heartwarming.