River cruise... a very long first day

2019 note:  I'm finally posting photographs of our nearly three-week Viking river cruise in August 2018. I hate the phrase "better late than never," but it certainly applies to this year-late series. This one will be all about the photos, with a bit of text.

. . .

Today is travel day. Seattle to Amsterdam (arriving on August 4), then a hop to Budapest. We met up with our group (sixteen of us, all acquainted one way or another through friends) at the airport. Once we arrived, got through customs, collected luggage, and found the Viking rep, we got the bad news: our river boat is somewhere near Cologne, w-a-y upriver. So we'll start our river tour on an identical boat, and it's about an hour east of here, in Slovakia. So we'll be bused there. Not the best news in the world, but a good way to see more of the countryside. And a bonus for this geocacher: our boat is in Slovakia, which gives us another country on our geocaching map (as long as we can find a geocache within walking distance of our boat).

Tomorrow, the coach will be back to take us back to Budapest. This afternoon was supposed to be a welcome luncheon, and an afternoon to explore the waterfront or walk around town, and we're missing all of that. I hope that tomorrow, we'll see all we need to see of Budapest.

The hour coach ride through the countryside was pleasant, but it was a relief to finally arrive at the boat. And to our delight, there was a geocache on the river walk, right by the gangplank to the boat! We checked in, dropped our bags in our room (which was beautiful), then we all met up in the lounge for a welcome beverage. They were sampling some of the wines available through the beverage package (which we didn't purchase). Then dinner, then to bed.

Our boat, the Vili, is closest to shore, with another rafted to it. There were perhaps a dozen river boats
moored here, on both sides of the river. No one could get any closer to Budapest than this.

The upper deck of our river boat, at twilight after dinner. We're approaching the blue hour,
and intend to make the most of the comfortable deck chairs as we depart Budapest.

We were rewarded with a beautiful sunset tonight as we headed west. Watching the disembarking process was interesting... we were rafted to another river boat, with two others directly in front. These captains are skilled at this, and the boats have side thrusters that let them move sideways to get out of the way, then back sideways to the moorings.