Bus Ride Across the Czech Republic, and Vienna #3

Fortunately this will be a short post, as I'm really far behind. This has been an especially busy trip so far, with lots of bus rides. We're taking a day off from bus tours to relax a bit and update things.

On Saturday we had the 7 hour bus transfer from Krakow to Vienna to board MS Savor, and fortunately our Tauck guides had planned a couple of stops to break the trip. The main stop was to be in the Czech town of Kromericz (pronounced Kro-mayr-jheesh) for lunch and some free time to stretch our legs. So there won't be that much to say here, but a few nice photos:

There is a lovely park and gardens near the town square,
where there are also some rabbits and peacocks roaming free

We even came across this albino peacock!

And not to let us down, one of the local churches
was being restored - more scaffolding!

Lunch was delicious, although way too much, since all we were doing was sitting in the bus all day. Speaking of which, off we went again, all looking forward to finally getting on the ship and totally unpacked!! A few photos from along the way -

This is an old fortress in Mikulov, now right
near the Czech-Austrian border.

Almost right on time we arrived at Handelskai in Vienna and within a short time we had our room keys and found our suitcases on the bed. First things first - unpack, unroll and hang up all our clothes - and then it was finally time to relax!

The next morning we took it easy. As we had already spent five days in Vienna this trip, we passed on the visits to Schonbrunn Palace, which we had seen on a prior cruise, and the museums. Good thing, as from the sounds of things, all of these attractions were quite busy. We just walked along the riverside for quite a stretch and then came back. On the way we passed the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, also known as the Jubilee Church, which was erected in the early 1900s to celebrate 50 years of Emperor Franz Josef I's rule.

Lots of swans around here!

Larry pointing out where our suite is on the ship

Of course, if we had been anywhere else, even on the ship, we probably wouldn't have seen Crystal Mozart for about 5 minutes as she passed by Vienna  on her way to Bratislava on the cruise the one we would have been on. Are the cruising gods trying to tell us something???

So that was our final day in Vienna. After dinner we set sail westbound, not knowing just how far we would be able to go, but hoping for good news on Monday evening when we were promised an update on the water level situation.