Danube cities weren’t all created equal...

Today we woke up in a town called Esztergom, that also happened to be the former capital of Hungary. The only redeeming value of that place was its massive Cathedral that we visited, but the town looked fairly poor and uninteresting.

What was remarkable though was that the Republic of Slovakia sat right on the opposite bank of the river, without offering much more than its Hungarian neighbor to the South. We then spent the afternoon cruising to Budapest.

Like the rest of the cities we visited during the cruise, the current Hungarian capital lies along the banks of the Danube and is said to be one of the most attractive cities in Europe. We certainly liked it much better than Vienna, that we found too cold, clean and serious.

We enjoyed some free time sightseeing the city before returning to the ship. After dinner, we were taken under the wing of a terrible female guide who could hardly speak English, sounded quite sad about the good old Soviet times and made our Viennese guide sound like a Goddess!