We landed into Budapest, Hungary, a city we really like, having first visited in 2012, but this time, we were really here because it was the kick off point for another cruise this time down more of the Danube River.
Before we get into the river cruise itself we ‘enjoyed’ a sardine style bus trip from the airport into the city and then a short walk to our AirBnB, just for a few nights stay to explore a little more of this city, before boarding the ship.
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| Crammed in for a 45-50 minute bus trip into the city from the Airport... standing |
We were soon back out and about and below is where we literally meandered this time, but also very handy was the free travel on trams, buses or the metro, for anyone 65 years and older, whether a resident or not.
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| Where we went in Budapest including a sunset cruise for city views |
We decided to go out for an early dinner, by walking down to the Great Market Hall and we learnt very quickly, the serves were huge!!
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| Inside the Great Market Hall or Nagycsarnok |
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| This was just Rob's order!! |
We started walking some back streets, discovering interesting architectures but mainly seeking out locations not experienced previously, plus enjoying some of the food and simply strolling around.
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| Found by just walking the back streets |
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| It was surprising what we found down some back streets |
We did eventually emerge at the back of the Hungarian Parliament Building (Országház), located next to the Danube and the 3rd largest Parliament building in the world.
We had seen the front previously, but were totally unaware of the water features around the back of the building, which enabled reflections of the main building and every now and again, a water ‘mist’ sprayed from the ground, creating a very etherial effect.
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| Lovely reflections at the back of Országház |
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| Next came the water mist from underground |
Walking back along the river towards the city centre and its bridges, we also came upon the ‘Shoes on the Danube Bank’, crafted by sculptor, Can Togay in 2005, a quiet but impactful memorial of the holocaust.
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| The shoe sculpture on the Danube |
During the final months of World War II, Arrow Cross militiamen aligned with the Nazis, rounded up Jewish citizens, marched them to the sides of the Danube, and shot them at close range in the back of their heads, so their bodies would fall into the freezing river and float away!
Before being executed, each victim was made to take off their shoes as leather shoes were highly valued during the war and could be easily sold or used by the militia themselves.
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| It did make us ponder! |
The monument consists of 60 pairs of shoes of the period, placed as if the victims had just stepped out of them… very poignant indeed.
After reaching one of Budapest’s bridges, Margit hid, we turned back inland to reach the Szent István-bazilika (St. Stephen’s Basilica) but not before enjoying at long last a very good coffee and trying a Chimney cake.
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| Margit hid is one of many bridges between Buda and Pest |
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| Walking towards St. Stephen's Basilica |
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| St, Stephen's Basilica |
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| Looking back from the stairs of St. Stephen's Basilica |
A Chimney cake is made using a sweet yeast dough, cut into long strips, rolled into a cone shape, covered in sugar and stuffed full of ice-cream.
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| We actually shared the Chimney cake |
We used the free transport to visit The Citadella, a restored and enhanced 19th century fortress located on the Buda side on Gellért Hill with great views back across the city. Also located here is the 40 metre tall, bronze Liberty Statue adding to the overall environment.
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| View of Budapest from The Citadella |
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| The Liberty Statue at the restored Citadella fortress |
The metro also enabled us to reach the boarding pontoon further out of the city, to take a 2 hour sunset cruise for the first time, along the river, passing the main parts of the city as the lights were turned on.
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| One of many sunset cruise boats passing on the river side of the Hungarian Parliament Building |
We were lucky the lights were even on, because in late July, they had been turned off due to historic low water levels in the Danube, water critical to the running of a nuclear power station. The city strategically sunk some barges to act as a virtual ‘dam’ and raise the river levels enough to allow the lights to be turned back on.
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| One of the other bridges over the Danube |
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| Sunset and the lights make for a great combo |
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| The Hungarian Parliament Building looks spectacular at night |
More on water levels later!
Finally, Budapest is home to the largest synagogue in Europe and the 2nd largest in the world and as a piece of architecture, built 1854-1859 and capable of seating 3,000 worshipers, was a new location we decided to visit and it was quite something.
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| The Great Synagogue in Budapest is an incredible building |
Naturally, due to what happened during WWII and being a synagogue, there was yet another and quite innovative reminder of the holocaust’s impact on Hungarian Jews.
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| The holocaust memorial is in the form of a tree sculpture... |
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| ...and on each branch of the tree is a 'leaf' with the name of each victim engraved on it |
CLICK HERE for more photos Budapest 2026
The River Cruise
Our 2026 river cruise had experienced a few curve balls, due to the very hot weather this summer impacting Europe, leading to historically low water levels on most of its major rivers, including the Danube.
Originally we were meant to board our Avalon Waterways ship in Budapest, but a few weeks earlier, we started receiving emails advising there would likely have to be adjustments to our cruise itinerary.
Our options became either to cancel our booking with a full refund or continue with a revised itinerary and what would become a ‘hybrid cruise’, which simply means there would be a combination of river and bus transport to visit most but not all the original destinations.
About 40% of the original passengers did elect to cancel and leave the cruise, leaving about 100 of us.
From here on will be a summary of the destinations we visited on the Danube after Budapest, but to be clear from the get go, was this section of the Danube similar to what we experienced in 2025… no!
This cruise was taking us through a general area known as the Balkans with a long history of wars, conquest by the Romans, Ottomans and others, but more recently in the 1990’s, it experienced at times, the violent break-up of Yugoslavia for some of the countries we passed through.
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| Our hybrid cruise through the Balkans |
The hybrid approach started immediately in Budapest, when we briefly boarded a Avalon ship parked in Budapest, to have lunch, and then walk to buses for a 4 hour drive to our first cruise destination.
Most of the passengers were from the USA/Canada, 4-6 were from New Zealand and a similar number from Australia, and the ship itself was very comfortable, with plenty of areas where everyone could mingle and chat, enjoy a coffee or cocktail, or simply chill out. The crew and food were also very good.
Quick summary of the ship itself:
- Its was called the Avalon Passion
- 135 metres in length
- Maximum passenger capacity = 166
- 84 cabins
- 47 crew members
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| View from the cabin |
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| The cabin |
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| One of the lounge areas |
First Night
After the initial bus ride we reached and boarded our actual ship in Ilok, a small town in Croatia where the Danube is also the actual border with Serbia. Here we met the rest of the passengers and received our initial briefing from Tony, our cruise director for this trip.
Part of his briefing included very amusing advise about low water levels and the ship. Tony advised that if our ship actually scrapes along the bottom of the river at any stage, due to the nature of the ship with its flatter bottom, the noise would be heard very loudly everywhere.
“Don’t panic though and jump off the ship” Tony said, “because we are already on the bottom of the river and the ship has nowhere else to go, just go up a little higher!”.
We all settled in for our first night aboard, being introduced to the Captain and crew and meeting new and interesting fellow passengers, plus enjoying the first of many meals to follow.
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| One section of the dining areas |
Now lets get into the places we did visit!
Vukovar
Also a Croatian town, Vukovar’s history goes way back to the ice age apparently, but it has horrible history, as recent as 1991, with an 87 day siege of it by the Serbs. Prior to this, Croats and Serbs had lived harmoniously as literal neighbours and friends for 30 years, then almost overnight, they started killing each other.
There is a famous water tower we saw, which sustained 600 direct hits in 1991 but never collapsed, nor did the local Croats who valiantly resisted. We also visited a very complete museum taking us back to 3,000 BCE right up to current times, with woolly mammoth bones.
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| 'The Tower' still full of holes |
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| A building still wearing conflict scars |
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| Vukovar today has a nice town feel but is a little stark |
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| Mammoth bones in the museum |
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| Ancient artifacts |
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| A Roman military diploma found in Vukovar |
Ilok
With our ship moored in Ilok, naturally we visited it. There was a surprising range of things to experience starting with historic walls from the period of the Ottomans, before the Austrian Hapsburgs helped take it back.
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| The Ottomans have been here! |
Ilok also has a small Franciscan Church, where remains of St John of Capistrano, a warrior monk who helped defend Europe from the Ottomans, were buried for a while after he decided to die in Ilok. His remains mysteriously disappeared post local battles with the Ottomans, for their protection, by locals it is believed.
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| Ilok's small Franciscan church |
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| Symbolic remains of St. John Capistrano |
Ilok has a wine making history going back 2,000 years, so we visited the Iločki Podrumi winery, a highly reputed winery, touring their cellars and their huge wine barrels, seeing the remaining 1947 white wine bottles valued at €7,500 per bottle.
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| Wine barrels... BIG wine barrels |
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| Top row bottles @ €7,500 each |
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| Passengers enjoying a tasting or three |
After 2 days on a stationary ship, we were advised we would be sailing earlier than planned to achieve a critical water level window and avoid being stranded… yeah!
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| Cruising peacefully as the sun sets |
Novi Sad
After cruising overnight, we also moored at Novi Sad, Serbia, this country’s second largest city of 350k people.
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| Moored at Novi Sad |
It has also had a very violent history, some of which was:
- During the Hungarian Revolution from 1848-49 it was largely destroyed
- In WWII there were mass massacres of mixed nationalities by Nazi supporters and their bodies shoved into the Danube
- The city was bombed for 78 days by Nato in 1999 during the Kosovo war
Next to the river as we walked into the city are more memorials to those killed by Nazi supporters but there is also a lot of beauty within the city itself.
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| Memorial to the victims |
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| Names of some of the victims with the fortress behind |
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| In the city of Novi Sad |
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| There are some very ornate buildings in Novi Sad |
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| Elderly busker in Novi Sad |
Novi Sad is also home to the ‘Gibraltar’ of the Danube, the Petrovardin Fortress, the largest intact fortress in Europe. It has 16 kilometres of tunnels built under it to house thousands of troops for its protection if needed, and nearby is a famous clock tower.
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| We walked to the fortress, across the bridge from the ship |
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| The walk took us through the back streets with the clock tower ahead |
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| Climbing up into the fortress |
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| View from the top of the fortress |
The tower has reversed hands, is also known as the ‘Drunk Clock’ with large hour hands and small minute hands, so that fisherman on the river could read the time more easily.
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| The 'Drunk Clock' |
Belgrade
Still in Serbia, we visited the Belgrade Fortress, which was fought over in 115 battles, burnt to the ground over 40 times and rebuilt by various occupiers. During the 18th century, the Austrians added baroque styles to the fortress and the Ottomans built the Sahat clock tower inside the fortress.
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| There were multiple entry points to reach the inner areas of the fortress |
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| The Sahat clock tower is very visible |
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| Some of the Serbian war machines |
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| View from the fortress walls |
From the fortress we saw where the Danube and Sava rivers joined and from here we moved to the Church of Saint Sava go inside the largest Orthodox Church building in the world.
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| The Church of Saint Sava |
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| The entrance into the church dwarfs the person coming out |
When we walked inside of it, our breath was almost taken away… it was truly stunning and it's believed to be modelled on the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.
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| It was very simply a stunning church to walk into |
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| The detail is amazing |
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| With all the beauty they have left reminders of the 1990's violent past |
Golubac Fortress
We sailed overnight on a widening river and we were lucky to look out of our cabin window just on sunrise to catch our first glimpse of the Golubac Fortress, still in Serbia. It was built in the 14th century to defend what is called the Iron Gates or Derdap Gorge.
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| Cruising towards Golubac Fortess early in the morning across a now very wide Danube River |
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| Graphic showing the entire fortress structure |
The fortress is very well preserved and was built in stages, starting in 1335 but was fought over many times between the Serbs and the Ottomans before the Ottomans handed it back to Serbia in 1867.
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| With the ship moored near the fortress we broke into smaller groups for our tour inside |
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| Walking towards the fortress but we had to keep off the lawns |
It has a very impressive complex of towers, most which we were able to explore alone and climb, after spending time in its new museum, built within the total structure.
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| It was great to explore this fortress |
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| Climbing some of the towers for better views |
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| The museum was very informative |
Lepenski Vir
Hybrid time as we were transported by bus, further down the river to one of Europe’s prime archeological sites, right on the banks for the Danube called Lepenski Vir.
After a nice walk from the bus following the shore, we came to a very large, curved roof structure, built over the remnants of 9,500 to 5,500 BC mesolithic-to-neolithic communities.
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| A very large structure built over the remains of ancient home sites |
The people who lived here, built small homes, all with the same shape and here they found the remains of those homes and skeletons, along with many other artefacts. People had settled and lived here for very long periods, because they had access to ample food and obviously, water.
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| Each site had a place for a fire |
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| Some of the skeletons found |
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| What they theorise how homes looked |
In the meantime, our ship had sailed further down the river without the weight of all the passengers on board, to the small village of Donji Milanovac where we all boarded again.
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| Our ship sailing ahead to Donji Milanovac |
Before departing whilst standing at the window of our cabin, we once again observed some ‘Danube culture’, a term we have made up, when 2 local men went drifting past in the river’s current, chatting away to each other as if they were sitting at a stool in a bar.
No flotation devices, totally relaxed, drifting off to wherever and something we had watched people on both sides of the river, doing quite often in the more rural parts of the cruise.
Iron Gates Gorge
Iron Gates Gorge is one of the ‘on river’ highlights and again, an area of much history. It is also a natural border between Serbia in the south, and Romania in the north and separates the Carpathian and Balkan mountain ranges.
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| Cruising towards the start of Iron Gate Gorge |
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| Most passengers were on deck to experience the gorge |
As we cruised through this narrower section of the river, most passengers were up on deck somewhere as Tony provided a commentary of things to look out for.
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| Entering the gorge |
During our transit, we passed a massive rock sculpture of Decabalus, a famous Romanian King in 87-106 AD and his sculpture faces the ancient Roman plaque of Tabula Traiana across the water.
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| Passing a cafe restaurant before reaching Decabalus |
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| The massive rock sculpture of Decabalus |
Between AD 28 and 102, Emperor Trajan and his successors carved military tow paths into the steep rock and the plaque made by the Romans commemorates it.
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| The Roman created commemorative carved stone |
The building of a massive dam creating hydro electric power, meant we also needed to travel through 2 locks to the lower section of the Danube, 30 metres below the dam wall. There are duplicate lock structures on both the Serbian and Romanian sides of the dam wall and we exited via the Serbian structures.
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| Approaching the Serbian locks |
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| Transiting through one of the 2 large locks |
Drobeta-Turnu Severin
To keep the name simple, Droberta, has yet another fortress we visited, built around 1230 by the Hungarians and partially destroyed by guess who, the Ottomans in 1524 and then to change pace, we tried some more wines in what was a previous palace.
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| Outside yet another fortress |
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| An 'encouragement' chair |
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| Part of the internal fortress structures |
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| Heading into the hall to try some wine |
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| Rob chatting to fellow passengers before the wine flowed |
In the afternoon feeling relaxed after the wines, time for the Museum of the Iron Gates which took us along a historical journey over millennia, but there were 2 exhibits which caught our attention especially.
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| Traditional clothing displays |
Part of the museum has an aquarium housing a variety of local live fish including multiple tanks with quite large and very active sturgeon in them. Sturgeon are native along the Danube, produce caviar and their numbers are now controlled to protect access to them.
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| Live caviar producing sturgeon which are also eaten |
The 2nd exhibit focussed on Trajan’s Bridge. A bridge, big deal you may be thinking, but this was a bridge built by the Roman’s in 105 AD, 1,135 metres long, yep, over 1 kilometre and built across the Danube!
The Danube in normal circumstances is quite a fast flowing river, so to construct a long bridge across it in 105 AD, was certainly quite an achievement and required very innovative techniques. Part of the original bridge footings can still be seen.
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| Drawing of what the bridge would have looked like |
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| Model in the museum of the bridge |
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| Remaining bridge footing with a distant bank across the Danube River |
The Transition
Essentially the actual cruising was over because the ship could not travel any further due to low water levels, so we departed the ship, saying our goodbyes to the crew, boarding buses and travelling to Bucharest, Romania. We were also meant to have visited Bulgaria but that was missed unfortunately.
CLICK HERE for more photos Balkan River Cruise Part 1.
The next post picks up from having reached Bucharest by bus and continuing on the rest of the cruises original destinations and optional land tour with Romania we added.
