Blue Danube

"Blue Danube" is a famous waltz, and when the light hits it right, the river can look a bit bluish in the distance. Up close, it's nearly a muddy as the Mississippi.

Today we are on the water for the entire day on our way to Bulgaria. As we move east, we changed overnight from "Central European Summer Time" to "Eastern European Summer Time," so we had to set our clocks ahead one hour. We'd say that we lost an hour of sleep, but since we're still not 100% past jet lag, it hardly matters. We're losing sleep every night -- especially Mary, who is struggling with the adjustment more than I.

Since we are not docked, there is no shore program today. The tour leaders have tried mightily to keep us entertained. There was a talk about "Growing Up Under Communism" this morning. The chef organized tours of the ship's galley (kitchen). And the Captain is even letting passengers sign up for visits to the wheelhouse. They also have a couple silly games going on, but we're not playing.

Marker for the site of the Roman bridge, almost 2,000 years old.

But mostly they are keeping us settled with day drinking. There was a Bloody Mary hour in the morning, followed by a beer and sausage snack on the sun deck. This afternoon there is "Tea Time," but it's in the bar where beer and wine are free. "Martini Cocktail Hour" is before dinner. We'll definitely skip karaoke night in the bar after dinner.

We did pass through a narrow cataract in the river where there were steep cliffs on both sides. It was also here that we saw the last remains of the first bridge built across the Danube by the Romans in the second century CE. 

And we saw "The Romania Mount Rushmore" (the river is the border between Romania and Serbia, and later between Romania and Bulgaria, so Romania is on one side). This is a bust of the king who defended this land from the Romans for many years before finally being defeated.

A highlight, however, was passing through "The Iron Gate." This is a huge hydroelectric dam with two sets of locks capable of handling these long river boats. Our boat was fortunate to arrive at just the right time so that we could enter the lock directly and not have to wait in line while the locks cycled for boats ahead.

The Iron Gate dam and locks were a joint project between Yugoslavia and Romania in the 1970s. There are locks on both the Serbian and Romanian sides of the river. And the twelve electric turbines are divided equally, with six providing electricity to each country.

It was fascinating to watch the Captain operate the ship's thrusters from a flying bridge to put the big boat within a couple inches of the lock wall. We passed through other locks later in the day, but the Iron Gate was definitely the biggest and deepest among them.

Because of our good timing with the locks, we arrived in Vidin, Bulgaria some two hours ahead of schedule.