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ALASKA BY SEA

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  I returned recently from my third ocean voyage along the southern coast of Alaska.   My first voyage along the Alaskan Inside Passage was in 2019.   I had booked that cruise while sailing through the Panama Canal with my very experienced cruising friend, Ruth.   She had gotten an email from Cunard offering discounted prices for the Queen Elizabeth’s maiden voyage to Alaska.   That ship was in Asia and would soon be crossing the Pacific to visit Alaska.   “It’s a smokin’ deal on a beautiful ship,” she told me.   “You should book it.” I was new to cruising and leery of being on a big ship, but Ruth had taken a world cruise (90 days) on the Queen Elizabeth and assured me that I would find it a very agreeable ship.   So, I booked the cruise as a solo traveler.   It would leave from Vancouver just four weeks after our Panama Canal cruise ended in Miami. And Ruth was right, it was a beautiful ship, and I had booked passage for a very reasonable p...
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Cruising the Lower Danube River from Bucharest to Budapest

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 Most of the people I know who have cruised the Danube River have sailed between Budapest and points north—through Austria and Germany.   We elected to cruise the lower Danube through the former Soviet-bloc countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Croatia.   Our Viking River cruise began in Bucharest, Romania and ended in Budapest, Hungary.   This region, situated between the historically great empires of the Ottomans, the Habsburg Germans, and Russia, has a history of occupation, conflict, and contested borders alternating with periods of nationalist identity, struggles for independence, and self-rule.   We heard about these struggles during many of our guided tours and lectures on board the ship.   Having thrown off the yoke of Communism, the nations we visited are moving toward full integration as part of the European Union. After 22 hours in transit, we arrived in Bucharest, without our checked suitcases, which we had, unfortunately, left in Chicago....
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