The South Marysbursh M River Cruise By John A. Jackson T’ve always loved to travel. As a child the family moved from Toronto to Scarborough then to Midland and back to Scarborough. When I started working, I moved from Scarborough to Brampton to Whitby to Cheltenham and then back to Toronto. During my years at work with the Ontario Government I traveled all over Ontario and the rest of Canada except for two provinces. To this day I have never visited Saskatct or New: Valerie and I have traveled as_ tourists through Canada, much of the United States, Britain, France, Italy and other places too numerous to men- tion. For a number of years we sailed through Lake Erie and Ontario and up the St. Lawrence until we retired and moved to Prince Edward County where we switched from a sailboat to a 30’ Sea Ray power boat on which we traveled in Ontario and New York State. It’s safe to say that we both love to travel and do so as much as we can. We both love cruise ships and have traveled the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Alaska, Hawaii and Egypt. For those of you who get the Anglican Journal, you have seen on a regular ba- sis the ads from Craig Travel. It was with that com- pany that we traveled through Egypt and had as part of the tour a three day cruise on the Nile River. We planned to go to Egypt for some years and every time there was some sort of a crisis in the Middle East. So finally we took the plunge and are so very glad we did because I’m sure no-one is planning to visit Egypt these days. We were having lunch with some friends one day when the subject of river cruising came up and we were intrigued by their description of their cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest on Scenic Cruises on the Danube and Rhine rivers. We contacted our travel agent - yes we are of the age that still has a travel agent and do not book everything on the Inter- net! Our travel agent spoke very highly of Scenic Cruises and in fact we had to book very quickly, al- most a year ahead to get the accommodation we wanted. So before we knew it we were booked on a cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam which we did this past July. Is there much difference between ocean and river cruising, I hear you ask? Yes there is, but each has its own appeal. The major difference is size, with the cruise ships carrying 3000 plus passengers and a large number of crew, whereas the river cruise ship carried 130 passengers and 50 crew. The other major difference with Scenic Cruise is that everything is included in the price with such things as no tipping, free wine and beer at all meals and in our case butler service no less. We flew to Amsterdam where we changed planes for Budapest where we were met by represen- tatives, and taken to a downtown hotel to wait in luxurious splendour for the ship to be ready for us. We met a number of people from the ship who had just completed their tour and were waiting for trans- port to the airport. We arrived at the ship, went to our suite to unpack and then roamed about to see the facilities and to listen to the plans for the next day. That eve- ning we had a marvelous dinner in the main dining room which can seat all of the guests at one sitting. Then we were taken on a cruise around the harbour of Budapest under the moon and the stars as well as the lights from the city. The next day we went on a bus tour and guided walking tour through Budapest and later were invited to the Captain’s welcome cocktail party and a Gala Dinner and dance. Valerie actually got me to dance. The following day we sailed to Bratislava, thence toVienna where we toured on buses and went to the magnificent Schoenbrunn Palace. In the eve- ning a private classical concert was put on for us at the Palace Lichtenstein. The boat traveled at night so we woke up in the beautiful Austrian village of Durnstein which had the ruined castle at the top of the hill where Richard the Lionheart was held captive for ransom — shades of Robin Hood. We stayed on board but a number of the passengers went on a guided bike ride and we picked them up later when we got to Melk. At every stop there were opportunities for bus tours but we decided that four hours in a bus going to Cesky Krumlow or Salzburg wasn’t for us so we just stayed on board. I think you are realizing how good the trip was so I won’t go into more detail, but we did go through more than 50 locks on the Danube and the Rhine sailing to Passau, Regensburg, Nuremberg, (Continued on page 11)