Keyswench After BLUE MAX ADVENTURES: 2013-7-6 to 7-27 - European Trip

Saturday, July 27, 2013

2013-7-6 to 7-27 - European Trip - Aboard the Viking Aegir

Warning: The blogs I will be writing about our European trip may get a bit tedious & full of boring information about the history of the countries we visited...But, for you history buffs - I hope you'll enjoy. But I do hope you like the pictures. Oh...& by-the-way, most of the information I document on each country will be plagiarized by me from various sources. Sorry, I don't have enough memory space for 6 weeks' of details.

Waiting for the airport shuttle in Miami

We left Green Cove Springs & the torn-apart BLUE MAX on June 30th. We got to the airport the next day by 2pm, however our 5:30 flight to London was delayed 2 hours.
I'll talk about Bucarest & the rest of our trip in the next blog but wanted to tell you about the Viking River cruise boat - The Aegir - (pronounced A-ger) ("God of the sea & the personification of the power of the ocean-Aegir was both worshipped & feared by sailors") Ironic, the Aegir will never see the sea.
She's 442 feet long; 37 ft beam; 6ft draft; she has 6 generators; holds 35,000 gal of fuel (YIKES!) & 75 tons of black water; 52 crew members & staff; about 186 passengers. She was built in 2012 & has the most up to date electronics. The pilot house, mast & shade awnings on the open deck can be raised or lowered electronically from the pilot house.

Shade awnings lowered for bridges

All rails, chairs & pilot house lowered

All rails around the upper deck can be taken off manually & laid down flat on the deck to get under low bridges of which there are many on the Danube. There are 66 locks from Bucarest to Amsterdam.

Pilot house electronics

Aegir docked in Budapest

Taken from the Green Bridge in Budapest - We often had to side-tie to another boat & pass through that boat to get off as in this case

I was impressed with the staff & crew...everyone chipped in to help with everything-even the department directors. The boat was spotless.

Loredana, Director of Housekeeping extroidiaire

The dining room was spacious & homey (but a bit loud at times) & the staff was amazing. Breakfast & lunch was served either in the formal dining room or the Aquavit lounge (forward of the bar/lounge area) The dining room had an enormous buffet area in addition to menu items for breakfast & lunch. Unlimited (free) beer & wine were available during lunch & dinner.