Nic and Sue’s Euro River Cruise and some bits on the side. Autumn 2026. Day 4- Prague to Budapest via Vienna.

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Both awake before alarms, better sleep for me last night, not for Sue.

Off to breaky right on 7, as we have Uber Airport booked for 8 to take us to the airport.
Made a sneaky roll each at breaky to take for lunch – as the two short hop plane flights today are only 50mins and we get a drink and a praline!!! Anything to avoid airport food – often crappy and always expensive.

Great trip with Mikhail, nice black merc, smooth and comfy. No traffic to speak of.

Arrived to airport at 8:20, self checked our luggage, which I’m not a fan of… that bloody luggage tag never cooperates!!!

Security check was pretty painless, Sue dinged and had to be scanned (knees) and she had a little water in her bottle which was picked up at the scanner – a little bit was poured into a vial and tested in a machine then all good to go.

A brief look through duty free – I checked out the Czech alcohol section, Sue the cosmetics side.

We had a couple of hours to kill before boarding, I blogged while
Sue snoozed. There was a cat meowing and sure enough a woman behind us had a cat carrier with a black cat who wasn’t happy and she was giving it no attention. Not on our flight so not sure how it went.

Boarded seemlessly, a small Embraer 95. Two rows of two seats. No screens etc. climbed and then descended basically. Up for 25 and down for 25mins. Water and a Mozart choccy for refreshments.

Short stop at Vienna Airport – coffee and my contraband roll and apple hit the spot. The gate lounges were good – lots of seats with charging options (unlike Dubai)
Onto the next plane, Austrian 🇦🇹 Airlines again – an Embraer 195.
Roomier in both seat width and leg room. Next stop – Budapest!!

We could see rivers on both flights with quite prominent sandy banks – thinking this is the low water that is preventing the Cruise boats from sailing their usual routes. We did see one river with a cruise boat on it. As always the views from the air never cease to fascinate me.

We could really see the dry landscape which we assume resulted from the hot summer and drought conditions. Must be a shock to the farmers who we reckon would be unaccustomed to this.

Took a while for the luggage to make it to the carousel, our Bah’s arrived promptly (was nice to have the AirTag tell us the bags were in Budapest – esp as we had to check ourselves in.)
Once our bags arrived I booked an Uber, walked out the nothing to declare door and straight out to taxi queue – gave the code to nice yellow Uber Tesla with Peter and we were off. All within less than 5 minutes of collecting luggage. Too easy, No worries!!! (IYKYK) arrived about 40 minutes later to the Budapest Marriott Hotel, a little bit classy actually. We have views over the River Danube for the next 3 days.

We phaffed for a bit before heading out along the River to see what there was to see. A tram runs along the river just in front of hotel, underneath are bars and things. There were people wandering the banks. A group of women all dressed in colourful Brazilian outfits – couldn’t figure out what they were doing, but they certainly drew attention.

Had a drink and then went to find a cruise to do. I was keen to try a smaller boat – not the big modern ones. We chose Duma cruise at 7pm (after a bit of indecision)
We lucked a seat out on the front of the boat with good views of Budapest as we sailed along the Danube. A complimentary champagne with some salty snacks sustained us for the hour. The lights of the city turned on as we sailed along, and the old buildings of Buda and Pest looked stunning in the balmy clear night. The river is low but we didn’t know any different. The lady booking us on the cruise told that the waiting room (basically a pontoon) was full so we had to queue along the pathway. Normally it would hold 60 people but due to low river was limited to 20 people.

Back to the hotel for a shared Margarita pizza before heading up to the room for the night.