Pre-trip May 28, 2019

Another trip, another blog.  I've really got to start re-linking the pictures in my old blogs--maybe turn them into photo books at Walmart or something.  It would be a nice family history.

We've been planning this latest trip for a little while--Fe got the plane tickets and I booked the hotels last fall.  Fe may have been planning it (in her head, anyway) a bit longer.  She had been asking for a Danube River cruise since she wanted to see the Hungarian capital, Budapest.  She didn't have to do much convincing for me, but I refused to do it on a cruise ship.  So last fall she bought the plane tickets and I booked the hotels.  We'll be starting in Budapest, then to Bratislava (Slovakia), Vienna (Austria), and leaving from Prague (Czech Republic).

This vacation will also be one of many "firsts":

• It's the first trip Fe and I have taken alone since 1996.
• It will be the first time we fly Aeroflot, the Russian flag carrier.
• Our first layover in Moscow (see above).
• The first time most of our transportation will be by train (we may take a river boat from Bratislava to Vienna--they're only 60 miles apart).
• The first time we've been this far east in Europe--in countries that had been behind the Iron Curtain.

And now, to explain the blog name.   As many of you know, I am a history buff (or nerd--I'll admit it) and early in the planning we were just going to Budapest and Vienna, the two capitals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  I tacked on Bratislava ("Where?!?") and Fe added Prague.  Aside from the capitals, these two cities were important to the empire as well.  Maria Teresa was crowned in Bratislava in 1741, as part of a long line of Habsburg monarchs, from 1521 to 1918.  Prague--as the provincial capital of Bohemia--played an important part in the religious and economic realms of Austria-Hungary.  History?  I'll be swimming in it.

Now to pack.