We toured Europe on a Vantage Travel river cruise. The itinerary was from Frankfurt, Germany to Budapest, Hungary. Touring with a friend, we covered it all, ate it all and drank it all – or so it seemed.

The Vantage cruise was great (again), but we and the entire cruise industry were plagued by low water levels in many rivers. In some areas of the Rhine, we were limited in how far we could go, which made us go on a smaller boat to see some sights. In other cases, were cut off entirely and had to rely on bus travel to reach some locations. The Danube, in particular, was so low that sand bars were visible as we drove along the highway. That prevented us from continuing the cruise from the Rhine to the Danube. Vantage, of course, made the best of it by providing very nice hotel accommodations, dinners and entertainment.

All in all, it was a very nice trip. Following the cruise, we flew to London to spend a few days seeing the sights there. Although we saw many of the things on our list, not everything could be visited or seen. We think that we hit the highlights though. We even attended two magnificent organ concerts there – on in St. Paul’s Cathedral and one in Westminster Abbey. How cultured is that!

Below is a gallery of images to view. With the exception of three or four, I took them all, so you only have me to blame for the quality or the content. As always, just click on an image to open the gallery to view images at their full size. You can also download an image simply by right-clicking on an image and choose to download the image to your own computer.