Friday, 24th August 2018 The day was spent cruising through Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia, passing through the 140km scenic gorge on the Danube between the Carpathians and the Balkans, known as the Iron Gates. The two hydroelectric dams, built as a collaboration between Yugoslavia [now Serbia] and Romania are called Iron Gate I and Iron Gate II. Before entering the gates we passed the point where three countries meet: Romania on the starboard side and Bulgaria and Serbia on the port side separated by a small tributary to the Danube. The completion of the dams in 1970 resulted in the Danube rising by up to 45m and there are now three locks to pass through. The geography of the area had to be changed and buildings and communities were sacrificed, including a whole island, Ada Kaleh, which was home to a thriving Turkish community. Prior to the dams and locks it would take ships four days to navigate the shallow waters through this part of the river, now it takes about 15 hours. The Iron Gate II lock is a double lock [one lock immediately adjoined to the other with a common gate] the combined lock has a drop of 34m […]
Bulgaria
Thursday, 23rd August 2018 Overnight the cruise boat moored in Ruse, which is the fourth largest city in Bulgaria. While the majority of passengers had a guided coach and walking tour of Ruse, we walked into the city to see the sights including the Monument to Freedom in the main plaza; The Court House; The streets of the old city and The Pantheon, which is now a museum. Unfortunately, as we had no local currency – Bulgarian lev – we found we could not pay to enter any of the sites. We did manage to pay by card for some more sun protection as the 30 degree plus temperatures have meant that this is being used up at quite a rate. We left Ruse to travel on up the Danube through the afternoon and evening towards the Iron Gates along the border between Bulgaria [starboard] and Romania [port]. After the evening meal, the onboard entertainment was a team trivia quiz in two halves. First you had to give an answer to a question. Then three possible answers, including the correct one, were provided for the same question and teams gave their “final answer”. This made it possible to score a maximum […]
Wednesday, 9th August 2018 The boat had travelled through the night southbound through Romania, before curving westwards along the Danube on the border between Romania and Bulgaria. At 10:00 the boat docked at Oltenita on the Romanian side of the river, south south east of Bucharest. With the exception of us and about 8 others, the passengers disembarked to join the waiting coaches. While they all drove off for the one and a half hour coach ride to the capital, and their tour, the boat, with us moved on to Giurgiu. We had a relaxing time on the boat as it travelled along the river. Because the weather has been so hot and dry across Europe, the Danube is about 3 meters shallower than normal. This meant that in this part of the river even on a boat with a draft of just 1.6 meters we had to travel slowly, meandering backwards and forwards across the river following the deepest channels. At 14:30 we moored at Giurgiu. In the photo below you can see the ‘Giurgiu-Ruse Friendship Bridge’ that connects Romania with Bulgaria across the Danube. This is one of only two bridges connecting the two countries across the Danube, […]