In May 2025 we went on a new type of travel for us, a river cruise! We joined the Grand Circle Cruise “Eastern Europe To The Black Sea”. Except for Budapest, this included places we had not travelled to. The map above, courtesy of Grand Circle, depicts our route which started in Budapest and ended in Bucharest. The trip was 13 days (14 the way the tour company likes to count the departure from the US day). The cruise ended in Constanta then we traveled by bus to Bucharest.

The entire group of 140 people were assigned to sub groups of 35 people each. Each sub group had their own tour director for the duration of the trip. The sub groups were only relevant for local activities off the ship. The tour directors were native to the countries we visited and spoke about their experiences growing up there.

The individual pages of photos are arranged in the sequence of the tour. Some of the pages may have too many photos for a single screen. If there are, navigation arrows will appear at the top of the page.

On each page of photos, if you click your mouse cursor on a photo, a larger image will be displayed. You can then sequence through the photos using the navigation arrows on each side of your screen. Also a small circle icon at the top right of that window will start and stop a slideshow of the photos. The “X” at the top right of that screen will exit back to the original window. The slideshow timing is set for 5 seconds for each photo.

Click your mouse pointer here to go to the Hungary photos, here for Croatia, here for Serbia Novi Sad. here for Serbia Belgrade, here for cruising the Danube, here for Bulgaria Vidin, here for Bulgaria Veliko Tarnovo, here for Romania Constanta, here for Romania Bucharest, here for on the ship photos, here for some miscellaneous photos that are not related to a particular location.