We arrived in the late evening last night and stay at Hacienda Jimenita. We start the morning early at 5:30 am to head up in the Andes mountains to the Antisana Condor Observatory.

For the past week, there are many folks on the ship who are getting sick. Steve woke up this morning not feeling well. The morning started with a speaker that came on board to talk about authoritarianism in Hungary, starting with the Orban coup in 2006. The EU has now responded by cutting funding to Hungary, but it’s too late at this time in her feeling.

The morning starts with a talk about the disembarkation procedures that will happen in two days. They send you to the airport depending on when your flight is, we have an early 6:20 am flight. That results in luggage out at 2:45 am and get on the bus at 3:15 am with a brown bag breakfast.

On the trip schedule there was a visit to a local school, but that isn’t happening because today is a school break. Instead, they brought a local high school history teacher on board the ship to give a talk about school in Slovakia.

The morning starts with a talk by the four program directors on the ship about the transition from Communism to Democracy. Three of the Program Directors are from Transylvania, in Romania and one is from Croatia.

The program directors were born between 1981 and 1987, communism fell in 1989.

We are skipping the optional Schönbrunn Palace visit. We visited Schönbrunn Palace in 2019 on our Vienna to Amsterdam trip.

We visit Vienna the next two days. We came two days early on our 2019 on a Vienna to Amsterdam river cruise, and have seen a number of the sights in Vienna. Today, October 26, is Austria National Day. The treaty was signed in May, but the last foreign soldier left on Oct 25.

The ship spent the night docked at Dürnstein. We sailed by, but did not stop at Dürnstein in 2019 on our Vienna to Amsterdam river cruise.

In the morning we visit Melk Abbey. We visited the abbey and sailed through the Wachau Valley in 2019 on a Vienna to Amsterdam river cruise.

This morning our group has a tour of the historic city center of Linz and a tour of Mauthausen concentration camp in the afternoon.