11 June

11 June

We transited overnight and at a little after 8 am, we entered the largest lock on the Danube.  There are two locks at the location, one on the Serbian side and one on the Romanian side.  The Romanian side was the only one functioning, and the commentary said that the Serbian side needed a lot of repair work.  Both were built during the Soviet period.  The drop in river height was a total of 30 meters, with two 15 meter lock sets.  The commentary indicated that the lock doors were "guillotine" style invented by d'Vinci as oppose to swinging door style.  Once we passed through the locks the Danube enters "some of the most scenic shoreline."  To us, the Danube looks high, but it is not up to previous high water marks.  No commentary was made on this point, so there was a lot of speculation as to why it wasn't up to the former high water mark.   We passed a Roman marker that was carved in 100 AD, when the rode alongside the Serbian side of the Danube existed.  Apparently there have been floods that washed away the road and the only thing left can be the holes in the rock side.  There were a couple markers that were on the Romanian side that were built during the country's socialist period, however the commentary indicated that the Russians kept tight border control during the same period.  There were also several new waterfront homes built in the post Socialist period that the commentary also pointed out. There was also Europe's largest carved face on the Romanian side.  It was in honor of one of the King's.  The dimensions were given but I didn't catch them all, other than the face is bigger than the Statue of Liberty.  Right now it's raining (no surprise for us) so we're inside the lounge and Roger is taking in the sights with the binoculars.  The cloud layer looks like we'll be in and out of rain the rest of the afternoon.  Tomorrow we'll be in Belgrade Serbia.  

Romanian cough medicine knocked me out.  I have no idea what it has in it, but an hour after I took it, it was lights out for me.  I took a nap this morning and was only disturbed by the commentary on what we were passing.  Roger was topside and took all the pictures .  Hopefully I'm turning the corner on this silly cold, and I'm glad we're on the boat, because having a moving bed is a nice thing to have.  We definitely like not having to pack up each day.