Tuesday, Oct 10 Milanovac & the Iron Gate

Up at 7AM today to have breakfast and be on the buses by 9AM. We cruised by some castle this morning at 6AM coming in. Turns out the castle is right next to us when we step off the ship. We are in Golubac, Serbia. This is what they call a ‘Technical Stop’ as we get off the ship and the ship will move on as we take our bus and walking tour today.

We board the buses and travel along the Danube. It is raining lightly but enough to obscure the vision of most things. We arrive at Lepenski Vir, an archaeological site where the oldest community on earth is documented. Not that it is the oldest, but the oldest ‘community’ ever found! They have built a museum roof over the site and you can walk around and see what the insides of the houses looked like. Outside they have a couple complete grass huts that show what the completed homes looked like. All in all a fun excursion!

Then it’s back on the buses where they take us to our ship which is now docked in Donji Milanovac and we have lunch. We have to walk across a barge to get on the ship and I find I can walk up to our room from the outside and a couple fun photos are acquired! As soon as we clear Customs, we will cruise down the Danube through the Iron Gorge. This is a much more scenic part of the Danube with mountains and hills. The scenes are beautiful and our cameras are happy once again! We meet with shipboard friends and start up a game of Mexican Train Dominos. But partway through the game our ship reaches the dam and Iron Gate Locks and our cameras complain at us because we are not setting up to photograph a new set of ship’s locks in the world! We are bound by our cameras wishes and walk away from the game to step out on the front of the ship.

This set of ship’s locks are different from what we have ever seen before. There are two locks here. The first lock is very intriguing and we enter it. As the water recedes (we are descending in altitude) the lock gates are unusual. Once we drop to our intended water level, the gates split in the middle. The top gate rises and the bottom two thirds drops down and goes under water. The red light turns to green and our ship drives under pipes and a bridge. Interesting! Then we find ourselves in a second lock where we drop further and this time, swing gates (like the Panama Canal Gates) swing open and we power out into the Danube once again! All told, we drop 30 Meters, a fantastic drop! Even the Panama Canal doesn’t drop that much total! We drive out into the Danube again and power on.

It is time for dinner. We go back inside and get our daily briefing and then go to dinner. It seems we may have to divert from our planned itinerary due to river water levels. We are told of a barge that is stuck on a sandbar. So we await the morning announcement to hear where we will go.

We go to the lounge for a Cabaret Show performed by our Activity Director and it is entertaining. I do not bring my cameras and therefore do not photograph it. Now it is time for bed so we bid you adieu!