We had two tours today. The morning tour is included in the price of the cruise, but the afternoon tour is one of the few optional tours offered. Every day we will have one included tour, except on Thursday when we are cruising all day through the Iron Gates region, including the locks that will take us down over 100 feet in elevation.

Not knowing what to expect in the former Yugoslavia, we found a fairly typical small Eastern European city with old Orthodox and Catholic churches, statues and memorials to historic figures, modern shopping, and hard-working people. Our guides talked about the history of the area and the Serbian people who have been under rule from outside for most of the last millennium. The morning tour included a panoramic drive around the city, a visit to the church and a walking tour of downtown. With free time afterwards, we stopped for a cool drink in a sidewalk café. The shops only accept the Serbian dinar as payment, and some, but not many, accept credit cards. Before we got off the coach to walk around the town, the guide told us that everyone would take Euros, but that wasn't the case. Bruce and Grace from southwestern England treated us at the café, since we had not purchased any of the local currency.

The guide asked us to meet him in front of McDonalds to assemble again to return together to the boat. Every foreign guide we have all over the world points out the McDonalds.

For the afternoon, tour we drove out to the countryside to visit a winery and bee-keeping museum at Sremski Karlovci. The day has been hot, but we were invited into the wine cellars which are naturally about 55 degrees all year long. What a nice break in the hot afternoon! Then the owners generously served us seven wines and two honeys to taste, refilling anyone’s glass who wanted more.

We had to carry our passports with us while in Serbia, and we will need to carry them tomorrow, too. The Serbian officials require you to have your actual passport with you, not just a copy. Usually, the cruise staff keeps your passport so there is less chance of it getting lost. They have shore passes for us to take anytime we leave the ship, and we are to return them to the office when we reboard. That’s how they know if everyone is on board before sailing.

One of the nice things about cruising is the opportunity to meet people, many of them from other parts of the world. At each meal we have shared a table with others. There are only 120 passengers on this cruise so we have had the chance to get to know some of them better than we would if just passing by them at a hotel or resort or on an ocean liner. The passengers on this boat are mostly from the US, the UK and New Zealand with a few from Canada, Australia, and Germany. Other passengers have great travel stories to tell. We always get good ideas for new places to see from fellow travelers. We feel young again as most of the passengers look to be in their sixties or seventies, or older. There is one very young couple who we found out are relatives of the first officer. The young woman speaks English, but her companion doesn’t.