Iron Gate

On Saturday, we took the Journey through the Iron Gate! There were no stops or excursions planned for today. It was strictly to be a day of cruising and passing through some of the most beautiful scenery. We started off with idyllic scenes of the quiet countryside, occasional towns with the church steeple in the midst, and then we cruised into the area known as the Iron Gate.



With the Carpathian Basin on one side and the Balkan Mountains on the other side, this part of the Danube River forms a spectacular narrow gorge. At one time, the river here was not passable. So the engineers came up with some kind of construction thingy (notice as the cruise goes on, my technical terminology gets more sophisticated), and now we have arguably the most beautiful passageway on the Danube River. With the gorgeous, warm, sunny weather, most of the passengers were on the sundeck for this portion of the cruise.

On both sides of the ship were towering white limestone cliffs that majestically rose high above us. Interspersed with the cliffs were beautiful forested areas. The highlight of the cliffs was the face of King Decebalus carved into the rock (their version of Mt. Rushmore, I suppose.) King Decebalus was apparently famous in this part of the world - well, famous enough to have his face carved into the rock.




We ended the journey by going through a large lock, one of many on the Danube River.

And at evening, we had this beautiful sunset scene from the ship.


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