Eastern Danube, Day 4: Romania to Bulgaria

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Due to the quickly dropping water level in the Danube, we left immediately for the city of Vidin in northwest Bulgaria. We abandoned our planned initial stop in Ruse and arrived in Vidin about noon. As a result, we had a morning at leisure. Kenna did a core exercise class and she and I did a stretch class on the Sun Deck of the AmaVerde. Later in the morning our Cruise Director gave a talk on the plan for the rest of the cruise, particularly the parts of the itinerary that were affected by the change in departure port.

After lunch, we joined a walking tour of Vidin. Vidin is a small city, rather off the tourist track but with quite a bit to see. Led by a very knowledgeable 19 year-old tour guide, we walked to the ruins of a nearby fortress and explored it. We then walked to the city’s synagogue (really a Jewish community center currently) and learned about the thousands of Jews that were sheltered and saved from the Nazis by Bulgarians during World War II.

Following the tour, we visited a local Russian Orthodox cathedral, said to be the second largest in Bulgaria. It was a beautiful building, but under renovation. We were sorry that the scaffolding detracted from the exterior beauty of the building. On the way back to the AmaVerde, we stopped by a local souvenir shop for our usual collection of items from a new country: a flag for me, a pin for Kenna, and a postcard for our daughter Celeste. The proprietor of the shop spoke Bulgarian and Spanish (but no English) so we had fun making our purchases with our rudimentary Spanish.

Many of us on the ship spent time on the Sun Deck after dinner as there was a beautiful full moon rising over the river.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to the Eastern Danube. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.