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Call us on 138 747 (AU), 0800 447 913 (NZ), contact your local Viking travel agent or visit viking.com | 17 Sore feet are momentarily forgotten (and Viking Rinda's only bar gets busier) when local folk musicians and dancers come aboard. In Pécs, Hungary, an ancient city that's said to have been deemed so pretty by a World War II pilot that it escaped bombing, guide Andras tells us that the country's inflation is the highest in the EU. "Yeah, it's high but it's good to be the best at something," he says wryly. Wandering the old town, he compares 19th-century Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to Harry Styles and points out the colourful Zsolnay porcelain roof tiles that might have charmed that fighter pilot; famous all over Hungary, they've been manufactured in Pécs since 1853. There's free time before we get the bus back to the port of Mohács so I buy a honking great cheese burek, take pictures of pastel-painted buildings and sit in the grand main square. Sailing from Mohács to Budapest, my boyfriend and I hang out in our Scandi-elegant state room with its balcony and wall of glass doors and watch small beaches covered in vibrant umbrellas and sunbathers pass by. Holiday huts face the water, with tinnies tied up at boat ramps and humble piers. Anglers sit still beneath the beating sun; two women wave from a canoe. Viking Rinda is barely louder than a humming fridge thanks to its hybrid engines and, even from bed, I can hear crickets, birds and the fishermen chatting. At dinner in the restaurant, we look for Ken and Chavonne from California, who are on a father-daughter schoolies adventure before she leaves home for college. I eat most of the bread basket while deciding, as I do almost every night, to order the three-course menu of local specialties (such as the spiced trout fillet in Bulgaria and chocolate coconut cake – ĉupavci – in Croatia). For almost two weeks I'm surprised every day – by another beautiful town I hadn't heard of; by a hike in Serbia's Đjerdap National Park; on a bike ride in Belgrade that's broken up by a dip at the city's man-made beach; when I buy a pair of slippers and the shoemaker phones his son to help translate his thanks into English; and by the easy comfort of Viking Rinda and watching life unfold on the river. But Budapest I know. When our fellow guests head off on optional excursions to the thermal baths and Jewish Quarter, we slip into the crowd at the Great Market Hall for lunch, crisscross the river's bridges and hang outside a tiny bar with a rockabilly band playing inside. After dinner, not long before the ship pulls away from the dock, Leonard urges everyone to join him on the sundeck. The long summer afternoon finally fades to night and both sides of the shore, Buda and Pest, begin to light up. The fairytale monuments of the Castle Hill district emerge from the gloaming and as we drift by the Hungarian Parliament building, fancy as a wedding cake, it glows gold against the blue sky. Just when it feels like the show's over, Leonard tells everyone to turn around. In two days exploring on foot, bus, bike and funicular, none of us has seen Budapest like this: captured in one perfect frame, all its lights shining on the inky Danube River. Words by Faith Campbell. This article was originally published in Travel Insider - Qantas Magazine.