2025

Cruising with Friends

Amsterdam to Budapest

FUN

That’s what this trip was: fun!

Judy and I made an almost last-minute decision to take another cruise with Uniworld in the first two weeks of September, told our Thursday bridge friends our plans, and they signed up for the same trip!

Six of us have been playing bridge together online since the lockdown in 2020, swapping in and out at the table, but one of us  (Bill Neill) couldn’t make the trip. Things were evened out when Ellen Cason’s husband Bill, not a bridge player, did come with us on the trip, so there were six of us together for the first time.

First time ever. Even though we had all been in Austin in and around 1970.

Judy and I moved to Austin in 1968, in the first months of our marriage. I went to graduate school, Judy taught, and we met new friends We even started our family there.

We met Trudy Skiff Laifer, who sang in our church choir for a while, when she wasn’t on stage singing in UT opera productions. Trudy and Kathy Skiff Rycaj, her sister, had even visited us right after Sara-Tori was born in 1972.

During the lockdown in 2020, Trudy and Joy (another friend from Austin) reached out to us again, and we started playing bridge online. It wasn’t long before Ellen Cason was introduced to us online as someone else who had been in Austin and wanted to learn how to play bridge. Though we had all been in Austin at the same time, Judy and I had never met Ellen or Bill in person. Then two years ago, we were in Manhattan, had dinner with the Casons, and learned we had even heard Bill sing in UT opera productions too!

We met at lunch September 3 on the Uniworld River Princess in Amsterdam and set out on a fourteen night cruise along the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers, all six of us together for the first time.

I’m not going to do my usual thing, writing blow-by-blow accounts of each day. Instead, I’ll add my photos to this account simply as a reminder of a fun time we all had together. Just to remind me of this in a few years, when our memories begin to fade 😉

It’s enough to remember that we had a good time, played cards, played password, enjoyed food and drink, walked a lot, oohed and ahed, and in general had fun! Enjoy the photos.