ICPDR's middle basin begins at Bratislava. The slope falls from about 0.43 percent to 0.1 percent. The river dumps gravel as the Little Alföld island-delta (Szigetköz / Žitný ostrov), then cuts the Visegrád gorge — one of only two canyon stretches on the entire middle Danube — and spills across the Great Alföld past Budapest and Csepel Island. Alpine water is still in it (Inn, Traun, Enns), but the river now behaves as a lowland ice-and-rain stream: winter ice jams (the 1838 Pest flood), broad islands, Gemenc-type wetlands. The great lowland tributaries that will nearly triple the discharge — Drava, Tisza, Sava — have not all joined yet. The Drava arrives at the southern edge of this stretch (Aljmaš/Osijek). The Tisza and Sava join further down in Serbia. The water under your hull is Alps snowmelt that has left the mountains and is learning the plain.

Ordas is a small left-bank village used as the cruise landing for Kalocsa, the paprika and archbishopric town in the marshy productive district 142 km south of Budapest. The day's industry is grain and red gold.