It's the end of our second day in Budapest! We've seen sooo much stuff here, but I'll try to give you a good summary.
Yesterday we got here at about noon. We took our taxi directly to the Hostel (courtesy of Mr. Ford...thanks!!), so that made it easy. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the sites of Pest, which is the eastern side of the Danube. We started off at the National Museum to brush up on some Hungarian history...we were glad to know a few things before touring around. We ended up taking a brief nap in a movie theater in the museum, though, as the jet lag set in. After the museum, we went to St. Stephen's Basilica where we climbed 10000000000000000000000000 stairs (or so) to the top, where we had a panoramic view of Budapest. After taking a ton of pictures, we went to the bottom of the basilica and explored the inside for a little while. Finally, we bought gelato outside St. Stephens and enjoyed a break before continuing on our trek to City Park. The walk to City Park gave us a good tour of Pest but we were happy to finally get there. Megan got to see a castle (making all of her dreams come true)...and there was a moat! Awesome. We played cards in the park for a while before leaving to find some dinner. On the way to dinner, we took a detour to see the Great Synagogue...its the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world!! This was very exciting, but by this point we were absolutely starving. It took us about 40 minutes to find some legitimate dinner, but eventually we triumphed. We went back to the Hostel pretty early and slept off our jetlag.
Today we went across the Danube to see Buda. We picked up breakfast at the Central Market before going over 1 of three different bridges we crossed today. We spent the morning exploring Castle Hill (where Buda Palace is located) and the surrounding neighborhood. Afterwards, we planned to go on a tour of the Parliament building but - no our great chagrin - the last English tour left 20 minutes before we got there. We took this catastrophe in stride and turned it into an opportunity to pick up Gina's sleeping bag from the airport (it was lost there the day before). This took about 300000000000 hours. When we got back, we headed for the Turkish baths...this was perfect after 2 days of sightseeing in the heat.
So...tomorrow, to Vienna! Don't expect so much detail next time, this took ages to write.
6 comments:
great stuff! glad you found your sleeping bag, gina. have some cake mit schlag in vienna
Great Post! I heard that the TV feed of the German soccer game was cut due to an electrical storm in Vienna, I'm glad you made it through unscathed.
Megan will surely have her fill of Palaces by the end
of this journey. Best of all, now you can reconsider the lederhosen!
off to a great start. Have the hostels been comfortable ? Enjoying following your progress very much.
Hope you're enjoying Vienna, and that the German and Spanish fans are in good spirits. Mike got to London this morning, and we're just off for a bit of culture at the Courtauld Gallery. I had a great day at Wimbledon - especially fun to see Roger Federer play.
love to all, the other Emma.
For Emma - Morgan Uceny has made it through the first two rounds - she has qualified for the olympic trials final by running 2:02 !! The final is on monday night !!
I hope you enjoyed some Mozartkuegeln in Wien! It is great to hear from you regularly-and from the Elliotts too. It has been a grueling couple of days pulling things together to spend the month in Maine. We're already a day later than planned. We're off tomorrow with Jasmine. Jim comes on Monday.
Love to you all (from this Mom too), Chandler
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