Day 27 Budapest, Hungary. Let's Sightsee! 

Joan's View

Out tandem sits in pieces in our room. Tony still has to break it down further and neatly pack it according to his precise layout in the cases. That means from now until we fly out, we are roaming this huge city.

We started this morning with a 4 hour Tuk Tuk tour. Erik, our guide, was a pro at it, and we got to hear lots of great stories. We spent 4 hours buzzing around the city checking out the major sites. Here are some pictures of what we saw:


This is a map in stone that is part of a building. It shows how high a flood came at one point. To the left is a picture of Budapest with Buda on the left, Pest on the right and the Danube flowing through the middle. We took this picture from Budapest's Liberty statue or as the locals call it, "the bottle opener", That area is actually communist monuments that still stand (see the 2 pictures below).

 Erik was kind enough to take us to a primo apple strudel place! Yum Yum!

 From there, we saw the beautiful St Mattias Church










Next, we walked to Fisherman's Bastion for more great views.

 We got back on the Tuk Tuk and saw this Hospital in the Rock, which was built in 1944 as a reinforced bomb shelter under Buda Castle. It was kind of a secret hospital during the war.

We visited the Hungarian Parliament. Outside of the Parliament, these Hungarian soldiers march in precision around the pole. They symbolically protect St. Stephen's crown, which is inside the Parliment building. Across the street from the Parliament, you can see this building which still has bullet holes in the columns from the war in the1950s.

 Tony also got to hold hands with President Reagan. This was at another Communist monument, and to neutralize it, they erected Reagan by remembering him saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."





We saw the shoes along the Danube memorial. It's in tribute to those Jews during the war who were lined up along the Danube after being ordered to take off their shoes. Shoes were valuable then. They were chained together, shot and fell to their death in the Danube.

 This picture of a Rubik's cube is painted on the side of a building. It simply looks like dots until you take a picture of it, and it becomes 3D.

Another picture shows Tony outside of the Hotel California, such a lovely place, such a lovely place.

 We also visited the Ruins Bar. It is old Jewish housing that instead of tearing down, became an eclectic bar with all of these funky rooms.

We stopped at heroes square.








At the end of our tour, Erik dropped us off at the Central Market. We picked up a few things to eat.

 Our day was already full of the sights of Budapest. Tony found an English mass at Jesuit Church of the Sacred Heart. We found dinner at a Craft Bar and called it a day.

Tony's Extras

The day was filled with a lot of information about the Hungarian people and their history. I had a little bit of time sitting outside of shops to let Joan shop, but not too bad. Erik, out TukTuk driver was well educated on the United States and its politics. He knew our past Presidents better than me. He said when this happened in Hungary's history, Eisenhower was president, etc. 
We still need to decide what we want to do tomorrow. It's such a big city and so many options.