We managed to get a great nights sleep and woke up around 0830. The hotel includes breakfast, so after doing all things morning, we headed down for food. A good buffet was laid on from cereal through Continental to eggs, bacon, pancakes etc.
Prior to leaving Lyn had bought tickets for the Hop-on-Hop-Off bus, which is our usual way to do a quick trip around the city and see what want to explore further.
It promised to be a warm day with temperatures in the low 20’s (mid 70’s) and clear skies.
We headed down to the bust stop which was by St. Stephens Basilica.
At this stage, I have to mention we didn’t bring a camera on this trip, as I had just got a Google Pro 7 cell phone whose camera specs are better than the camera’s!! HOWEVER, I am still not used to using it and there may be the occasional spare digit appearing in the picture!! Also thee photos have been compressed in size as the originals were 4-6MbB in size, which would take up a fair bit of bandwidth to upload them.
Rather than spend a whole time jabbering on, I’ll just show a bunch of pictures with minimal content. If you are interested in the story behind them, the internet search is your friend!
Many walls were decorated with art.
Although we are not lovers of Opera, the internal decor of the Opera House was amazing.
As we drove along the Danube we could see all the cruise boats moored up for the day
The attention to detail on the stone work of many buildings was amazing, below is just one example.
We stopped for lunch at a sidewalk cafe where we had a quick sandwich (Carrot cake and Apple pie may have found their way onto our table as well!)
Next we were back on the bus to Heroes Square
In the same area as Heroes square were a number of other attractions, including a zoo and botanical gardens. We didn’t visit these as we weren’t too sure of how much time we’d need for other parts of the tour. There was also an old castle in the vicinity.
Budapest is also home to the worlds second largest synagogue, so the tour information told us. A little fact checking shows that it is the 9th largest. Wonder if I can get my money back??
At the back of the Synagogue is a metal tree sculpture, each leaf is engraved with the name of a Hungarian who died in the holocaust.
By the end of the afternoon we were ready to head back to the hotel. On the way we were looking for a restaurant for tonight’s meal. Although there were a few along the way none really appealed. As we got closer to the hotel, there was a sign over an entrance way for a Bazar, the spelling was close enough to attract Lyn’s attention! In fact this led to a whole area of restaurants, some indoors and some on patios. Well worth exploring later.
We went back to the Bazar later and had a very enjoyable meal there. Prices here seem to be similar to, or slightly less than Canadian prices. The exchange rate leads to some large number though as 1 Canadian dollar buys around 380 florints.
Enough for today, hopefully the pictures worked out OK this time. By the way, the usual disclaimer, I am writing this at the end of a busy day, there will be spelling and grammar mistakes!