The Constant Traveler: Day 12 : Budapest

Today is a trip to Budapest. Found out that it was originally or maybe still is two cities. Buda and Pesh, each side of the river Danube. The whole ride there was thru the fog. Between 2 and 5 cars in length visibility. Doesn't work so well when the lady says there is monestary off to the right built in yada yada. Kinda just tuned it all out at that point.

They are part of the European Union but not on the euro so the boarder crossing was nothing, kinda like crossing into California there is a few buildings but at least today no one was manning it.

So it's funny to remember seeing on Facebook all these refugee crossings and crazy posts. So far we have only seen one family I would say we're likely refugees. I kinda wonder if all the RVs we saw were related to that at all. Seemed a bit cold for RVs in a few spots.

Anyway we first drive around the city over to a large park with a palace. Also a memorials to heros called Heros square.

Opposite the palace is a large pond they use for rowing in the summer and ice skating in the winter. I'd say likely the most popular place in Budapest because the lines were long and the ice was busy.

We had lunch at the restaurant looking out at the ice rink and palace. Great atmosphere and food. First course was a goulash, or beef stew. They gave us green fresh paprika peppers that were a bit spivey. For lunch it was a paprika chicken with a noodle. I looked it up and it seems easy to make so may try that some day.

After lunch we went to the old town the Buda side. Although 70 percent was destroyed during the war they rebuilt much of it in a historic way.

We saw this strange statue near the square. The town also has a labyrinth of tunnels we saw going down but didn't get a chance to explore.

We had a great view of the Danube. And the church on that side had a fancy tile roof that seems very unique to this region.

Next stop the down town. Our goal was to go see the synagogue which is the third largest in the world only behind Israel and Manhattan. The place was beautiful with lots of tile work, however we missed the entrance by 10 minutes.

So instead we went over to the basilica, it had a lot of glitter to it. A lot of gold plating on the cielings. There was also a mummified hand of at Stephen I guess, that looked creepy.