We had almost a full day in BP because our flight didn't leave until evening.  We planned to catch the Metro/bus out to the airport at about 3 pm, so we skedaddled off to Parliament for the 10 a.m. English tour.

Parliament was modeled after London's Parliament, and you can clearly see the resemblance from across the river.


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After our bus from Skanzen arrived back downtown, we took the Metro and then a tram out to Bokay Kert [garden - I keep chuckling when I think bouquet gardens] for the September Festival.  This is a big celebration of Goulasch!  On Saturday, the mayors of all the little towns around Budapest got together to cook up a huge pot of the stuff.  On ( Read more... )

I received an email from the US embassy in Budapest:  apparently someone turned in my wallet including "drivers license, military ID and some other cards" [unspecified].  The embassy is sending it to me via diplomatic pouch - it should take about 3 weeks, I guess pouches belonging to diplomats move pretty slowly.  Or maybe it has to go back to the ( Read more... )

The park was celebrating grape harvest.  ( Dancers and singers.... )

I had read about a Hungarian open air museum in Szentendre, a small town a short distance out of Budapest.  In English, the museum is called Skanzen.  This is a pretty cool place for finding out about Hungarian village life.  Whole buildings have been moved here and assembled into small villages representing different parts of the country.   We've ( Read more... )

We ate lunch at the Great Market Hall, where you could get sandwiches, salads, Hungarian sausages and the greatest thing ever:  Langos, pronounced Lahn-gosh.  This is similar to Indian fry bread, and is sometimes called Hungarian pizza.  The yeast dough is made with flour and mashed potatoes, then shaped into flat rounds and fried so it puffs up in ( Read more... )

We lost part of our morning dealing with the fallout from the lost wallet.  I learned about Western Union and wiring money, etc.  Quite interesting and useful in case of emergencies, but frankly I hope I never have to do this again!

We took the 16 bus down the hill, passing 54 empty tour buses parked on the hill - all their tourists already ( Read more... )

We totally lucked out on evening entertainment:  the square across the street from our hotel was the venue for a weekend-long festival of Hungarian music and food. Budavari Nyaruto 2010.   Every day from 10 a.m. to 10 pm, we had the opportunity to listen to Magyar Muzsika of all kinds.  And free!  Well, the food and wine cost money, but the sounds ( Read more... )

After our bike tour, we lucked into attending a wedding in St. Istvan's Basilika [St. Stephen's, and it's only a basilica minor because it doesn't fully qualify architecturally, but the pope made a special exception].   The basilica was closed to the public for the wedding, but the doors were still open to allow the guests to enter.  There were 4 ( Read more... )

Budapest, as you probably know, is two cities separated by the Danube, Buda on the hilly side and Pest on the flat side, as the Danube marks the edge of the great Carpathian plain.

We had prepaid for a bike tour of Budapest, with Yellow Zebra.   We were supposed to meet at Deak ter [square or plaza], but first we had to get there.  The bus stop ( Read more... )