budapest | Adventuring in Europe

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Budapest 2016 Revisited

Posted on July 21, 2016 by melvisx

Of all the countries we visited this summer I was most excited to go to Hungary. I suppose my interest was because I’d never been to a country that had been behind the Iron Curtain. I had no idea what to expect, but Budapest turned out to be exactly what I had expected.

Before going people asked why I was so interested in going to Hungary I had some amorphous thoughts but couldn’t articulate them. After visiting Budapest and riding through the city seeing the grungy buildings with plaster falling off, crumbled buildings here and there, people going about their lives, I realized this is exactly what I expected. A former Soviet Bloc country rebuilding itself. Among the decaying and crumbling buildings were of course restored and maintained places of national pride as well as new construction.

One of the points of pride we visited was Buda Castle (I had no idea Budapest was formed by the union of two towns). Below are some shots of the street leading into Buda Castle.

It was difficult to get a shot of the whole castle given the small space and increasing number of people. Moments after we arrived at the castle two tour buses unloaded.

Tried to fit model of cathedral.

Courtyard

Couldn’t resist….

Of course after taking this I noticed my group and moved on, and I had no idea where. Oops.

The view from the castle was awesome:

From the castle we headed to the Pest side of Budapest and along the way passed this

…which looked really awesome, but alas was not one of our destinations. Instead we went to the city center for some lunch were I found this, and did that:

…but didn’t buy this:

We also took a sweet river cruise:

We also went to a bath house which was awesomely relaxing:

The morning we departed Budapest we visited another of what would become a theme of our trip, a public market….

…where we bought some snacks for the road and last minute souvenirs like this sweet fridge magnet:

Stalin

Wish I could read Hungarian 😦

And of course no trip for me would be complete with out at least one amusing sign…

budapest

…and random photos from a rest stop on the way to our next destination:

Categories: Geography, Original post, photography, Travel | Tags: budapest, hungary, Iron Curtain, photography, travel | Leave a comment

Of Long Days and Moist Kiddos

Posted on June 12, 2016 by melvisx

(I think I might be setting the bar a wee bit high on the titles.) As the title begs explanation, here it is: I learned yesterday that one of the students on the trip doesn’t like to be called kiddo, so of course I call them that as often as possible. At one point I asked, “What about moist?”

“Oh, I hate that word too!”

“Well, then moist kiddos must be the worst!” I said with a huge smile on my face. I’ll let the reader take that wherever they want.

(Story note: it’s really been several days since I started this post, so I’ll try and summarize those days to catch up.)

Day 2

Visit to Harrod’s to grab some breakfast and be amazed at the amount of awesome stuff neatly presented, then headed off to see the changing of the guard, which was a lot like one would expect; a huge crowd of people, police keeping them wrangled (incidentally, British police are very polite), and lots of eating for a few moments of cool.

From there we headed to Borough Market which was full of all manner of cool things to see and yummy stuff to eat.

After some grub and gawking it was over to the Tower of London, to learn of torture and moats; so I of course took a picture of some chicken wire baboons.

Oops, forgot, on the way to the Tower of London we also visited the Tower Bridge.

From the Tower, we mosied over to Oxford Square for a little shopping and dinner.

Day 3 we headed to Oxford to visit the town and schools which was quite nice save the bus rides to and from which took longer than the bus company said they would, and caused us to miss riding the London Eye at night.

There was a sweet cemetery too, but those pics are on my camera which has a dead battery; so you’ll have to wait for t

Day 4 & 5 (they blurred together for me) caught the London Eye prior to the gauntlet at became our journey to Hungary. Though our travel to Hungary was harrowing and delayed my arrival at the hotel made up for it when I turned down the hall toward my room and there was a tall attractive blonde in the hallway; in her underwear. Unfortunately I discovered the next morning that said siren was part of an Italian high school team, #awkward.

Soooo, Hungary, loving it!

Nearly forgot, London Eye!

Day 6 Hungary tour. We began at the Buda Castle, had a casual kebab lunch in the city center and finished up “swimming” in the pool fed by hot springs. I really didn’t know what to expect, but it was a giant public pool with all manner of people enjoying the water and watching soccer on a giant screen.