Beautiful Budapest

Budapest is actually two cities that are split by the Danube river, the Buda side is hilly and has the castle and a famous old bath house called the Gellert Baths.  Pest is on the other side of the river and it is where we stayed and spent most of our time.

Driving across the bridge when we arrived was neat because you can look down the river both ways and see cool bridges and buildings, a little like crossing one of the bridges into Washington, DC and seeing all the monuments and landmarks!

One of the many amazing bridges.

We checked into our hotel and wandered around, we found a Spring Market...which was like a Christmas Market but with beautiful weather.  Here was the freshly cooked salmon that we had for dinner!

Kelly and Katie tried the tiny sausages!

This is Chimney cake...round bread turned over the fire. they pop it off and sprinkle it with cinnamon & sugar (or a few other toppings). It was delicious!

A cool swing at the night market..this was before the fighting began over who got to have the swing!

We found a cool statue on our walk to Parliament...he was near the American Embassy.

Charlie attempting to be Spiderman!

Olympic park and playground...Hungary has many Olympic medalists and they all had their names on a monument in the park.

The golden staircase at the Parliament building.  We went to see the crown & scepter that were once stored in Fort Knox for safekeeping.

These are cigar holders where members of Parliament could leave their cigars in the halls while they went back into the chamber to vote!

Times have changed somewhat...they are no longer allowed to smoke in the building...outside is another story..Katie really hates all the smoke you walk through everywhere!

The red communist start that used to be on top of Parliament...now its just in a display on the tour.

We did an escape room that was pretty creepy...it was in a smelly basement and the theme was an operating room..Charlie really wanted to leave before our hour was up...happily we made it out!

The guidebook said to get the best view, don't take the Ferris Wheel but instead climb to the bell tower of the St. Stephen's Basilica..the book was right, we got a wonderful view from the top and looked down on the Budapest Eye!  Inside there is a relic of St. Stephen's hand..If you drop in a Euro coin it will light the relic up for 5 minutes.  There was a group of  Hungarian Elementary school kids standing around hoping a tourist would come with a coin...luckily Kelly had one in her bag and we loved watching their reaction to seeing the hand-very fun!  I don't have a photo but it was neat to see their reaction!

Something I had no really thought much about is that most cathedrals have an inner dome that is painted/decorated, then they have a second dome over top to protect it.  Here is a view of the inner dome/outer dome of St. Stephen's Basilica.

We walked across the river to the Gellert Baths and lucky for Katie her friend from Brussels happened to be in Budapest the same time as us..so she got to spend the day with us.  The big bath house is behind the kids in this picture.

The bathhouse was gorgeous old place..I didn't take many pictures because I locked up my stuff, but here was a ceiling dome in the entrance.

Another shot inside the bathhouse. Water was great, warm, there were about 12 pools, sadly the outdoor wave pool was not on for the season yet!

Crossing back, all soaked & ready for dinner! The kids liked this bath house much better...much younger hipper crowd, mostly tourists!

Hungarian flag blowing in the wind!

We took a night boat tour...here is the castle on the Buda side at night.

Katie & Astrid with the Parliament in the back.

The Parliament Building lit up at night was incredible..this photo doesn't do it justice!

Sadly our time in Budapest came to an end and we headed back for school to start back up!  We were all charmed by Budapest and hope that maybe we can return again one day!