Today we met Kati who will be our guide in Budapest for the next 2 days. Today we toured the Pest side of the city. Due to the fact that Budapest is much more spread out than Prague our tour has a driver that drops and picks us off at different places. We were thankful as the temps were over 90 today. We visited the section of Pest that was developed for the millennium celebration at the end of the 1800s. Hungary was celebrating its 1000 year history. Once again I realized that the US is so young. We are working on 300 years. The neatest site there was a park where they constructed palaces and churches that showed all of the styles of architecture over the thousand years. I figured that had taken a very long time, but it had on taken several months.

Here we have the medieval castle.....

And the Gothic Church with its Monastery...

We also visited St. Steven's Basilica. It is the largest in Budapest and had some of the most amazing Italian marble inside the church.

 

We also visited the Jewish Quarter where we saw an amazing piece of artwork that was a memorial to those who died and suffered during the Holocaust. The broken limbs symbolize those who were lost and the new growth symbolizes the new generation.

We ended our tour in the market place where they sell every type of fruit and veggie you could think of. Also, they sell paprika. Hungarians use two types...hot and sweet. They use the sweet in their cooking and then have the hot on their tables like salt and pepper to spice up their dishes. They even sell every type of pickled thing you could think of....even some pickled cauliflower that had happy faces on them. Let me just say I wish we had one of these back in Columbus. Absolutely amazing. Made me want to go home and cook something.

 

We ended the evening with a traditional Hungarian folk concert. Lots of dancers, stringed instruments, and gypsy music. It was great fun and a good way to get some Hungarian culture. I even recognized a couple of the songs from American commercials.