Budapest, Hungary

We arrived in Budapest on June 17th (happy birthday to me) were we were picked up by our friends, Lansing and his son Ethan. Lansing and Sarah were kind enough to let us camp out at there house for a couple of days before leaving for Croatia, as well as a day layover before Amsterdam and another day before going home. We really enjoyed spending time with them. Hopefully we didn't become stinky fish!

Sarah took us to an area known as The Danube Bend, which is north of Budapest where the beautiful blue Danube (which is actually poo brown when you really look at it), breaks through the Pilis and Borzsony Hills in a sharp bend before continuing in to Slovakia. Here we stopped by a majestic palace overlooking the river at Esztergom and Visegrad, where medieval kings once ruled Hungary. Afterwards we stopped in Visegrad for lunch at Gulyas Csarda, where we delighted ourselves in classic, heavy Hungarian cuisine.

While in Budapest, we wandered down the famous Vaci utca, an extensive pedestrian shopping street, strolled through a market place, where I found a wooden Rubik's cube-type toy that I totally fouled up and couldn't get back together, meanwhile the girl working the booth was casting her spell as she glared at me, and then we made our way to the Gellert Furdo thermal baths where we managed to survive an exciting wave pool and soaked in the thermal spas.