The Beauties of Budapest

In the morning we took a bus tour of Budapest, ending in a walking tour around St. Stephen's Cathedral. The city is beautiful. We drove by the old palace and the ornate Parliament Building. I was especially impressed by the fact that the left side of the nave (the worshipper's left) was formerly an Islamic mosque that was incorporated into the fabric of the cathedral when it was enlarged at the beginning of the nineteenth century. After lunch Glenda went to see some performing horses. The presentation evoked the horse culture of the Magyars, who settled Hungary in the ninth century. I walked downtown with Heather and Don from California. Once we got our money exchanged, we visited the House of Terror, a museum showing the horrors of both the Nazi and the Soviet occupation of Hungary in the twentieth century. Next we went to the 4:00 pm tour of the Budapest Opera House. Picture-taking cost an extra five forits, and a mini concert consisting of an opera singer performing one five-minute aria to recorded music cost an extra ten. I opted out of both offers. After supper Heather and I went up to St. Matthias Church with our tripods and cameras to photograph Budapest by night. We had a great time using all our toys to capture some truly wonderful images.Read more