European Van Trip 2022

The walking tour here was one of the best of the MANY we've been on! We felt stupid to Budapest is in fact 2 places... Buda being the rich area out of the touristy center, and pest being the more working class and commonly visited part.

Pic 3 is Mr Beans Teddy bear as a statue 😂 I was proud to recognise him when she asked if anyone knew who it was 🙈😂

The shoes by the river are symbols of all the Jewish lives lost, taken to places (Auschwitz being the main one) to be killed. A 'popular' way to kill them was to have 2 people put together and stood in front of the river, so one bullet would kill the first and their weight would drown the one at the back as the bullet actually wouldn't go through 2 people. Just absolutely awful. The shoes are of all sizes from babies to mens, heels, boots etc to represent the entire communities lost 😭

There are a LOT of pictures of the parliamentary building as there was just so much of it and it was so impressive.

It was actually a competition between architects to design that building, but the second place of the competition they liked so much they built it opposite and its the one 4 pics from the end.Leia mais

When we woke up this morning, to Lennon's joy there were cows passing the window, and we had some stray dogs outside too. To Ringo's joy (not) we gave the dogs some of Ringo's treats, they looked fed and happy enough.

There were a couple of old ladies (you can kind of see in picture 2) who spent the 2 hours we were in the van picking mushrooms and also collecting walnuts from the ground all around where we were parked. Brace got us one walnut while he was out 😂

The video is our mate who kept very gently biting Brace's ankles...

Then we got to the bear cave. We knew the tour would be in Romanian and no English option but wanted to go and look anyway. When we entered there were about 30 Romanians... Everyone was staring at us. It felt so uncomfortable, I felt really unwelcome and started worrying about whether Lennon was going to be noisy on the tour etc.

How wrong we were! Everyone was so friendly. Lennon was kissed by a man and almost all the women 😂 a lovely couple started talking to us to before we actually entered the cave. When we started the tour, we followed along at the back, not understanding a word but in awe of the cave! We were not allowed to take photographs, but the first few minutes walk the floor was just covered in huge bones and animal skulls, apparent prey of the bears. Thousands of bones. The cave itself was just as mad, definitely the most striking cave I've seen the millions of stalactites and stalactites ranging from cm's to full floor to ceiling thick boulders which would take 28 thousand years to form!!!

Some of it was beautiful, some of it was eerie, and then we got to the main event, the full bear skeleton 🐻

After the tour guide had done his bit, a lovely old man came and asked us if we had understood the guide, so we said no not at all. He then re told all the stories we had missed, and stayed with us for the rest of the tour translating the guide and chatting to us in between. He recommended his town to visit (which just so happens to be where we are going next) and took a photo for us as well as with us at the end.

He said they have found the remains of 141 bears in the cave, the bears were pre historic bears and thousands of years ago, rocks falling trapped them all in leaving them to die trapped in. The bears were 3m tall. The cave was only discovered in the 70s, accidentally when they were using explosives to mine rock. It is always 10°c no matter what time of day or year, it never changes! To creat 1cm² of stalagmite it would take 100 years! The highest point of the cave is 27m. So very big and grand for a cave.

At the very end, we were allowed a few photos but it doesn't do it any favours.

When we left the tour the street was lined with stalls selling home made things. Our none tour guide guide recommended we bought what we thought was plum wine. The woman selling it gave me a taste and it wasn't wine at all so I ended up having a very strong morning shot 😅 then he recommended we buy something else, a sort of fried flat bread.

We had a lovely morning, 3rd day in Romania and so far it's just been the most friendly and welcoming place 😊Leia mais