I’m writing this post quickly because I need to get ready so we can head up to Buda Castle Hill to Matyas Church, where I’m going to a Latin high mass at 10AM. Neat! (I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it here before, but one of my goals this trip is to go to church in every country. I missed Bosnia, but I’ve gotten every other country so far. Sweet.)
Sign on our train from Pecs to Budapest.
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The train ride through the Hungarian countryside was amazingly beautiful. This video quality is kind of lousy just because we were on the train and the windows were tinted and dirty, but you get the general idea. They had massive flooding in June, and it was still clearly evident as we passed through flooded fields, roads, and in one place, houses. Sad.
Train station in Budapest.
Our Couchsurfing host lives RIGHT in the center of the city, near some pretty famous stuff. He wasn’t home when our train got in, so we walked across the street from his apartment to the Museum of Fine Arts and Heroes’ Square.
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Heroes' Square
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Inside the Museum of Fine Arts. What a beautiful museum!
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"Art is long, life is brief." (Ars lonca/ Vita brevis.) At least I'm pretty sure that's what it says, based on my almost non-existent Latin ability.
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Museum of Fine Arts from Hosok Tere (Heroes' Square) at sunset.
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I do realize we're going to tourist hell for this, but we did have Mexican food for dinner. Their horchata was basically milk with sugar and cinnamon. I was like, "Dude, you forgot the rice!!" On the other hand, though, I had a 20 ounce glass of absolutely excellent fresh-squeezed OJ that cost me about $3.50. Can't beat that. OMG GOOD. (In Amsterdam, they'd sell 0.2 ml glasses of fresh-squeezed OJ for 3 or 4 Euro... expensive!)
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We both got a kick out of the wall display teaching Hungarians the finer points of Mexican cuisine. :-)
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Where we are now:
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