Today I took a
guided tour out to the country, away from Budapest. I wanted to see villages outside the big city and that we
did! We drove north to Slovakia,
and indeed crossed over into Slovakia and wandered around a small village right
at the border. Then we visited the
Basilica of St. Stephen in Estergom, which is absolutely magnificent and
apparently, one of the five largest Roman Catholic basilicas in the world. I’ve included a coupld of pics of the
interior, as it was truly beautiful, with absolutely stunning frescoes on the
walls and ceiling.
As you can tell
from the pics, there has been a fair amount of snow in the past couple of days
and today it was absolutely freezing! The temps were in the low 20s and it was
quite bracing. The drive up to
Slovakia and Estrogom was beautiful however, as everything was blanketed in the
new snowfall and it was really quite pretty. The guide apologized for not taking us through the mountains
but he was concerned that the roads would not have been plowed sufficiently for
us to traverse them safely, so I was fine with main highways! We drove over into Slovakia and then
our guide let us walk back into Hungary over the bridge that spans the Danube
at that border. I’ve included a
pic of me standing on the bridge with the Basilica of St. Stephen behind
me. We then toured the
Basilica. After that we drove back down to Szentendre, a small artists colony
just north of Budapest. It reminds
me of Provincetown, Hungarian style!
We had lunch in a lovely small restaurant where there are only 4
tables! The other three were taken
up with Russian tourists and one Hungarian family so I heard no English at all
for some time today. There was
only one other person on the tour with me, a young Chinese student who was
completely silent the entire day!!
(I’m guessing his command of spoken English is not as good as his
comprehension, so he was able to understand what the guide said but did not want
to struggle to converse with us. )
As I was frozen to the bone, I had two lattes in rapid succession just
to warm up (don’t plan on sleeping tonight!!) and had a delicious veal stew
with gnocci for lunch. The stew
had a delicious spicy gravy with sour cream. It was completely perfect for lunch on a freezing cold day. It filled me up so much I have no desire
for dinner tonight. I’ve got a
cherry strudel from a local bakery that will do fine if and when I get peckish!
After lunch we
had a couple of hours to wander through Szentendre, which was dangerous for me
as there were lots of lovely shops.
I wound up doing most of my shopping for this trip there. The stuff was beautiful and the prices
were better than in the Great Market here in town. I had one mishap, however. As I was fumbling with my various belongings in one shop my
camera fell off a counter to the floor.
Alas, that seems to have killed it. I couldn’t get it going again and when I got back to the
room I read the manual to see if I could troubleshoot the issue but no
luck. So I then had an unexpected
journey out to a popular shopping mall to buy a new camera! (I can hardly go through the rest of my
stay here without one!) The metro map was confusing so I wound up getting off
one stop too early, but eventually found the place. It was like Eastview Mall magnified, and in Hungarian!! I found a media store where I bought a
new camera and then came back home to get it set up. Not what I had planned for this evening, but oh well! I certainly had an experience of
mingling with the locals, because that mall was most definitely not a tourist
venue! I was surrounded by
Hungarians and many American store chains where everyone was speaking
Hungarian!
So
I’m having a quiet night in the apartment, staying warm and relaxing after the
unexpected adventures of the early evening! Tomorrow I plan to hit the Jewish Quarter in the first half
of the day and possibly another of the thermal baths later in the day. More anon….
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