Budapest Day 4

Today we wanted to see St. Stephen's Basilica. We couldn't go any earlier because Will Smith had done a concert there the night we arrived. No, I'm not kidding. I forgot to mention it in my earlier post, but we actually heard him speaking when we were at Buda Castle the other day. Quite surreal. Anyway, the church looks like this.

Before we did that, we had breakfast. I saw French toast on the menu, so I ordered that. It came out looking like this - that's sour cream in the dish and salad on the side. Not like any French toast I'd ever had before. It tasted okay but really needed something more to it.

Oh, earlier on we'd seen a shibe - the first in Budapest. Not the last, though; more on that later.

So, St. Stephen's.

There's a relic in the box - St. Stephen's right hand, apparently. Looks kinda gross, whatever it is. We were warned by Zoltan the tour guide that you have to put money in a slot to make the lights come on. But if you wait around long enough, someone else probably will; that's when you take your pictures.

We went up to the observation deck. There were probably a lot of stairs, but it was worth it.

Back down again.

We'd booked a tour of the Hungarian Parliament Building. It's very impressive.

We got our tickets but had some time on our hands first, so we went for a wander.

Eventually we went in.

Tour over, we went wandering some more.

We went to the see Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial.

Back on the road.

We hired some bikes and went riding on Margaret Island, which is in the middle of the Danube.

Shibe!

THE SHIBE LOOKED AT ME. And the nice owner lady said I could pat the shibe so I did.

SHIBE NUMBER 3 FOR THE DAY. It had started to rain rain; apparently it was also going to rain adorable Japanese dogs.

Rochelle got to pat this shibe, briefly.

They make very cool magnet souvenirs in Hungary. I have one now.

And that was Budapest. We went out for dinner but I didn't take any pictures, only Rochelle did. So I have to get them from her.

Both of us were very sad to be leaving this place - it was easily our favourite destination so far; I'm not 100% sure where it sits for me when you add in all the other places I've been, but I reckon it'd be pretty high - beaten only maybe by London.

There's just a great energy to the place. It was easy to get around, the food was excellent, the wine was great (have been trying to work out where to get some in Australia) and the exchange rate against the Aussie dollar means that everything is ridiculously cheap by our standards. We found ourselves adjusting to that and refusing to go anywhere we felt was overpriced - wanting more than 3 AUD for a coffee, or 15 AUD for a main meal suddenly became unreasonable...