July 25, 2010 On to Budapest, Hungary

We left Vienna at about 8:30 am and arrived in Budapest at about 11:30. It was rainy, windy and cool. Some were let out at the shopping street, but many came on to the hotel even though it was too early to get our rooms. We sat in the lobby for a while and then went back and picked up several at the shopping area and were taken to the House of Horror. It is a museum or memorial in the very house where the Nazi's during WWII were housed and then after when the communists took over, It was so sobering and frightening the atrocities that were done to these Hungarian people during those times. It is one thing to hear about or read about this part of history and quite another to be right where these things happened. Again, no pictures were allowed inside. It is something you would never forget if you saw the names and pictures and videos of people that experienced the atrosities to themselves and their families. These places are not happy places, but necessary so that the world will never forget and hopefully not repeat what happened here.

On a happier note, the picture above is the view from our hotel window. we are right on the Danube River that separates Buda from Pest. Buda is very hilly and Pest is flat.

After coming back to the hotel, we went to a market and bought a few things. Some interesting things, you bring your own bags to the store or else you have to purchase one to carry your things home. We went there especially to buy some paprika, which is made from peppers and is used in a lot of their food. At home, it is just a dry spice, but here it comes like a paste in tubes or packets or jars. It can be sweet or hot.

Well, some of the people are "cut" out of the picture, but this is where we had dinner. The food was Hungarian goulash, which was a vegetable soup with paprika in it for starters and we all had the chicken at our table. The dessert was like cheesecake with a strawberry sauce on it. It wasn't very sweet at all so even I could have some, of course, after I scraped off the strawberry. Why couldn't it have been raspberry? Go figure. All the food was very good.

The evening ended with Jerry going down on the street to take a picture of the Chain Bridge at night. In spite of the rainy, cool weather, we had a great day.