Back in Budapest

My (Chris’) Mom came to visit us in Vienna and we decided to take the train over to Budapest for a few days.Here we are after our full 3 hour train ride (which the Austrian train service calls a “just over 2 hour train ride”). Our day started at about 5am in Vienna because we wanted to spend a lot of time walking around today. The train ride went pretty quickly though. Here there be pirates! I’m not sure why, but for a land locked country, Budapest has a strange fascination with pirates. A lot of souvenir stands sell “Budapest Pirate” themed shirts.First stop, the Great Market Hall of Budapest! Mom did pretty well, she spent no more than 200 euros and 30,000 Hungarian Forints today. (I’ll let Dad wonder how much.)Ships ahoy! The big slides at the Citadel park provided endless amusement. Oliver would squeal everytime we went down them and then when we got to the bottom he’d start crying because the ride was over. As soon as we walked back up he’d be giggling and laughing again.Here is a fun little collage we put together of the various trips down the slides. Nana’s turn! (Mom has refused to be called “Grandma” for over a decade)Elora was very excited because we found lots of snail shells all over the place. She loves picking these up in Vienna, but lately we haven’t seen them. Luckily these shells didn’t have snails in them. Usually she picks up live ones, pokes them, and talks about “the snail is slugging all over my hand.” We didn’t know “slugging” was snail-speak for “crawl”, but in Elora’s world anything goes.It’s happy boy in bushes time!This flower garden was begging for someone to go and sit in it.After a very long and sweaty walk up a huge hill, we finally made it to the top. Elora loves this statue. It’s on top of a huge hill overlooking the city that you can see for miles and miles. So she’s always looking up towards it and talking about the park and the fortress near the statue.Yes, apparently not one, but several people have placed their used chewing gum in the butt crack of this statue. Keep staying classy Budapest!Who’s this guy? Why are we taking a picture of him? Oh wait, Karen’s off to the side shooting the bow. She did pretty well actually. But shooting the bow was just an excuse for her to get close to Mr. Budapest here so we could get a picture of him in his medieval garb and authentic Ray Ban sunglasses (500 years old!). Much obliged Mr. Buda.Nothing sweeter than children playing with large anti-air craft guns.The obligatory tourist photo. Somehow scenes like this just beg for you to go and stand there and get your picture taken in front of them. We were so high up that when Mom saw the statue up on top of the hill she said, “We’re not going up there are we?” That’s how we roll…Lots of statues. No idea what it means. But it looked like a Catholic bishop and a barbarian Hun. Maybe it’s depicting the conversion of the nomadic Hun (tuscan) raider peoples? Cue tuscan raider noises… “Arrr Arr Arrr Arrr!”And finally at the end of the day we sat down for a small dinner at a quaint cafe near St Stephens. It was wonderful to bask in the atmosphere of the beautiful basilica and surrounding town square while being serenaded with Iron Maiden and other 80s heavy metal. What a strange, but fun experience, especially considering the cafe was named after the artsy Paris district Montmartre. Ollie danced.