Two Great Cities Rolled Into One

 I looked at my passport. I had renewed it in 2014 and it did not have a single stamp in it. I used to travel internationally all the time and I had not set foot off US shores in like forever. I'm so ashamed. I guess I've been spending all my time traveling around the US in the RV and overseas travel got overlooked. This definitely needed to change. I've always wanted to do one of those river cruises and now was the time to do it. I'm so used to figuring out how to do everything myself – where am I going to sleep, what am I going to eat/do? This river cruise with every thing taken care of for me would be a perfect way to start to get my international chops back. So, off to eastern Europe with my traveling buddies, Mike and Marina – my brother and sister-in-law. 

Minneapolis at sunset.  

We got to our VRBO in Budapest, Hungary rather late in the day. Our VRBO was perfectly located, one block off the Danube, around the corner from several excellent restaurants and only a ten minute walk from our ship, the AmaBella.

The street our apartment was on

Budapest is actually two cities located across from each other on the Danube. Buda was the high rent town where the royalty lived, while Pest was where the business area located. We had a whole day and a half in Budapest before the ship sailed and we decided that a Segway tour was the way to make the most of it. The tour would take us up the hill on the Buda side and it was a blast. I've never been on a Segway before and it was fairly easy to figure out how it worked. And you could go fast on it.

Behind us is a memorial dedicated to St Gellert, a Roman Catholic bishop who came to Hungary to convert the heathens. There was a pagan uprising where the pagans threw him down this hill to his death. Supposedly, every level of the waterfall commemorates where he bounced on his way down the hill. Note: my helmet was way too large, so I spent most of the time being slightly choked.

The Budapest Castle Hill Funicular
This was built so the rich people didn't have to climb up to the castle

The Segways took us up to Fisherman's Bastion, named because fisherman defended the area from invaders during the Middle Ages. It was the best place to look over the Pest side of the river. Nowadays, this is a popular place for marriage proposals.  

We were on Castle Hill during the noon hour and were in the courtyard of Matthias Church when the bells started ringing.

The Parliament Building

The Shoes On The Danube was a very moving memorial made to honor the Jews who were massacred by the Hungarian militia during WWII. The Jews were ordered to take off their shoes (shoes were valuable and could be stolen and resold by the militia after the massacre) and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. Wiki

We did a lot of walking and since TripAdvisor said that the #1 thing to do in Budapest was to tour the Parliament building, we signed up for a tour. The Parliament Building is the second largest parliament building in the world (first place goes to Romania) and besides being massive, it is a very grand building indeed.

The Grand Hall

Where Parliament meets

Parliament members are not allowed to smoke in the Assembly Room
so they would place their cigars in these numbered slots before they went in

I really like Budapest. The buildings are grand and the people were very friendly. I was here previously in the late 90's and remembered little. This time, I only had a day and a half and really could not do it justice during that time.

I found a reference to a Michael Jackson memorial in a park.  We walked several blocks out of our way to find the memorial.  Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the Budapest Michael Jackson Memorial.