Budapest

The rain has finally stopped - still chilly though, about 10 degrees in the morning.

The day starts with a bus tour of the city highlights. The city is beautiful. It is hard to get my head around the fact that some of these beautiful buildings are only apartments.

The tour ends at the city's palace/fortress on the top of a hill (as usual) and the view is of the entire city. We find a few things up here that we are interested in and plan to return after lunch. This area is really quite large with a hotel, many shops, restaurants, a cathedral, and other touristy things.

After lunch we explore the Pest side of the city (the river divides the city into the Buda and Pest sides). We walk down a long pedestrian area filled with shops and cafes. The prices here seem to be the same if not higher than what we would see at home. I bought a top in the H&M store in NY and saw a very similar one in the H&M here and it was 25% more. The sun has come out so we stop at a cafe for a drink and some people watching. It seems as though most people speak English and other languages besides Hungarian.

Next we cross over to the Buda side and stop at a chapel in a cave. Apparently there are many caves in the area. We take a funicular to the top of the hill where the castle/fortress we want to revisit is. A wine cellar is here with over 1000 Hungarian wines. About 50 of them are open for sampling so we spend a bit of time here. We tasted some really good stuff here, however, the Hungarians and the Spanish must have a competition on the the world's worst wine. We tried one just like the one we had in Spain that we hated.

Some of the caves here have been made into a labyrinth for visitors. You are given a lantern to help you through the completely dark maze. The caves themselves are natural, but the rest of the things to see are recent additions.

Although this is our last night on the ship we wanted to go out again after dinner. The rain has returned so we decide against it.