We visited the Shoes on the Danube, a memorial there to honor those lost in WWII. We also went through the Labyrinth, naturally made, but now used in connection to Dracula; they were quite creepy with very few lights, fog, and opera music echoing throughout accompanied by wax figures as a masquerade ball. We took the funicular down Buda Hill, rode the Budapest Eye, and as we were sitting having a milkshake to cool down, a random parade came by as there are multiple festivals happening around here, but what mostly caught my attention was the guy having to wear a fur coat in 90 degrees. We had a great dinner where we cooked our own meat on a lava rock (I had some Mangalica Pork, mostly because I was really intrigued by the concept of eating a fuzzy pig). And then we were supposed to take an overnight train tonight to Munich, but we ended up missing that one, but we were able to get another train to Munich tomorrow morning and a hotel room in the same hotel we stayed in last night so it all worked out. Plus we were glad to be able to take a shower after sweating all day.
Margaret Island
The cruise is over but we are still hanging around Europe for a little while, so we checked into our hotel where we got a very fancy room for just one night. We explored the city a little more and visited the oldest church in Budapest, the Roman ruins of which can be seen through glass in the floor of the new church built over it. We took a tour of Margaret Island on some electric scooters – the traffic was crazy but it was quite a fun way to get around. Margaret Island is located in between Buda and Pest (on one side of the Danube is Buda and the other is Pest – the two cities joined a while ago, first being called Pestbuda, but since Buda was the previous capital they decided to put that first). The island is so beautiful, basically just a giant park as there are no residences and no cars are allowed to drive around, and it contains an English rose garden, a Japanese garden, a zoo, and a waterpark, as well as a fountain that does a light show in the evening and lots of green space.
Hopping Around Amsterdam
We had a couple of delays with our flight getting to Dallas yesterday, but our flight to Amsterdam also got slightly delayed so we were able to still make it to Amsterdam mostly on time. We were successful with our first Amsterdam adventure: navigating the train station and getting to our hotel, which has an amazing view of the city. After a quick nap to recharge, we explored Amsterdam with a Hop-On-Hop-Off boat tour on the canals. Amsterdam has about the same amount of water as Venice, but far less bridges.