Our First Hungarian Sunset

Our afternoon train from Zagreb to Budapest was right on time, as trains in Europe always are. This is one of the pleasures of travelling in Europe ~ the trains. It’s nice not to have to go through security, take your shoes off, and pull your laptop out of your bag. You just get on the train and open your bottle of wine.

 We were set with our ham and cheese sandwiches and a bottle, well 3 bottles of wine for the 7 hour ride to Budapest.  When the trip began there were 5 people in our 6 person 1^st class cabin.  It was very hot and the cabin was stuffy. Shortly after we started out, I took a walk and met a young woman in the cabin next to us, but their cabin was a lot cooler. I asked her why. Her suggestion of opening the window didn’t work for us as it was locked.

At one of the stops all the people in both our cabins departed except Denny and I and the women next door. She invited us to come and join her and rid ourselves of our sauna like conditions.  It was nice to meet Agnes, who is from Budapest and had lots of good advice on what to see and filled us in on what Hungary is like.

When she looked at our directions for getting to the hotel, she suggested we get off at her stop and then she would make sure we transferred to the right train that would take us right to the Hilton.  When her boyfriend met her, he had already purchased tickets for us on the connecting subway. How nice is that! Here we are in a strange city at night and our quandary of how to negotiate the Budapest subway system is suddenly solved.  Agnes and Sandor not only provided us with the necessary tickets but also guided us right up to the Hilton entrance.

 Tonight, we took them to dinner and they had a great restaurant picked out with a spectacular view of the City.  It was an area called the Citadel which is on the Buda side of the beautiful Danube River,
 

 Today we walked around the city and saw many spectacular sites: The Hungarian Parliament, we were lucky to get there just in time to see the changing of the guard. Freedom Square, where we took pictures along side of the Ronald Reagan Statue and the Soviet Memorial. St. Stephen’s Basilica, with its majesty,  built in 1845.  Denny believes it is one of the two most magnificent churches in the world, being 2nd only to St. Peter's in Rome.