Panic in Budapest

The planned itinerary for this morning was an excursion called Panoramic Budapest. We were told to show up this morning at 8:30 after breakfast to meet our guide. It turned out to be that the small crew of passengers aboard the Ingvi needed three full size motor coaches to divide up into three relatively small groups of avid tourists.

We had a lot of territory to cover and it was raining, not pouring but a steady drizzle. So checking out the sites of Budapest from a dry and comfortable deluxe motor coach was just fine with me. The first part of the tour was fighting rush hour traffic on the Pest side of the Danube to see various buildings and small squares. We learned about the history of Hungary and how it was founded by people who were led from Asia by seven historic heroes. Coincidentally, there are seven bridges across the Danube. Our ship was docked by the Green bridge and we used the White bridge to cross over into the older part of Budapest which used to simply be called Buda. Geographically, Pest is west of the river and Buda is east.

We found rush-hour traffic in Pest because the main downtown of Budapest is on the east bank. In Buda our bus rapidly started to ascend toward the Prague Castle. Our destination was the church of St. Matthias. We disembarked a couple of blocks away, learned that in order to use the bathroom we had to have either Hungarian, forints or Euros. At this point we had neither. But it wasn't a problem since we had just left on the bus tour after breakfast.

All of us were given a device for hearing the guide’s narration easily when we were out of the bus walking around. The bus dropped us off and we walked along a downtown street where the guide pointed out an ATM. I immediately got a 200 euros from the machine since the euro is the currency accepted in most of the countries we will visit.

We continue to the church of Saint Matthias. The guide purchased tickets for everyone in the group and then we entered the sanctuary and sat in a designated set of pews to listen to his explanation of different points regarding the church. Here are a few shots of the church and other high points of the tour.

Wifi is going to be sporadic now that we are underway. We set sail from Budapest last night (Thursday, March 31). So posting lots of pictures will be problematic. Here is one picture from the required safety drill Wednesday evening before dinner.