New Years Day

Donna and I decided to do the "Hop on Hop off" tour of Budapest today. The boys have had enough and are quite tired from last night. Outside to get on the bus and what happens, SNOW! YES it actually started snowing quite lightly. Everyone, in particular the Australians, were quite excited. A number of the group come from Queensland and had never seen snow. We all walked around in it for a while. We tried to call the boys but their phone was off. It was still snowing when we got off the HOHO for our first stop in Hero's Square. It kept lightly snowing for about 2 hours. We enjoyed it.

From Hero's Square we walked over to the Zoo. Check out Donna walking on the snow covered track. The reason for going to a zoo being, throughout Budapest we kept seeing this sign of a wombat advertising the zoo. They have quite a large Australian section in the zoo. Some of the animals looked quite cold, especially the kangaroos and wallabies but the rest were mostly indoors and kept warm. It is quite a large zoo for one in the middle of the city.



Budapest is a city built on the Danube around hot mineral springs. They are throughout the city but here next to Hero's Square and opposite the zoo is the city baths. An extraordinary building with this hot steam coming from it. This is a shot from behind it looking across a small lake of hot spring water.

From there we walked over to the castle complete with mote (although empty at the time) in the middle of the city. It isn't medieval or even really old apparently. It was built only a hundred or so years ago to look old and now houses a museum.





Budapest is a city that still remembers the communist era. There are signs of it all of the place but none more so than the "House of Terror". This is not a fun ride or a side show but the actual building, now museum, where under the communist regime citizens were taken for interrogation and never seen alive again. Along the exterior walls are photos of people who disappeared in here. Unfortunately it was closed but outside is a great sculpture depicting the "Iron Curtain".

Donna and I walked all of this because every time we went to catch the HOHO bus we just missed it and watched it driving off. So after quite a few hours walking we finally decided to find a way to catch it. This took more walking as we had just missed another one but worked it if we walked quickly across the city we could cut it off at the pass. We just made it and luckily for us although there was a crowd of people waiting they were a group who didn't want to be split up and since there weren't enough seats for them all we managed to get on. Later tonight we have our final boat trip and dinner on the Danube. Can't wait they are always good.