Budapest, Hungary

  We slept in a bit more than we were expecting,  still not quite acclimated to the new time zone....plan for today was to venture out from Budapest and vist a couple of other small towns...Szentendre and Visegrad.  Easy acces using the subterranean train out of Budapest  and a local  bus.  Walking over to the train station we encountered a race of some type.

And we passed the church that I took a photo of last night.It's actually much prettier in the daylight!

On the train, nice to see the countryside, since all we've seen over the last few days was hardcore city scenes...evidence of the drought is everywhere. 

Very basic train...not terribly comfy and no A/C.... But who's complaining, it cost about three dollars total for each of us for the almost hour train ride.

It was a quick walk from the train station to the downtown area of Szentendre.   Obviously a pretty touristy area...lots of locals pedaling their wares.

I picked a church to tour - this one had a nice museum of religious artifacts (of course!)

Inside the church itself.  

With our late start, we needed to move on to the next little town.  Boarded the local bus and about an hour later we were in Visegrad.  The most important thing I wanted to see there was the Fellegvar castle, perched very high on the hill.  Built in the 1300's is fairly well preserved. 

View from river level.  It was a pretty strenuous hike for about an hour. 

A little closer view

 

After the tough hike, it was nice to stroll around the well preserved fortress.  Unlike lots of other castles we've toured, this one had a lot of original  structure. 

  

The view of the Danube was superb!  Really shows the drought conditions. 

Time to walk back down the trail and get headed back to Budapest.   

We opted for a bit of an adventure- ferry to the other side of the Danube, then catch a train back into Budapest.  You gotta love their transit system!  The ferry cost for each of us was about  $3.....and then the 50 minute overland train was $3.22 for BOTH of us!  And this train was part of the rail system, not part of the Budapest transit and was very nice and comfy....a welcome thing!

Back to Budapest we caught one more city bus to take us back close to the apartment.   Long day and we were tired puppies!