Budapest...December 24th...OK...this time I'm writing it down since we seemed not to learn our lesson the first few times. IT IS GENERALLY NOT A GOOD IDEA TO TRAVEL ON OR JUST PRIOR TO MAJOR HOLIDAYS. There...maybe that will stick. Actually the travel part works fine, its the stops in between, when everything is closed and you're hungry or thirsty that are hard to take. As fate or fortune would have it, our 1 hour, quick change planes, layover in Budapest on our return to Cairo turned into a 12 hour, lets venture into the heart of Budapest, tempt fate and see what's open layover. Actually to say we've learned nothing from prior experience isn't totally accurate, this time we knew what we could expect, there was just little we could do about it.

Our flight out of Munich left on time to deliver us into the Hungarian capital city-cities of Buda and Pest at 11am with our connecting flight leaving at 11:15pm. With that much time we figured we'd see what was open and make the most of it so we headed straight to the tourist information booth at the airport. Here the friendly fellow behind the counter who got stuck working Christmas Eve day informed us that most things would be closed (duh) including the world renowned spas of which we had inquired (it would have been a great way to spend a layover had it worked out). Furthermore, most of the transportation would probably be shutting down early as well, trains, subway, buses, taxis, maybe 3pm maybe 2pm, maybe...maybe...hmm so since we had come as far as the airport information desk and we still had 12 hours and 10 minutes to kill, we figured we may as well go the rest of the way into downtown (a 45 minute bus, train, metro stop away, that's an hour and a half down provided we make all the connections, don't get lost, don't get on the wrong bus, train, or subway. Longer if any one of those decides to call it a day earlier than maybe...but hey, we're travellers in a strange land where we can't even begin to fathom the language or read it and absolutely nothing is in english, the money is all different too).

We stopped at the Bureau of Change to get 50 Euro changed and received 11,900 Hungarian Florints in return! We are rich-Hungarian style!! We thought maybe the bank made an error in our favor until we found out that the bus tickets cost 185 HUF and a single beer set you back 950 HUF!! Don't get too excited, they don't actually serve beer on the bus, it wasn't until much later we found that out. So armed with gobs of Florints and a map of all the tourist sites that would be closed, we ventured out...what could possibly go wrong?

What indeed....after negotiating all three modes of transportation without incident, Nancy and I reached downtown and ascended up the longest escalator I have ever seen into the cold, grayness of mid-afternoon Budapest. I was so impressed by this escalator (no joking you could not see the top) I took a picture when we came back down later in the day. This is about a quarter of the way down I reckon as it took me a moment to get the camera out and this thing hauled.

We walked by this museum....

And this closed building...

And eventually came to St Stephen's Basilica, the largest Roman Catholic church in Budapest which can hold upto 8,500 people, in fact we waited for at least that many to exit as it seems we arrived as mass was ending. We toured the inside (churches never close) and we have some nice pictures but you don't get to see all those....(they take too long to load....)

You do, however, get to see a picture of me being goofy at Nancy's request. She has something about pyramids I think, Freud would know...

Anyway, I wonder sometimes who dreams up these little park/sidewalk art/statue thingies. It seemed like it was just there for us to take this picture so we felt obliged, I mean all that artists' hard work...

Then there was this...which I know Nancy has been wondering why I took this picture. She may have been seeing just the numbers, but all I saw was... blonde, redhead, brunette...

We walked toward the Danube (not blue this time of year) and came to the Chain Bridge, the first permanent connection between the two cities of Buda and Pest.

And here's a cute picture of Nancy (and Me and my two chins) with the Danube and the Castle district in the background. We had to take it ourselves because there was NO one around!

Nancy here...I thought that Budapest was a vastly different country than Germany even though they are only separated by Austria. It was second world at best. The subway, bus station, and streets were filthy, and that's coming from someone who lives in Cairo!

We made our way back to the airport in plenty of time, so I called home on Christmas Eve to say Ho! Ho! Ho! not once but 3 times, we got disconnected a lot.

I know you want to hear all about our 8 hours in the airport, eating the pretzel, and I am tempted to tell itbut something tells me you are anxiously awaiting the Safari blogs. Which will follow in a few days as we are headed out again for a long weekend to Luxor, Valley of the Kings, Temple of Karnak. Christopher we will take loads of pictures and get the history so we can fill you in. Right now you know more about it than us!

Love to all, Happy Islamic New Year! (Jan 21)