After the huge dinner, we walked to Heroes Square to take photos. The central site of the square is the Milllenium Memorial with statues of the leaders of the seven tribes that founded Hungary in the 9th century and other outstanding figures of Hungarian history in the background.
Check out the size of the humans to get an idea of how humongous this place was. It was breathtaking.
Last day in Budapest and I had a lie-in while the boys went off for a tour of the Parliament building. I got up and had Mackers for a snack before meeting up with them again.
The amazing hot chocolate was washed down with a strawberry and custard pie. I love trying out different Mackers fruit pies in different cities. Haha.
After that, we met up and visited St Stephen's Basilica which I love....
It was very dark inside and the place was lit with candles...
The view of the dome from inside..
Note that the statues on the middle part of the dome are life size... so you can get an idea of just how awesome this was....
St Stephen's Basilica also housed something quite unusual - Chapel of Holy Right Hand...
I can hear you going "What the???". It's the hand relic of the first Hungarian Christian King, Saint Stephen I who turned the pagan Hungarian tribes to Christianity. For this reason, he was canonized in 1083 and his entire right arm was removed from the body and prepared for preservation. Very very very weird, if you ask me.
It was a tiny chapel and when we went inside, we were greeted by this sight. The sign basically said no flash is allowed and if you want better lighting, you can pay Euro 1 for the area to be lit up for two minutes.
I'm sorry but I hated this thing. It turned an amazing church into a ridiculous circus sideshow. Having said that, one of the boys spent Euro 2 going to town with the lights... haha. Everyone around us took the opportunity and snapped away as well for free. Tsk tsk tsk.
Can you make out the fist yet?
Like I said, very very weird.
We then climbed up an endless set of spiral stairs to get to the top of the church...
....Only to be greeted by yet another set of cruel cruel stairs....
... but finally the end is nigh....
..... and we were rewarded with bitterly cold wind and rain... heh.
View of Parliament Building from the top of St Stephen's Basilica.
The layout of Budapest's city does remind me of a poor man's Paris.
We had some free time before the next pit stop so we decided to kill two birds with one stone - try out the city's subway which is one of Europe's first subways and also to visit the central market which was shut the day before.
All kinds of the local delicacy - paprika, for sale.
One of the main reasons for coming was to hunt down this famous local snack - langos. It was described as a deep-fried flat bread eaten fresh and warm topped with copious amount of sour cream. The sour cream part sold it to all of us but we just couldn't seem to find it anywhere in the city centre. Never mind, success was finally mine at the market when we tracked down this food stall.
I eyed the sweet version which looked awesome but none of the boys were keen.
Dude smothering on the sour cream.
Langos with sour cream and cheese...... Verdict = over-rated.... or rather, I had build it up so much in my head that the real thing paled in comparison to what I imagined. I think it was too oily and too plain. Needed sweet chilli sauce methinks.
Apparently strudel is another one of Hungary's famous food? Who knew?
Obviously I had to get one. I got a plum and sour cherry strudel. Didn't like it. Too fruity if that makes sense. Heheh.
We hopped back on the subway and went back to city centre. Our next stop was the Opera House for their 4 pm guided english tour.
It was right next to Louis Vuitton which was dead quiet unlike the ones in Paris. Sigh.
It had been raining so we were instructed to slip on these plastic-bag like covers over our shoes. Here's Victor showing how it should be done.
Everyone sporting the latest fashion in footwear.
Even me..... I told you my shoe standards have slipped since I moved to UK!!!!
Our tour guide who made some very very very wooden jokes. Victor thought she was "not bad for her age". Victor needs to get out more often.
All in all it was pretty boring and very expensive for Euro12. But the amusing thing that happened was that the ticket lady asked if we wanted to pay extra for a mini concert at the end and we said no and then she asked if we wanted to pay extra for photos and we said no. I assumed she meant a professionally taken photo at the end of the tour. But there was no photographer lurking around during the entire tour so we deduced that you had to pay to take photos of the place. Woooops, my bad. I am a thief. But I maintain my innocence. I really did think what I thought and no one stopped me when I snapped away furiously on my camera. Victor thought the guide gave us a filthy look though... i just thought that was her normal face. Oh well.
This was the VIP entrance for the King back in the good old days. Now it's reserved for regular VIPs like the Prime Minister.
And that was the end of our Budapest trip. I leave you with a rare photo of me... Damon snapped me while I was waiting in line for my chimney cake on Day 1. Look how happy I was!!!
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