Hungary :)

Hi All

Apologies for not blogging in so long... we've been doing so much! And now I have heaps of cool photos to share :)

Firstly, Hungary last week was brilliant. Gorgeous place. We spent 7 lovely days sleeping in in the morning, and walking throughout Budapest for the rest of the day :). We also seem to have taken millions of photos of which I've picked a couple shown below.

I've uploaded all of our photos to our new photo album site: www.flickr.com/photos/richncorryn and am in the process of adding labels and descriptions. The albums are on the right hand side of the page, and just select the "Hungary" one (or whichever one you want to look at).

We spent the first few days in the Pest side of Budapest (east of the Danube), where we went to see the gorgeous St Steven's Basilica (pic on the right). The detail throughout the basilica was amazing. You can see all of the pictures on the flickr website. A lot of them a blurry though as you are not allowed to use a flash inside the basilica.

We also took a 3 hour train ride out to Lake Balaton one day, which is the Hungary equivalent of the sea side. You can see a pic on the left of all the people crowding into the water and on the beach. The water is apparently slightly alkaline and is said to be medically beneficial (although we didn't notice anything?!)

Back to Budapest, other sights we visited included going out to the city park in the far east of the city, where we saw Heroes Square, spent hours looking through the Museum of Fine Arts (including the Inca exhibition - getting our background research done for our trip to Peru in October!), and the Museum of Contempary Arts (which was a bit disappointing for the entry fee). We also visited the Széchenyi Baths and the Vajdahunyad Castle (which was spectacular). Also in city park we saw the largest hourglass in the world (pic on the right with me in front of it to give an idea of the size!). It was made to commemorate Hungary joining the EU, and is turned once a year. Apparently it is able to adjust the rate of sand flowing through for leap years and temperature changes. Incredible.

Back in the center of the city, we also took heaps of photos of the parliament building (pictured on the danube on the left), and the Fisherman's Bastion in the old part of the city, i.e. in Buda (picture on the right), and also of course, of the Grand Palace & the Chain Bridge. Gorgeous photo on the left of them at night.

Also in the older part of Buda (west of the Danube) we meandered around old old old streets (pic on the right)which had gorgeous colourful buildings everywhere, the building where Beethoven lived, and lots of curiousities everywhere. See picture of a flying nun in the corner of a building (pic on the left) to see what I mean.

One other curiousity that I thought was really cute is a statue sitting on the railing called Little Princess. Her knees are shiney because people touch them for luck. Pic on the right.

Finally, we also spent a day north of Budapest in Szentendre, a cute town with lots of shops. We went to see a "mini museum" which had the smallest book in the world! See flickr for photos. Pic of me on the left standing under a street sign to Budapest and pic of

Richard on the right meandering through the town streets concentrating on a wooden puzzle we bought from one of the toy stores.

I've also updated our previous Windsor Castle post with our pictures. Including a cool one of us with one of the guards (how cheesy!) :)

Lots of love to all back home :)