Hot in the City (of Budapest)

Last week our family spent four nights in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, and two nights in Slavonia, the easternmost region of Croatia.  We really enjoyed both places, though the experiences couldn't have been more different.  (More on Slavonia in a future post.)


Budapest is about a four-and-one-half hour drive from Rijeka.  J.D. and I both think that it may be the prettiest and certainly the grandest city we've seen so far.  The architecture there is a feast for the eyes.  It was fun to just wander around.  

Looking at the Parliament building across the Danube River

Detail of the Matthias Church, in the Buda Hills

Of course, we saw many beautiful churches.  While in Slavonia later in the week, Alison dryly commented, "I think there’s a disease you get when you visit too many different churches."  Fair enough given how many churches we’ve dragged our kids to in the past 5 1/2 months!  But they're works of art, and so we keep dragging them along.  While in Budapest, we checked out a couple of synagogues.  We actually stayed at a place called the "synagogue apartment," and this was the view outside our balcony window.

Nighttime at the Dohany Street Synagogue

This synagogue is the largest in Europe.  On the outside, as you can see, it looks Islamic, and on the inside, it looks like a Byzantine church!  It's stunning on the inside and out.  Sadly though, the place is like a fortress.  You have to go through a metal detector to get inside, and from our vantage point, the place seemed to be guarded by police officers 24 hours a day.  I understand that previous experience has made this kind of surveillance necessary, but it was depressing to witness.

Caroline pretending to be a banker at Mini-City, a great children's museum in Budapest

We also did several more kid-oriented things.  For example, we spent much of one day at a fantastic, huge waterpark called Aquaworld.  It had a wave pool, tons of different slides, various kinds of pools, and this ball that your child can get zipped into and then rolled into the water (yes, I realize that it doesn't sound too smart to shut your kid in plastic and then put her water for 10 minutes, but judging by my daughters' experience, it's very fun!).  Given that it was in the mid-90s, sunny, and humid, we all enjoyed being indoors and in the water that day.  


(Apologies to Billy Idol for the post title.  I liked this song when it came out, had the record album (the what?!), etc.)


Laura