Budapest

We continued our stay in the best hotels while in Budapest. Our hotel was beautiful and in a fabulous location. It also had some of my favorite photography.

They always had delicious treats for you through out the day.

There was an amazing view from the hotel of both the Buda and Pest sides of the city.

Isn't this magical. You should want to go here.

We took a real nice tour of the city. I've seen a lot of synagogues, temples, mosques, cathedrals (you get the point), so they usually start all molding together in my mind. What I liked about seeing them in Hungary is that we also were able to learn about the historical side of them. During WWII the Nazi's took over most of the places of worship and used them as headquarters. 

The room below on the right was the office of Adolf Eichmann. He played a major role in the Final Solution and was in charge of deporting all the jews to camps. 

If you want to read a real life spy novel read Hunting Eichmann. It is the story about how Eichmann fled and remained in hiding in Argentina for about 15 years after the war. It is a some what slow and complicated book to get through, but I found it fascinating. 

This is a tree of life and represents all the Hungarian Jews that died. Each leaf is engraved with a name. You can see it at Dohany Street synagogue, which is the largest synagogue in Europe.

It was also amazing seeing the contrast between Budapest normally and Budapest during communism. The buildings built during communism were drab, grey, box like, and otherwise really ugly. Then a few streets away all the buildings were absolutely amazing with some much detail in each aspect. There is some really amazing architecture.

At the Vajdahunyad Castle there is a statue of Anonymus and if you touch the tip of his pen you will receive good luck. I touched it a few times. Apparently I didn't do it right because so far I've got nothing.

Out of all the things we saw, I found the bullet holes everywhere the most fascinating. Many buildings still have bullet holes all over because of WWII. They say it is just because they haven't had the money yet to restore the buildings, but I thought it was one of the more interesting things, and they should never be fixed.

I'm really done posting about Europe. Thanks.