Budapest Oct 19

After a buffet breakfast in the Intercontinental Hotel restaurant (Europeans apparently like their scrambled eggs runny, but their coffee is very good), we took a bus from Pest (pronounced "pesht") to Buda on the west side of the Danube, and looked at a bunch of castle/church/blahblahblah stuff (I think it's time for me go to home)

The walls of the cathedral were patterned after tapestries:

Saint Stephens (formerly the king):

The parliament building as seen from Buda across the Danube:

We then took a bus tour (traffic is terrible!) thru the city, it's a very historic city that, like most of the rest of the cities we've visited, endured religious wars (Catholics vs Protestants), invasions from Romans/Huns/Turks/Barbarians/blahblahblah, burned down in the 12/13/14/15/16th century along with the Black Plague, got attacked by the Nazis/Communists/blahblahblah and mostly got destroyed during WWII.

The bus dropped us off at the Covered Market, a place to buy stuff like paprika, linens, sausages, tourist crap, etc

We walked back to the hotel

Later that night, we had our farewell reception/dinner (the sour cherry liquour was amazing...the venison was not)  in the Akademia Club just a couple blocks from the hotel...there was a live string band playing, everyone said their goodbyes, and now we have tomorrow free time until departing on Sunday