Monday, May 22: St. Stephen's Basilica, Parliament

I had a good night's sleep for the first night overseas.  I was in bed by 9:30, went right to sleep and didn't wake until 2:45.  Pretty darn good.  And I went back to sleep for a couple of more hours after that.  I am refreshed.  I can do this.

Since breakfast this morning is not included in our hotel room and since we will be eating hotel breakfasts the rest of the trip, we head out for a small, local and casual spot and find Kolette Bistro for coffee and Hungarian pancakes and watch Monday morning Budapest pass by on the street right beside us.

 Bev dines on Hungarian pancakes.

 We have two major goals for today.  The first is to visit St. Stephen's Basilica

where they actually have St. Stephen's (the king) right hand for viewing, praying and parading.

But the highlight of St. Stephen's was the visit up top to the outside walkway around the dome providing expansive views of Pest and Buda.

 We follow with a walk through Pest toward and along the Danube River

where I lunch

on penne pesto.

The second major goal of today was an inside tour of the Hungarian Parliament building, the largest active parliament building in the world.

A view of golden stairway covered in 80 pounds of gold,

 the entrance hall and

one of two parliament chambers used by their unicameral parliament.  Why two?  This one today is occupied by young people.

Beverly decides to frolic in the water pool in the adjacent park.

Then it is time to meet our fellow Road Scholar tourers

and our Road Scholar guides, Agnes and Peter, in this, the Budapest part of the trip.

We end the day with a very nice but not very Hungarian dinner of hen soup,

salmon and

cake.

Everything before this evening has been done independently.  Now we start the official Road Scholar portion of the trip.

Good night.