When the plans for the first full day in Budapest were taking shape it ended up that Fred, John and I were not interested in taking a cooking class so we decided do our own thing. (Amanda’s edit: Really, Kevin should have said they were interested in beer drinking not cooking). We pretty much knew we wanted to check out a Belgian restaurant that Fred had found but had no other concrete plans in place.
Once the cooking class crew (Amanda, Deb, Jen, Joanna and Nate) had left we hung out at the hotel for a bit while Fred and John ate breakfast and then we headed out for a wander. We headed the direction of Buda Castle. Along the way we snapped photos and enjoyed the city.
Hungarian Parliament from the Buda side of the Danube
When we got to the entrance to Buda Castle we noticed that there was couple rows of Hungarian soldiers lined up in front of a red carpet at the presidential offices. We hung around for a while to see if we could see who was going to be coming to the offices. It turned out that a couple of official looking cars with Hungarian flags on them pulled up and a bunch of people got out. A group of them walked directly to the front door of the offices and lines up as to be waiting for someone. This left an old woman and a younger woman. One of the soldiers (looked like the ranking officer of the soldiers lined up) talked to the women and then the older woman walked over to the other group and the younger woman slowly walked down the red carpet stopping to what looked like inspect the troops. They did some fancy stuff with their rifles and then she walked on into the offices. We took some pictures but have no idea who she was. I am thinking that she is the first lady but who knows.
The soldiers lined up…but for what?
The woman with the red scarf is important some how
After all this excitement we decided to walk along the back wall of Buda Castle hill (if that is even what it is called). Again snapping some more photos.
After a while we came to the Hungarian War Museum. This went through the conflicts that Hungary has been part of, which is just about all of them (and they always seem to be on the wrong side)! The World War 1 and 2 exhibits were very cool but the one that really was the most interesting to me (and made me think that Doyle would love to see it) was an exhibit about Alexander Asboth. Not only was he an accomplished engineer in Hungary, helping with the engineering on the Chain Bridge among other things, but he was a Hungarian war hero and a General in the United States Civil War. (Amanda’s edit: BORING! Cooking is much more fun). He was an ambassador for Hungary in the U.S at the time that the Civil War broke out and became a general for the Union Army. After the war ended he became a U.S. Minister to Argentina and died in Buenos Aires. His remains were sent back to the U.S. in 1990 and are now buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The exhibit went through his life and contained items from each of the wars he fought in.
Once we had our fill of swords, guns and hand grenades we decided it was time for lunch…ok beer you got me. (Amanda’s edit: Told you so). We knew about where the Belgian restaurant, Belgas Orozo, was so we headed down the hill toward the Danube. It did not take long and we found it and boy was it a great place. It contained a menu of belgian type food and a beer menu that contained over a hundred Belgian brews. We opted for a few appetizers and started with the half a yard beer sampler. This contained 6 tasters of different beers. Then we each had a beer randomly picked from the menu. It was all great.
mmm Belgian beer!
After food and beer we headed back to the hotel to meet up with the cooking class crew and plan the rest of the evening. All in all a good day! (Amanda’s edit: This is why they were late!)
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