After an overnight train ride.........

......and lot's of walking.
An average of six hours a day. Nine hours on one of those days.

Welcome to Budapest!

GGGrrrrr.....

yup, a cool city.

We went to a fabulous art museum and all I can say is "Drama drama drama". the paintings were so desperate and full of incredible human emotion. It's probably my favorite art museum to date. we'd climbed to the top of the tower of the museum and got a beautiful view of Budapest from it's balconies.

This building has an art style that we saw a lot in Budapest. I'm curious about it's history.

Isn't she cute? I wasn't fast enought to sneak a picture of her face. My favorite part is her falling sock on her right ankle.
Babushka

Turkish bath Day. One of my personal favorites. We all got turkish massages ( giant burly hands) and spent the day soothing our bodies in the baths.

Oh yeah, speedos abound.

The pools were nice and warm. They had bubble jets that shot up out of the ground and you could just float you back against them. The fountains also gave a deeper massage that I was rather impressed with.

Inside were the hot and cold pools and Mineral baths. I wish you could see all of but htere's this big head in the way.

Weak! After Eric's childish display of courage against 20 degrees C, Julie showed him up by staying in the cold pool for a few minutes. ( I think it was more like 5 minutes). Anyway, I totally showed him up.

A lovely fortification we came upon one night. It's apparently Budapests' "Lovers lane". It really was beautiful though.

What you can't see is the view from this fort gives the beholder Buda and Pest divided by the Danube all lit in it's electric glory.

"Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh" (host of angels)

so, there were a few statues left over after the communist rule was shattered and someone thought that they should make a little park to view them. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere and the statues just sat wherever somebody dumped them off. super burly, extra manly statues. even the women.

The park showed a film which was independantly put together. In 2002 acces was allowed to Budapest police files during the communist rule. They found several training films for secret agents and some film of a real stake out. The training films were acted out by police and taken very seriously.

The film showed how to place bugs in home, the different type of 'Drop off's, how to maintain civilian identity in public, how to film with purse or briefcase camera, how to have secret conversation in public setting etc. I totally want to own this film. It had fabulous 60's elevator music to lighten the mood of criminal behavior. Oh man!

I wish you could appreciate how large this is. I''m only as tall as his foot if that helps.

We saw Romeo and Juliet in Budapests' opera house. Tony and Eric had a nice nap.

We found this charming restaurant with a Jules Vern theme. it was underground and the interior was pretty cool. I decided I want our study to look like this when we build a house. ...... Not that that is anytime soon.

Delicioso! ( that's delicious in Spanish)
(My family gets that one)

We're home and I am so sad. It's cool though, cause I;m planning to move to this fabulous continent.. soon.
We spent the first two days in Prague and did some exploring. Here's a few pics of our first couple of days.

Infamous clock. THis clock served as inspiration in a lot of movies.

Freaky but cool. A lot of the gargoyles are human in Prague. HHmmm.

What?

I'm going to miss the wind rushing past and the smell of the subway. No it did not smell like urine. Like pastries actually.

Oh man! Eric and Tony thought they would be cool and sit with all the school kids. I wish you could have seen the girls in front of them slowly inching their way to safety

Cool art like this everywhere.

I still get the chills looking at all the statues. I know they meant so much more to the people who made them and who lived at the time .

The Prague gollum. Lot's of stories and Myths about this dude.

yeah.

We did some shopping in Pragues quaint little alleys. We met an artist who made fabulous wooden puppets. THepuppets were set up like an artist ready to paint then he would be the puppetier and make the puppet actually get paint and paint a lovely woman's face. He was int he Guiness book for doing this with the worlds largest puppet. He was awesome, he looked like Albert Einstein.

The town square. Does that Cathedral get any cooler?

Such a cool city, Prague.
Ps. If you want to see more detailed shots of the city, check my Juliesjotts blog.

Melissa in cool little alley.

What I should really look like.

Prague castle in the background.

Tony made a homage to EA representing them with his fabulous homemade belt. It made for some good pictures. None of which I have.