Budapest, Hungary

On another whim, I took the train to Budapest this weekend.

Budapest used to be 2 separate cities split by the Danube River. This is a view showing Buda to the left and Pest to the right.

Hungarian Parliament

St. Matthias Church

Fisherman's Bastion

3 of the 7 tribe leaders who settled the Budapest area


Ceiling of St. Anne's Church. I went to a classical music concert someone played on the organ.

The Royal Palace was originally built around 1250, but was destroyed numerous times in various wars and was always rebuilt. The version seen today was only built in the 1960s since it was also destroyed in WWII.

The Chain Bridge was the first bridge across the Danube in Budapest and was originally built around 1850.
Royal Palace in the background looking across the Chain Bridge.

And you know how I like the "then and now" pictures! This one shows the bridge in 1945 after being bombed in WWII.
Hungarian Parliament.
Ceiling inside one of the halls in the Parliament.

Kings' crown inside the Parliament. The first king was King Stephen and he was crowned in about 1000. He was later canonized as a saint and now the crown is known as the Holy Crown.

Inside the Parliament

These are numbered cigar holders outside the Parliament Chamber.

Parliament Chamber

One of the many art museums in Budapest.

St. Stephen's Basilica

Inside St. Stephen's Basilica

Memento Park is a place where they have now displayed all of the former communist statues that used to be in the city when the Soviets were in control. This is a replica of a statue of Stalin. The citizens tore the statue down (like the Iraqi's did the statue of Saddam) and all that remained were the boots.

Hiking in Neustift, Austria

This weekend Chris, Kerry, Alissa and I went hiking in Neustift Stubaital, Austria, which is about a half hour south of Innsbruck (or only a little over 2 hours south of Munich).

Our goal of the hike on the first day was the rocky peak in the middle of this picture. It was about a 4,500ft elevation gain.

Here are a few pictures from the way up.

Is this not stereotypical Alps or what!

The wildflowers were in full bloom and the blues and yellows were incredibly bright against the dark green grasses.

Getting closer to the top...

Not a bad spot for a quick lunchbreak.

This is a video showing the panoramic view just below the summit. What a view! (don't get dizzy)

In order to reach the cross at the summit, we had to climb up about 25 feet through a narrow "chimney". Notice the steel cable to hang on to on the ridge on the bottom left. It's a good thing the cables were only necessary for about the last 75 feet or so! (it actually sounds worse than it was because the cable was really just to give you something to grab onto to help get over the rocks on the side, but I'm not a big fan of heights anyway).

This is looking down the chimney. The 2nd loop you can see is a handhold/foothold. Unfortunately the cable wasn't super tight, so it would swing when you put your foot into it. I was just about to call it close enough and stop there, but Alissa questioned my manhood, so of course I had to go on up after that!

SUMMIT! (We started from the town on the left side of the picture. It took us about 7 hours from start to finish.)

The 2nd day started out really cloudy with periods of rain, but cleared up later. We ended up not going as high since we couldn't see much anyway, but was still a good hike. Here we were just getting up in the fog.
Herd of sheep (livestock, not wild) right around the treeline.

These peaks were the original goal, but because this picture was taken at one of the clearest points of the day, we decided to just go to a hut a few hundred feet below them instead of going all the way up.

It cleared up quite a bit after we started down and turned into a really nice day.

There were huge fields of these wildflowers everywhere. It's too bad the pictures of them didn't come out better.

View to the south from our hotel balcony. The very first picture was the view to the east.