This morning, Wednesday, began with Cave Church. It was really cool because it was cheap, only 400 HUF and it came with an audio tour. You wouldn't think it but the cave is apparently 20 degrees all year round because of underground thermal springs keeping it warm. Like many things here in Budapest, Cave Church was destroyed during Communist rule when churches were not allowed. It is hard to describe because it is just a cave with stained glass, statues, and altars in it. One of the rooms is decorated with extremely detailed wooden carvings. I will try to remember to put some pictures of it on here. There was a video at the end of the tour and at one point they played the main bit from Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars. It seemed strange and out of place, but it was pretty amusing (which I guess isn't a good thing for them because it wasn't meant to be amusing).
After Cave Church we went back to the market to explore for a little while. It was a good trip because we were able to get our lunch at a fraction of the cost of a restaurant. I think we know where we can go for lunch from now on. We are planning on going back to try Langos at some point and I would like to buy a Hungarian sausage. Today I managed to buy a couple of large buns, kind of like kaiser buns for 100 HUF, enough salami for two sandwiches for 190 HUF, a litre of Fanta for 240 (instead of the 320 per glass at the restaurants). We bought slices of cake for dessert at 220 a piece (instead of the 380-450 they charge per slice for the same stuff down the street). Altogether our meals worked out to just over 1000HUF (about $5) for the two of us. Way better than the 3700-4000HUF ($18-20) total that we would have paid at a restaurant for the same amount of food. We ate at the hostel because it was just down the street and there was nowhere to eat it easily without utensils.
After eating we walked down a touristy walking area, mostly Vaci Utca, toward Parliament. There were no more tickets for the tour that day so we had to settle for something else. We walked through a square and found ourselves looking at St. Steven's Basilica. After failing to locate Duna Castle, we headed to St. Steven's. It was really really big and we paid 400HUF to get to the top of it to get a panoramic view of the city. There were quite a few stairs and then an elevator to the top. With all of the walking and stair climbing we should have decent leg muscles. The view of the city was amazing, but it was nothing compared to the inside. I took quite a few videos of the inside of it to try to capture it, but I am sure that it doesn't even come close. There was gold and paintings and arches everywhere. We stuck our fingers into the holy water containers just for kicks. We "saw" the mummified right hand of St. Steven. "saw" because it was in a case and it was kind of dark and you couldn't really see much of anything, but I saw it enough to say that I have seen it - whatever that's worth.
After St. Steven's we started walking back to the hostel. We stopped at two or three churches along the way because they were there and open and free. All of the churches are gorgeous and put any church that I would attend to shame. I am sure that you could spend a whole day just going around to all of the different churches. For supper I ate the other sandwich that I had leftover from lunch and Beth bought a bag of salad so we could have caesar salad. I bought of bottle of juice because it said it has mangosteen in it and I really want to try a mangosteen, but there are too many other fruits in it to distinguish anything. Just recently we have finished playing a couple games of backgammon. The chess/checkers/backgammon game and the set of cards that Beth bought at the market have been put to good use. Now I am going to go to sleep knowing that I am caught up on my blogging, but not certain of what I will be doing tomorrow.
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