Budapest!

The fact that my friend, Lynn, blogged from her hospital room a few hours after giving birth convinced me that it's time for me to actually post about recent events. So here goes!

In March, my sister, Jennie and her friend, Jackie, came to visit me in Germany. We traveled to Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; and Prague, Czech Republic. It was a whirlwind tour!

Our early morning start!

The easiest way to get from place to place was via train. There is a great train system in Europe! Our first trip was on an overnight train from Kaiserslautern to Budapest. I felt like we had crossed over to the Navy based on the submarine sleeping conditions!

When we arrived in Budapest the next morning, we were going to take the tram up to Castle Hill. However, the tram wasn't working.

We got lots of exercise though and beautiful pictures of the Danube River!

Here are some of the amazing sights we saw!

Inside the Matthias Church:

Moving the statues (apparently the statues aren't as stationary as I thought!):

Behind the Church is the Fishermen's Bastion with beautiful views of the Danube and Parliament.

Jennie and Jackie at Parliment!

As it was the week before Easter, we got to learn a bit about Easter eggs of the Croatian tradition (if you enlarge this picture, you can really read it!)

Here is another church we visited, St Stephan's.

I'm constantly amazed at how ornate the churches are!

We had a beautiful view of the sunset by the river! (Yes, that's actually a glass of wine in my hand!)

Before we turned in for the night, we hiked up Gellert Hill passing Independence Monument

to reach the Citadella. The Citadella was a fortress erected to defend Budapest after the 1848 revolution, but it was actually never used for this purpose.

We had a long (and somewhat dirty) hike back down!

All in all it was a great day! And we definitely got our exercise!

Stay tuned...Next up....Vienna!