Budapest Day 5 (Part 1) -- St. Stephen's Basilica and the Holy Right Hand

And so it was Day 5, our last "free" afternoon in Budapest.  At 18:00, we were meeting the CETP group in the lobby of the hostel to go to our orientation dinner.  Our plan today was to hop on the tour bus and ride the red and yellow lines for a full circuit around the city - stopping for a tour of St. Stephen's Basilica.

We packed a lunch (a salami and turkey sandwich with a hunk of cheese for each of us), grabbed our waters, and set out to the bus stop.

Riding the bus was a nice change for the day -- not too great for picture taking, but really great for feet resting. Not much to report -- we did wonder if we should, upon our next visit to any major European city, find a tour bus and do a circuit like this first.  It did allow us to see everything and kind of get our bearings a little bit.  However, it was fun just winging it and wandering around a big city trying to find stuff.

After about an hour or so, we finished the red line circuit and hopped off at the stop closest to St. Stephen's.  To get to his square, we walked through a nice park and stopped and ate our lunch.

We happened across this dog attacking a sprinkler.  It was funny --especially since the sprinkler was like a fire hose.  It did make us both miss Pokey, though -- cause he's just as stupid as this dog.

Then we came to St. Stephen's Square and Basilica.











Holy Moly.

St. Stephen's Basilica
(the panorama pictures later come from the little balcony atop the dome)

Street level view of the square from the steps of St. Stephen's

Close-up of the balcony (the upper black one is our look out point for pics)

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words so I think we can let most of this speak for itself...

Down the right side...

Shrines to the saints line each wall

View from the right side to the left --altar is to the right of the guy in the white shirt

From the middle...

Altar in front of us

Above us

Close up of altar

Behind (and above) us

And the left side...

It was incredible -- even for us less than devout types!

As we finished walking around, we realized that we had totally forgotten about the best part of St. Stephen's and one of the things we were most interested in when we decided to come to Budapest -- The Holy Right Hand of St. Stephen himself!

On St. Stephen's Day, they parade his hand around the square out front...well, we missed that because we were busy walking up 3/4 of a giant hill for no reason. But we were here now!

There was a doorway in the back of the church (front? -- near the altar -- stage right?) that led to a separate shrine for the Holy Hand.

The shrine of St. Stephen (Istvan)

And then...

The Holy Right Hand of St. Stephen (from as close as we could get)

We could barely see it -- but it's in there!

Just in case you might be a little skeptical -- there was a wall of proof on the way out. It showcased a lot of pictures of x-rays of the hand and professional looking people doing professional looking things to it.

I am sorry (and really not trying to offend) but it was all very Monty Python. Don't get me wrong, it was awesome -- but there was definitely an element of cheese to the whole production.  Meliss was gonna give it a fist-bump but we both thought that to be in poor taste.

We ended up speaking to a Hungarian guy a little after this and he just laughed about it and said it was for sure somebody's hand, but most Hungarians don't believe it's really St. Stephen's.  Oh well -- mom, do you think Jethro and the NCIS crew could get on this?

As we left, we saw a bunch of people get in an elevator and go up.  So, we searched around a bit and found a place to buy a ticket up to the panoramic view.  Our choices were stairs or elevator -- and since we felt bad about taking the bus all day, we opted for the stairs.  As usual we made an excellent choice.

Here is another random observation about Hungary (that I am sure completely and baselessly stereotypes a whole culture of people) -- they don't seem to be too concerned with safety regulations.

It's not that we think it's wrong -- it's just odd. We are so used to having everything idiot-proofed for us, it seemed strange to be allowed to walk up these rickety stairs with no-one around and no signs stating how much it's our fault if something happens.

There are a lot of little other things that were like this too.  For example, windows that swing fully open (with no screens) on the top floors of hostels populated mostly by drunk high school and college kids.

Or the guy on the road crew standing next to a jackhammer tractor thing wearing what I am going to assume were not OSHA approved work sandals.  All of it just screams lawsuit -- but it doesn't seem to be the case, hopefully we won't find out!

Stairs going up -- not rickety, just dizzying.

And going down...look how long Melissa's freak toes are!

Those stairs led us to this room -- it's just a bunch of stairs and scaffolding that we had to negotiate to get up and outside.  All of it surrounding the top of the church ceiling dome -- or an old Soviet missile silo.

But, we made it and gazed out at sunny and beautiful Budapest from atop another monstrous building!

St. Stephen's Square from way above

Just a beautiful experience at St. Ste--wait, what is that in the distance? Unbelievable.

NEXT -- Bus Tour #2 (The Yellow Line) and the Citadel (again...)

Day 4 Part Deux -- Central Market

Before continuing, we'd like to note that it has officially been a month in Hungary! Yay us! We have survived on rice, onions, garlic (which does not stop mosquitos from biting, well biting Meliss anway), and random meats from the butcher in town (by random, I mean whatever we can pronounce when we get there or whatever we point at and grunt).

All things considered it has been a great time and a great adventure...if this blog ever gets through our days in Budapest, then Sarkad and Gyula are next!!

We are also celebrating our 10 year anniversary this weekend and we are heading to Eger, Hungary which is noted for its wine. We'll see if Bull's Blood is any better in country than from Trader Joe's...we are optimistic!

Ok, so Day 4, Part Deux... 

When we got to the bottom of the hill (much easier going down than going up -- that's what she said! ha!) we found a booth by one of the many flower beds for the Hop On - Hop Off Bus. The guy spoke English and so we paid the fee and got 3 days worth of hopping on and hopping off any of the tour buses throughout the city...easy enough as soon as we could find where to "hop on" one of the buses.

Thank god we are on the bus... as you can see it only cost us 8000 huf
 (40.00 bucks for 3 days) well worth it!

We stood around a bus stop area and I guess we looked confused enough that another couple (also confused) came over and asked if we were waiting for the same bus. They were from England, Australia, or New Zealand (Meliss thinks Australia -- I'm still not sure) and they had no idea where to get the bus either.

The guy (bloke/mate?) went and asked some lady and she pointed us in the right direction.  The buses were all double deckers -- but in 3 types...covered...half covered...and open.  This happened to be an open top and so we all headed for the upper level. We got split up and said our goodbyes. It was nice to know that other people were slightly uncertain about all of this too!

As we sat down, we realized the buses were equipped with headsets so we could ride around the city and hear about all the historic sites as they went by (most of which, I am happy to report, we already walked slowly by on our own).  Lucky for us, we brought the computer bag with our headphones because there was no way my OCD (although much less so now) wife was going to put bus headphones on her precious little ears!

We rode and listened. We nixed (that's German by the way...anytime someone doesn't speak English, they go right for German...then Russian -- we go for Spanish and that NEVER works) St. Stephen's Basilica for today and decided to head straight for the Central Market.  Orientation for our program was starting the next night and we needed to get some cheap food for lunch and dinner the rest of the week -- plus, we were starving!!

We did notice on our bus map that there were two routes (a red and a yellow -- thank you color coding) and so we figured we'd spend Day 5 riding both routes and going to St. Stephen's.

Here are some random pics from our short bus tour -- we (me) were just happy there was a nice breeze and occasionally shade.

Going in...

Coming out... also shade (ahh for Marc - ugh for Meliss)

Jewish Synagogue in Budapest

Sign about the upcoming Jewish festival in Budapest.

Eventually, the bus dropped us off at the Central Market. We were excited to go here because we had seen the market on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern and the Rick Steve's Budapest episode (Zimmern found some super hot paprika {pronounced PA-prika} and some rooster testicles -- we were looking for neither).

This is our new Soulard... well, it was for one week... (And no Caraway, we don't know what any of these signs mean...especially the guy with the piano...)

We just wanted food -- edible normal food -- lunch meat, cheese, bread for the week and something to eat right then and there.

We found both...kind of. After walking around a bit, we bought some amount of grapes (don't know how much -- it was in kilograms) and some dried sausage meat. Both times, we were prepared to pay 1000's of forints because we didn't have a clue what anything was called, how much things were per kilogram, or even what they cost -- but we ended up with sausage and grapes for about 5 bucks.

The guy packaged our grapes for us and even went and washed them so we could have at them -- how nice. He did not, however, tell us that the grapes had seeds (almost all of them do, we've found out). So good...so frustrating.

The sausage was even better...and we tore into that before we left the stand -- didn't even care that we saw this as we walked away (halfway thru the sausage).

Notice the horse head in the middle of picture....probably just decoration

Anyway, the whole building is a big square but with a basement, a ground floor and then a 2nd floor. The ground floor of the market was similar to Soulard -- but the downstairs ...wow.

Ground floor of the Central Market

"Pick" is a famous Hungarian brand of sausage... (good job Grandpa!)

Every stall looked just like this... beautiful fruits and veggies

So, that was all pretty similar -- but downstairs was the "local" market. It was quite a different scene...and smell!

Fresh fish.... fresh fish... THIS SMELLED LIKE SHIT!

Or maybe it was this...

Or this... Meliss almost died - seriously it really smelled like death

But I still tried a pickled pepper from this stand (tongue twister)
Meliss thought I was crazy -- she just wanted to get out!
I guess locals are used to the smell...
I did spit it out around the corner -- ungood.

Finally, we made our way to the 2nd floor and this was all touristy booths (we will buy a cheesy shot glass for our collection), as well as a food court. Damn! Wish we had found this before the horse sausage and seeded grapes!

Ok, maybe not the blood sausage and liver sausage, but the rest looked pretty good to me
(Melisss was not hungry at this point)

View from 2nd floor

After our grapes (like eating watermelon...just seed after seed) and sausage (possibly horse) --- and after buying bread, some kind of meat (turkey?), salami (but in very small, pepperoni like circles with rinds that we had to peel individually --melissa-- or just eat whole -- me) and cheese (one big chunk cause they wouldn't slice it for us) we headed out to the bus stop -- and of all our experiences in Budapest, this was the weirdest!

We stood at the bus stop waiting for the Hop On - Hop Off bus that would take us closer to the big damn hill to our hostel. While waiting, we saw a lady that looked as confused as we had, not hours ago. So, we struck up a conversation. She spoke English and we asked where she was from. It went like this:

Us: Where are you from?
Her: St. Louis, Mo.
Us: Get out! Us too -- well, a small town on the Illinois side
Her: Me too -- you've probably never heard of it.
Us: Well, we're from Granite City
Her: Ha, I'm from Mitchell.

Unbelievable -- standing at a bus stop in the middle of Budapest we met a lady from (basically) our home town -- but it gets stranger.

We threw out some names....so did she. We didn't know any of the same people! So what's weirder? Meeting somebody from your home town in the middle of Europe...or meeting someone from your hometown in the middle of Europe and not knowing any of the same people?!

So we talked and waited...and waited...and waited. Meanwhile, our brick of cheese needed some serious refrigeration so we said goodbye and headed home. We were, after all, used to the walk!

Tomorrow -- Bus tour of the city, the Damned Serving Tray Lady gets us again, St. Stephen's Basilica, and orientation dinner.