TWO IDIOTS ABROAD: 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.