Day 16 and 17 - Two for the Price of One

I'm going to combine the last 2 days because I need to catch up and Grandpa and I leave for the Ukraine tomorrow. We're not sure if there will be any internet access so the blog may end today.

Saturday we left the ship and hauled our luggage through the streets of Budapest to our hotel about 1.5 miles away. Once we checked in our next mission was to haul the dirty clothes to the laundromat I located on the internet across town. So we had our first adventure in the subway system. Our first impression was that it was cleaner than New York City. The car was really new and clean inside, they even have rules that you can't eat in the subway. But we then changed to a different route and that's when we had the chance to ride history. The subway cars were from the old Soviet era complete with the squeals, rumbles and rattles. Older inside but cleaner than expected. The laundromat was fairly easy to find once to figured out our direction upon leaving the subway station. But boy did we get there in time, we got there just before the mob and were able to finish up our laundry in 1.5 hours. I met some kids with their mom at the laundry mat and talked to the older girl, she was 9 and could speak english. She was really surprised when I said I was american.

Inside the subway train

Old Soviety subway train still being used

Once we returned with clean laundry we set off to find food. The hotel gave us the name of a local place that served hungarian food. It was a quiet little restaurant that looked like it had been around for awhile as a bar or dance hall. It had a little stage in the back and a wooden floor. The food was good, Grandpa had Hungarian Goulash and I had pork with ratatouille (without rats) and fried potatoes. It was really good.

We tried to visit some other places of interest in Budapest after eating but this weekend is a holiday for Budapest and Budapest was shutting down early. So we spent the rest of the night catching up on email and relaxing.

Sunday was terrific! Grandpa and I tracked down where one of the 3 wards in Budapest were and we took the subway to the Buda side and walked to the church building. But you can see from the pictures it's not like the church buildings we are used to. This building is stuck between apartment buildings and is in a small road away from any major traffic. The building is new and really nice inside and out. The chapel is small much smaller than our own but the people were fantastic. They even have ward members translate for us using translators that we listened through. The bishop spoke english and Grandpa and I think he was from America. The talks were fantastic, a young woman spoke of her young adult conference she had just attended in Slovakia with Romanians, Hungarians and Slovakian young adults. The next speaker was a man in his late 20s-early 30s who had been a member for only 9 months. He did a terrific job and the last speaker was I'm assuming a high counselor who had been a member for 10 years. Just looking around the room you knew that not many of the people in this ward had been members for very long. It was a terrific experience.

Notice the steeple up top

The sign in the door

After church we decided to go back up to the castle hill, we were just 2 blocks away and catch what we missed on Friday. Today was the beginning of the Hungarian Folkfest. Artisans from all over the country as well as other countries came to show and sell traditional hungarian crafts. At the beginning were several cheese makers and there were even official cheese judges trying out the cheese. We found a booth selling huge cheese pretzels and yummy strudel so we of course had to get some and try it out. Enjoy the pictures of all the different kinds of crafts and people that were at the folk fest.

A candy stall, this one's for you J-man

We found another one of those marriage lock places in a park in Budapest

The white stuff is lard (pig fat), great piles of lard for sale at the folk fest

This woman is making lace by hand, it was amazing how time consuming it is, making lace is just a series of well placed knots

There were several of these tents at the festival, families were living in them while at the festival. The outside is made up of really thick wool like blankets. They might be from Khyrgyzstan

Hungarian soldier at attention at his post on caste hill

This man paints wood, beautiful painting work

Check out this playhouse/castle, it is made of baskets. There were many basket weavers at the festival and the young man sitting next to this was one of them.

This woman was in traditional dress selling clothing that she made

Sorry no stories to tell today, except that on the way back to the hotel from eating dinner we found 1 block away a laundry mat. So much for going across the city to do laundry.