Thursday 26 June 2014 Budapest Cool cloudy morning improving in the afternoon 25C Today we took a tour to the towns on the bends of the Danube. The tour concentrated on 3 towns Esztergom where the largest Catholic Church is in Hungary, then Visegrad where the former Royal Palace was and finally a pretty village Szentendre which has galleries, and quaint shops with traditional Hungarian embroidery and gift ware for tourists. We were picked up at our accommodati...

Wednesday 25 June 2014 Budapest Cool cloudy with some rain 20C This morning we were collected at 8.30 by Ildiko's son Adam and his girlfriend Sophie to take us to Lake Balaton. Ildiko is a friend from golf in Sydney who had invited us to come to her home in the country by Lake Balaton. The journey was around 1½ hrs, she and her husband Alex have a vineyard and newly built house overlooking the lake, and it is just 500m from the golf course down the road ...

Tuesday 22 June 2014 Budapest Cloudy with patchy rain 22C We had tickets to tour the new Parliament building at 10am, so we left the apartment around 9.30 to walk there. Despite some confusing directions, we managed to get ourselves to the tour kick-off (note World Cup reference) point on time to join a group of english speaking tourists waiting for the same tour. At the entry into the building we went through a scanning machine and mugshots were taken. The t...

Monday 21 June 2014 Budapest Sunny Warm 29C Our guide Agnes picked us up at our accommodation at 9.30am this morning. She is an excellent guide with an extensive understanding of the history of Hungary. The country has had many invasions and a history of turmoil and uncertainty which has made for a very moving history. To begin our tour we walked down to the Danube and briefly looked in on the Gresham Palace. The detailed reconstruction is absolutely exquisite...

Sunday 22 June 2014 Bochum - Budapest Warm Sunny but breezy 26C We were up and packed early to get to the airport by 7.15, solved the puzzle of how to return a hire car without a person in sight and managed to be on time to check in for our flight on Wizzair to Budapest. The security pat down was quite thorough (?) compared to anything we've experienced previously, but hey, as it was Sunday morning, perhaps they were giving some trainee security staff a go......