Budapest - Miscellaneous

Here are a few odds and ends from lovely Budapest. 
My dad's mother immigrated to the US when she was 17 or 18, we think.  The immigration agent at Ellis Island wrote down that she was from Bohemia.  Now that I have been on these trips, I know that Bohemia is part of the Czech Republic, and that Astalos, her maiden name, is not Czech.  Looky here, we saw the name Asztalos everywhere.  Magyar vagyok!  My new, unsubstantiated theory is that she was Hungarian.

 

We went to a food hall to see what people like to buy.  There was a lot of pork, some feet, and lots of organs.  I've decided to spare you the shots of the meat counters in favor of a nice picture of paprika.  There are many varieties.

We saw this walking across one of the bridges on the Danube.  It was about to rain, so we didn't have much time there.  It's part of the Gellert Hill Cave, carved into the rock.  Parts of the structures were used as a hospital during WWII.  It's kind of cool seeing these buildings protruding from the rock.

These guys are really coordinated.  They're actually doing track stands with no hands on these bikes.

My on going rant - the US Embassy.  It's an old, beautiful building on the boundary of a large park.  Look how nicely the armed guards, bollards and tall fence blend into the neighborhood.  No other embassy has this around their building.  It's forbidding; if I lost my passport, I'd be nervous about approaching the facility for help.

Dawn on the Danube.

Budapest exceeded expectations.  If you're heading for this part of the world and your choices are Prague or Budapest, I'd go Budapest.  It's not as crowded and there is a lot of really cool stuff to see.