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 accommodation at 8.30 and taken in a mini-bus with an English couple and a Spanish couple. The guide conducted the tour in both English and Spanish. He took us by mini-bus to each of the towns and then we returned from our final destination by boat down the Danube in a 1 hour trip.

The morning was cold and windy, we crossed into Slovakia and had the opportunity to walk across the Danube from Slovakia back into Hungary. The trip was informative and very relaxing. The weather improved over the afternoon and there were a variety of interesting shops at our last stop where I bought a couple of souvenirs.

We had been told about the Palinka – a Hungarian fruit brandy. This is unique to Hungary and so we purchased a small bottle to taste, with an alcohol content of 40% - you can see how the Hungarians warm up in winter! There are many flavours and we chose the Plum which seems to be the most popular.

We had a quiet night in and packed ready to move on to Vienna tomorrow.