Austria into Hungary

Hey guys,

Finally a bit of spare time to get some more thorough blogging done. We are now in Bordeaux in the south of France killing some time, and drinking some fine wine hoping to catch up with a family friend here. Well Vienna is a nice place, but a little quiet for us. Below is a picture of a typical fountain in the city near the Opera house.

We had some new crew join us on the Kumuka tour in Vienna. This included our new friends Adam and Renee, new friends for, Perth! They live in Ardross, and we feel like old friends now after spending a couple of weeks together on the bus.

It was then time to head off to Budapest in Hungary. This day we would be going through 3 countries in 1 day! From Austria, through the Czech. Republic into Hungary.


Hungary is a a pretty strange place (now I understand you Loedi...), with rulers, communism and finally democracy only about 15 years ago. In the old days the Austria-Hungarian empire was massive. It used to control half of Europe! FYI - Buda&Pest used to be two different cities on either side of the Danube river but were merged many years ago into the city that we know today. After arriving into our hotel, we were on a 3 hour bus and walking tour of the city.
This city is a BIG place!


Below is a view of Pest (the commercial side) with Nat checking things out casually... This photo was taking on the Buda side. Some stunning views around the place. There is a castle near here and stuff. It was then time to head back for our group dinner at a local restaurant including a local gypsy show. Quite funny, with lots of shin and thigh slapping and stuff. They tried to unload their crap house wine, but we ordered some really nice local wine.



Next day it was time to explore the city, with our new travel buddies, Adam and Renee. Went to the local markets, heaps of animal body parts and guts for sale, and of course loads of salami!

Then it was time to head of the river over to Buda, for this famous wine museum. A great find! They over 200 wines for sale from all the regions of Hungary and over 50 for tasting. You pay about $20AUD they give you a glass and its "Go For IT!" for two hours. All the wines are opened and you help yourself! Very cool, things got pretty messy for us but was a lot of fun.

For some reason I cannot add any more pictures to this!.... Damn so many cool things to show you...

We were meant to go to the thermal baths but run out of time. Back to the hotel to recover..
Next post will be in Prague, a very special place.

Cam and Nat

06/07/06 ps - This has been updated with the spell check in place. Finally a normal keyboard! Most of the keyboards that we have been using in the other places have been different to the standard QWERTY keyboard, and this makes it really hard to try and type stuff out in a hurry. Hopefully not to many of these errors in the future!