BUDA-PEST--the Buda side

We arrived in Budapest from Vienna and rode in Europe's first electric subway car/system (not the original car...) to our hotel. It's a cute little blue and yellow car with a circus horn. The kids dubbed it the Happy Train. Two or three "guards" wait at every subway stop to check each individual ticket! It became a bit annoying--and a time-waster for Hungarians, you would think...

 We had to go back to the train station to reserve our couchettes for the return trip. The station was COLD!

 Budapest was two separate cities: Buda and Pest. The two are across the Danube from each other. Each has its own castle and personality. We visited Buda first--it makes up the hills of Budapest; you can see the Pest palace on the opposite side--it's the flat part. This was the first sunny day we'd seen in awhile--the kids couldn't open their eyes.

 Here are the hills of Buda behind the Castle. So lovely!

 Hector messing around... (Mom having a heart attack!)

 The kids catch air! Brady was working his new camera. We spent some time while he practiced the timing feature and the panorama tricks. Will post some of the results.

 A quiet moment for the boys.

 We loved the old phone booths--I don't know if the girls have ever seen one...They call it a kabin here.

 You can get a sense of the old in the atmosphere here. Hard to capture.

An artsy take here of the kids, under the bridge. We were looking for graffiti for Finn's project. We didn't find much graffiti (here or in Budapest in general), but it was fun scrambling around so close to the water while the trams/cars/buses rumbled overhead.