6th Day: Budapest (5/28)

On our second day in Budapest, we headed out to the House of Terror, a museum that was housed in the former Nazi headquarters as well as the Hungarian Secret Police for the Soviets (a horrible irony). Here, again, I was able to take a few clandestine photos, including ones of Soviet paintings, walls of propaganda ads, and best of all, a carpet of the Soviet empire that resembled a map. By the end of the tour, we saw the interrogation rooms, the files they kept on citizens, and various monuments to those who died. Overall, there was a slight political bias to the museum--Nazism is the same as communism, all praise to the appeasing Catholic Church--but it was worth the visit in its detailing of that period of Hungary's history.

 After the museum, we decided to take a hop on/hop off bus tour that started at the Budapest Opera house. We drove up Andrassy Ut, then crossed the river to the Buda side, where we snapped some panoramic shots of the city from the Castle District and drove around the famous sights, like the funicular and the fortress. Hopping off permanently from the bus tour, we walked through the city and caught the metro to the Szechenyi Baths, which is north near the parks. We got there around 4 and hung around until 6, when the clouds came out.
  Fresh from the baths, which were welcome after walking so much for 5 days, we took in the park and went south towards Hero's Square, where I was able to get better photos of the statues. Heading back to our hotel, we stopped at a pub and then set out for dinner at the Kaltenberg, which served traditional Hungarian fare as well as its own brew. With dinner out of the way, we stopped at the "No-Name" bar near our hotel before calling it a night.