On board the Scenic Pearl

July 31
This morning we went on a guided bus tour to Buda and Pest. Although now the one city known as Budapest, it still is two areas, one each side of the Danube. The high, beautiful area is Buda. We went up to the hight peak to look out across Buda and Pest. On top of this peak is a statue of a girl holding an palm branch obove her head. It is really beautiful. It was put there when Budapest was under communist rule. After the uprising most of the communist statue were moved to Hero Park but this one was treated differently - they covered her over with a huge cloth for three days and then removed the cloth and said that the communist spirit had left her. They now know her as the freedom or peace statue.
We travelled on to another hill top were there were lovely buildings, one in particulat - the Fishermans Bastion - was like a fairy tale castle. It would have fitted very well into Disneyland. Under this area is a huge cave system that had been used centuries ago by individuals to hide their valuables, as they could just dig down under their house and find a cave. Years later these were all joined and in the time of WW2 it was turned into an army hospital. There was also another more recent area - a bunker in case of a nucelar war. The ministry of defence building was only a single story building because the top 2 floors had been bombed and never re-built. All around there was walls that had been re-built with whatever was available where they had been bombed. A really bad place to be in WW2.
We then drove through Pest. A lot more war damage still here. One building we drove past was just riddled with bullet holes. The people are so poor they barely have money to feed themselves let alone repair the highrise flats they live in.
1000forint equals equals $4 - It is quite scary when you first see the price of things until you realise the value.
Back to the boat for Hungarian folk dancing show. Den and I were both enjoying watching until we were dragged up to join in. Thankfully it was just some folk dancing steps and not what the girls had been doing with bottles of wine on their heads, spinning and twirling around and the bottle staying where they had put it. It was a very entertaining show.
We then had a welcoming cocktail party with the captain.
Dinner was an Hungarian banquet, accompanied by Hungarian wines. It was very nice.
At 5pm we had started cruising towards Vienna.