I woke up early this morning and walked down the road to mail a few postcards at the post office. The tourists had not descended upon Buda yet so I had the streets all to myself for a little morning walk in the sunshine.

At around 9am Eric and I hiked down the 100+ stairs to the bottom of Buda Hill, crossed the Chain Bridge and wandered around the outside of the Parliament building. The Hungarian Parliament building in one of the largest in the world. Best word to describe the architecture - lavish.

From the Parliament, we continued upriver to the Shoes on the Danube sculpture. It is a poetic memorial on the riverbank honoring the people who were killed by fascist militiamen in Budapest during WWII. They were ordered to take off their shoes and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. These iron sculptures of shoes represent all that was left behind.

We continued upriver to Margit Hid - the bridge one takes to get to Margaret Island (if you don't take a water taxi). We rented a tandum bicycle and cruised around the island ending up at an outdoor pool and thermal pools where we spent several hours swimming a cooking in the sunshine.