It has been said that a difference between Europeans and Americans is that Europeans regard 100 miles as a long distance whereas Americans regard 100 years as being a long time. This is Heroes' Square, a large square constructed in 1896 for the millennium of the Magyar Conquest of Hungary. The square features this Millennium Memorial. The central column is dedicated "To the memory of the heroes who gave their lives for the freedom of our people and our national independence." On the top of the column is a statue of the archangel Gabriel holding the crown of St. Stephen and a double barred cross of Hungary. At the base of the column are the seven mounted Magyar chieftains who led their tribes into modern Hungary. The two colonnades on either side of the column feature statues of famous Hungarian historical figures. Of note, in the foreground can be seen two features of a Viking River Cruise tour. (1) on the gentleman at the bottom left has a white and red box which is a radio receiver for the tour guide's comments. (2) The lady holding the "4D" sign is the tour guide. The "4" signified the Legend, and the "D" indicated it was the fourth tour group from the boat.

These are the seven mounted Magyar chieftains at the base of the column. In the front is Árpád, considered the founder of the Hungarian nation. Behind him are the chieftains Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba, and Töhötöm (Tétény). Little survives in the historical record about these Chieftains, their name even differ between contemporaneous chronicles. Furthermore, both their costumes and their horses are considered to be more fanciful than historically accurate. In the background on the top of the monuments right colonnade is a woman in a chariot holding a palm frond representing Peace

The two colonnades each have seven statues of important figures from Hungarian history. This is the first of the statues - St Stephen. He was the first King of Hungary and is revered by Hungarians as the founder of their country. Generally believed to have been born in 975, he succeeded his father as the Grand Prince of Hungary in 997. Over the next three years he consolidated his rule as a Christian ruler overcoming a pagan opposition. He was crowned King of Hungary in Esztergom around 1 January 1001. The bas-relief below his statue shows him being presented with a crown by an emissary from Pope Sylvester II. That crown still exists and is one of Hungary's crown jewels. The pope also presented him with the double (Patriarchal) cross which has been incorporated into the Hungarian coat of arms. He died in 1038 and was subsequently canonized by Pope Gregory VII in 1083

This is the Matthias Church on Castle Hill in the Buda part of Budapest. The original church dated from 1015. the current Gothic church was built in the second half of the 14th century and was extensively restored in the late 19th century. Officially named as the Church of Our Lady, the church is popularly named after King Matthias, a popular Hungarian king in the 15th century who was crowned and twice married in the church. After Buda was occupied by the Turks in 1541, it became the main mosque for the city. During this period the ornate frescoes on the interior walls of the building were whitewashed and interior furnishings stripped out. Once the Turks were expelled in 1686 the building was restored as a church. Franz Joseph and his wife Elizabeth (Sisi) were crowned here in 1867, establishing the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This is another view of the Matthias Church. It was taken from the side of the church looking back towards the tower. It show some of the gothic detail of the building.

The roof of the Matthias church is made from tile and has an elaborate colorful design. This picture shows some of the roof's detail..

Stained Glass Window in Matthias Church, Budapest

The Bastion was built between 1895 and 1902 as part of the Hungarian Millennium celebrations. It has seven towers to represent the seven Magyar tribes that settled in Hungary in 896. It is called Fisherman's Bastion because the Fisherman's Guild was responsible for defending this stretch of the city walls during the Middle Ages. This modern bastion has no defensive purpose. It is a viewing terrace, with many stairs and walking paths. This picture is of the eastern half of the Bastion and was taken from the mirror image terrace on the western half.

This is the Pest side of Budapest from the Hungarian Parliament Building on the left through St. Stephen's Basilica. This picture show that these two buildings are of equal height (315 feet), and by current regulations no other building may be taller. By being the same height these two buildings illustrate the equal importance of church and state. The church in the foreground with the steeple that is undergoing renovation is Budai Református Egyházközség, a Calvinist Church on the bank of the Danube.

Between Fisherman's Bastion (in the background) and the Matthias Church is this statue of King (Saint) Stephen I. On the supporting pedestal are bas-reliefs illustrating episodes from Stephen's life. Of note at the bottom of this picture to the left of center is a gentleman in a red and white striped shirt. To his right, in front of the low conical tower is the head and shoulders of his golden eagle.

As seen in the previous photograph there was an eagle handler by the pedestal on which king Stephen's statue is standing. He was with a golden eagle. As I watched, for 1750 Hungarian Forints, he would allow tourists to put on a gauntlet and he would then place the eagle on their arm. Considering my plans to go to the Alaska Bald Eagle Festival in the fall, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. This picture shows the result :)

Here is a close-up of the eagle and it's handler.

This collage is from pictures I made on a tour to the Lázár Equestrian Park. The park is owned by the horse & coach driving world champions, Vilmos and Zoltán Lázár. It includes a stable, farm yard/Zoo, and social venues for weddings etc. However, the purpose of the tour was their Hungarian riders horse show. Hungarians have been horsemen dating back to the Magyars even before their settling in Hungary. This collage covers the highlights of the performance. It also shows the biggest problem - a very muddy track from the on again, off again rains. The upper left picture shows two riders coming in with whips. They demonstrated their skill with the whips from horseback, then dismounted and allowed two of the viewers to use the whip to knock a wine bottle off of a block (for the wine). The upper right picture shows the same two riders coming back into the viewing area after having galloped around the ring holding a mug of dark liquid. The rider on the left is holding the mug by its handle, the rider on the right has the mug on a tray. The lower left shows ‘Queen Elisabeth’s riding in a side-saddle with hussars. As the announcer noted - the Hungarians don't win many wars, but they sure look good in loosing. The lower right picture shows a "Puszta-five" - five horses being ridden by one man. Three of the horses lead the formation with the rider standing with one foot on each of the two horses bringing up the rear.

Viking ran a tour to the town of Szentendre (St. Andrew). It is a riverside town about 15 miles upriver from Budapest known for its museums, galleries, and artists. The first half consisted of a walking tour around the old town. This is a picture of the town square, The church is the Greek-Orthodox Blagoveštenska Church. Greeks fleeing from the Turks occupying Buda settled in Szentendre in the 17th century. These refugees originally built a wooden church on this site. The current church is a replica built in 1752.

This is another picture of the Szentendre old town square. In this view you can see the central pillar with a cross on top. It is a memorial cross erected by the Serbian Trade Guild in gratitude that a plague had passed the town by during the 17th century. Another highlight of Old Town was the Marzipan Museum. There were demonstrations of marzipan being made and the museum shop sold some delicious examples.

The second stop on the Szentendre tour was the Skanzen Open-Air Ethnographical Museum. It features reconstructed villages from each of Hungary's eight historic regions.

The Skanzan visit started with a Hungarian goulash soup cooking class in the visitor's center. We tourists were lined up on either side of some long tables and given ingredients to cut up. Once everything was cut up the instructor placed some oil in a witch's caldron and lighted a burner underneath it. We added our cut up vegetables, let them sauté for a minute, and the instructor added some meat and stock. He told us that the soup needed to simmer for several hours. Since we couldn't wait that long, the tour was taken to the dining room where we were served a lunch featuring some previously prepared goulash soup.

The weather had been raining off and on all day. As a result, after lunch about half of the tour chose to stay around the visitor's center. The rest of us went out to see one of the open air village exhibits. There were a total of 10 villages in the museum, representing each of the 10 different areas of in Hungary. We went to the on which had been reassembled from the region of Kisalföld, also known as the Little Hungarian Plain which covers northwestern Hungary, south-western Slovakia, and eastern Austria. This picture shows the approach to the village. In the village we visited a farmer's house and the three generation house of a prosperous town resident.

This is a picture of the Budapest Great Market Hall. Dating from 1897, it is the largest and oldest indoor market in Budapest. There are three floors. The basement contains a conventional supermarket. The ground floor contains booths selling vegetables, meat, bread etc. The second floor booths sold local arts and crafts and food stalls. This is first floor looking down the main aisle.

A block away from the Great Market Hall is the Liberty Bridge (Szabadság híd). Across the bridge and up on the Gellért Hill is the Liberty Statue (Szabadság Szobor). Erected in 1947 it was to memorialize what was then referred to as the Soviet liberation of Hungary (during World War II and featured the inscription "To the memory of the liberating Soviet heroes, erected by the grateful Hungarian people in 1945". Over the years the favorable opinion of the Soviet Union faded, and after the end of communist rule in 1989, the inscription was changed to "To the memory of those all who sacrificed their lives for the independence, freedom, and prosperity of Hungary" This picture was taken from the Pest side of the bridge looking due west.

This is Hungarian State Opera House. Its construction began in 1875 and was completed in 1884. Gustav Mahler was the director from 1887 to 1891. The building had a major renovation from 1980 to 1984. The front of the building is topped by these sculptures of various important opera characters.

In several places I found climbing roses which had been trained to use small trees as trellises. The roses would poke out from the tree foliage. This is one of the better examples located outside the Hungarian State Opera House.

The last stop on the last Viking tour was the Lotz Hall (Lotz-Terem) Book Cafe in the Alexandra Bookstore. The building was originally a casino with a billiard and ballrooms on the first floor, playing and reading rooms on the second floor, and the third floor had as 2 luxury apartments. After some fire damage, the building was restored as the Párizsi Nagy Áruház (Paris Department Store) which was Hungary’s first modern department store. Nationalized after the war, it deteriorated from lack of use. After the collapse of the Soviet Union it had a succession of unsuccessful tenants until the Alexandra Bookstore moved in. They converted the second floor extremely ornate Renaissance ballroom into a cafe. This is a mosaic of that cafe and it barely begins to show the ho ornate it is. As a cafe it was also outstanding. Normally elaborate cakes look much better in the case than they actually taste on the fork. Their cake tasted even better than it looked. After the delightful afternoon tea, the tour returned to the hotel using the metro line running under Andrássy Út.

This picture of the Fisherman's Bastion and Matthias Church was taken from the terrace beside the Hungarian Parliament Building. The two wings of the Fisherman's Bastion are separated and allow a very nice view of the Matthias Church. While it appears that there are only six towers on the Bastion, in fact a seventh dower is hidden by the largest tower on the right. If you blow up the picture you can just see the tip of the tower sticking up to the right. Boats were constantly going by on the Danube.

This memorial honors the Jews who were killed by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest at the end of World War II between 1944 and 1945. Victims 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 rusted cast iron period shoes represents the shoes left behind on the bank.

A few blocks further along the Danube is the dock for the Viking River Cruise boats. Since the Legend had cast off the night before, this is the Idi. The Legend left early because the river was rising rapidly. In the lower center of the picture at the Idi's waterline you can see a large log which had hung up on the mooring lines. The boats always dock with their bows pointing upstream to prevent damage from such flotsam. In the background is the Buda Castle, this time by day..

This is panoramic picture of St. Stephen's Basilica. At 315 ft. it is one of the two tallest buildings in Budapest. (the other is the Hungarian Parliament Building). They are of equal height by design, signifying the coequal status of church and state. By current regulations, no taller buildings are allowed in Budapest. The largest church in Budapest, it can hold about 8,500 worshipers at the same time. The church was completed in 1905 after being under construction for 54 years In the foreground, on the square in front of the cathedral, you can see several tents, one having very obvious Lego signs on it. The Lego Store in Budapest was setting up to build a record breaking Lego tower. It was completed the following weekend. It reached 114 feet, and was topped by a Rubik's cube.

Unlike the St. Stephen's in Passau and Vienna which were dedicated to the first Christian martyr, this St. Stephen's is dedicated to the first King of Hungary. This picture is of the high altar and features a Carrara marble statue of St. Stephen. Standing on the cupola above the statue is a sculpture of the archangel Gabriel holding the Holy Crown above the king’s head. While it is unusual to find the statue of a person on the high altar of any basilica, this basilica was given special Papal permission to display the church’s patron saint.

Here is a close up of the High Altar statue. The sculptor, Alajos Stróbl, also carved the statue of St. Stephen located between Fisherman's Bastion and the Matthias Church shown in a previous picture.

Since 1950 The Holy Dexter, King St. Stephen's naturally mummified right hand, is housed in the church's reliquary. For a few forints a visitor can light up this elaborate chest and see the hand. It is the most important relic of the Hungarian statehood and kept in the Holy Right Chapel located behind the high altar. Each year on the 20th of August it is ceremonially paraded through the city.

A Stained Glass Window in St. Stephen's Basilica, Budapest

For a small fee a tourist can take an elevator up that opens inside the St. Stephen's Basilica dome. From where the exterior of the dome can be accessed via some stairs. This picture is of one of the basilica 's front towers as scene from the dome.

This is a view of the Mathias Church and Fisherman's Bastion on the Buda Castle Hill as seen from The St. Stephen's Basilica Dome.

This is a view of the Buda Castle in Buda as seen from The St. Stephen's Basilica Dome in Pest.