Dublin

1st Stop!

We went to Dublin for a quick visit and a pint. The weather was not great but the city is farily easy to navigate and the food was great!

Walking around

Dublin Castle

More churches

Dodgy end

Old man Old pub

Guinness is a dry stout that began in St. James Gate by Arthur Guinness. I was very tired so had lots!

They keep the Guinness Yeast strains in a vault so that future beers will be made for the initial taste.

Like the weather outside

Beer Beer Beer! keep them coming!

The backside of the factory

View from the top of the brewery

Two Jade?? you need to share!

The lease for the brewery was signed on December 31 for 9,000 years at £45 per annum, Great Deal!

Concert

Walk home after the concert

View from the hotel

Flying into Geneva

Geneva!

A few Dinners around the Apartment

Apero for Jades work
(note Mom's Canadian flag in the window)

Hot dogs in the fireplace before we got the BBQ

Jades Homemade Sushi!

Budapest

Over Easter Jade and I visited Budapest which is the capital and largest city in Hungry. There are two major sides to the city that occupy the banks of the river Danube, Buda and Obuda (Old Buda) on the right bank and Pest on the left. We stayed in a lovely boutique hotel located on the left side of bank next to the Great Market Hall (Nagy Vásárcsarnok) and on Váci utca which is a 1300 meter long walking/shopping street. The weather was fantastic and the shopping was cheep and the food was very nice. I did have the Hungarian goulash and many dishes with paprika but do not have their coffee it was awful! The transit system was very easy to master and the English language is not predominate, but the locals will help you with a kind smile after a few rounds of charades. I really enjoyed our visit to Budapest and I would go back again but I think a long weekend was a good amount of time for a first visit. Safe, clean , cheap and Fun!

Great Market Hall

A shopping square on Váci utca where they make this traditional treat of dough over coals then covered in chocolate or nuts or cinnamon, very good!

A lady was hand painting an egg for Easter in the square

This man was asking every person that went by to play with him, I wish I knew how

Square market

Walking around

Look what Jade found!

Terror Museam
House of Terror is in the building where the Nazis and Soviets would conduct interrogations and sever torture. Some of the prisoners were kept there for years and other killed in the same day. We toured the basement where the imprisonment, torture, and hanging were conducted. Some of the cells were so small to keep the prisoners always in a halfway position from sitting and standing. This museum was put together very well but no pictures were allowed so here is the website to check out the gallery then museum http://www.terrorhaza.hu/

Tour of Budapest by boat

Third largest Parliament in the world

During World War 2 the Germans destroyed all the bridges

Finding our way in the underground

Lovely park before Heroes Square

Hősök tere (Heroes Square) is surrounded by the Museum of Fine Arts and the Palace of Art. The millennium Memorial which has statues of outstanding figures in Hungarian history. The memorial was started in 1896 and completed in 1929.

Cool bike tricks in the square

All the walking deserves a big beer

Communist statue park

In 1949 Budapest was declared a communist peoples republic till 1989. The statues would stand in the most prominent places around Budapest to remind the people of the powerful Soviet system. After the fall of the communist system the statues were moved to the outskirts of the city in a statue park. The statues are gigantic and usually show top communist officials like Lenin, Marx and Engels or they depict hard working men and women and soldiers. Although it is a great experience to be around these pieces of propaganda, I felt that the park itself was a letdown as it was not up kept and most of the statues are now falling apart. Perhaps the people of hungry would rather that part of their history die then maintain it for future generations.

All the statues are amazing but I was most impressed with Stalin’s Tribune which was an 8-meter-tall bronze statue but only his boots remain after it was pulled down in 1956. Here are the pictures of it standing, being taken down and now his boots.