Pickle people

Every kind of paprika and paprika souvenir!

We are in Budapest now! We arrived Thursday morning and were able to check into our apartment right away, which was very nice. Also nice, our apartment is pretty much next door to a very popular tourist destination - the market hall. We went there to get something for lunch. The market hall is interesting because it is a huge old iron building and the stalls are all in sort of permanent booths. Because of that there are lots more meat stands than usual, which made the girls unhappy. The market is so big that there is an Aldi's grocery store in the basement. Because the littles were hungry E and R brought them back to the apartment while S and I went to Aldi's for some yogurt and drinks. However, the market is so big that once we got to the basement we had a hard time finding the Aldi's. First we had to pass many fish stands (I had smelled fish upstairs and couldn't figure out why. I was glad to see I wasn't crazy, or that the meat upstairs hadn't gone terribly bad, which seemed like the other possibility.) And there were pickle people everywhere! Here is the conversation you would have with S if you were here:

S: Name a vegetable!

You: (Your answer here)

S: Pickled! They pickled everything.

Some of the friendlier looking pickle people

After lunch we walked around a little and visited St Stephen's Basilica. It is the home of King Stephen's supposedly well-preserved hand. St Stephen's has an elevator up to its viewing tower. The littles have missed out on all the towers so far, so up we went.

Looking away from the Basilica

T was nervous about being up so high

The Basilica itself is one of the prettiest churches I've ever been in. I wasn't able to get very good pictures. We were there in the late afternoon, and it was glowing gold inside. I even fiddled with my camera's menu settings for the first time, but no luck. This is the main part of the Basilica. There is also a special chapel with lots of stained glass windows of Hungarian (I assume) saints and a golden case for the hand. I didn't get a very good look, but it looked like a dried whole banana.

Ice cream! 

T was exhausted and had a little bit of a tantrum after ice cream, so we skipped the big Ferris wheel in the park and headed to a milk bar for dinner. It was fine, but I think we went to the best milk bar ever in Krakow, so we might not bother with a milk bar again. We headed back to our apartment to do laundry, eat popcorn, and watch a movie.

R is five feet tall. Look how high the ceilings are! 

We are on the third floor (called 1st here because of the half floor). It's high, but we don't notice. We are Swiss mountain climbers. Even L does the stairs :)

I hope this warning on the metro isn't anything important.

It is embarrassing not to know the language and I feel so rude, sometimes.

Also, it is impossible to know whether I am going in the right bathroom.

How would you decide between Férfiak and Nők?