This city is huge! As we approached on the ship, the cruise director described some of the buildings. On the city tour, we heard much of the history of the place. Hungary is the only country that has been on the losing side of every battle or war or revolution for the past 600 years! They have no unemployment insurance, so if you can’t find a job, you work for the government (often doing maintenance or clean up).

Our first stop on the tour (with another exceptional, local guide) was a huge indoor marketplace. His family visits this one often. There are six of these beautiful market buildings in the city, designed by the same architect. The prices are in Hungarian currency, the forints (several hundred forints to the dollar). Everybody in Hungary is a millionaire (in forints).

The guide told us that the furry pigs in the picture have the best meat of any mammal. Low cholesterol, and the “good kind of fat (like avocados), meaning that Hungarian sausages are the best in the world. This guide is proud of his country!

One side of the Danube River is Buda (hilly) and the other side is Pest (flat). Many bridges connect the two parts of the city. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, most recently in 1945 when the Nazis blasted away all the previous bridges before the communists took over. Hungary was under communist rule for 45 years, until 1990.

This is one of the few communist monuments still on display in Budapest. After the communists left, the citizens took down all the monuments and put them in storage (in case they get taken over again). The ruins of the fort behind the statue (which he called the Statue of Liberty) was built to destroy the city.

The bus took us to the Fishermen’s Bastion on the Buda side, and the guide told us that Walt Disney used this castle as the model for the castle in Disneyland. But, we have heard that “mad” King Ludwig’s castle in southern Germany is also the model, so who knows?

A friend from our tour took our photograph with the city behind us.

The same hill has Matthias Church, with many wonderful statues.

Also interesting is the porcelain tile rooftop. This type of roof (which we saw earlier on the market place) is more expensive to make but will (hopefully) last longer. Pretty!

This beautiful church is next to the first “western” hotel in Budapest, a Hilton built in the 1970s during the Cold War. It turned out that was the hotel we chose to stay in the next night! (So more later.)

The inside of the basilica was unique, according to our guide, because of the ancient Asian influence in (especially) the painting of the tiles. And, I found a confessional.

Another beautiful church.

The stained glass windows on both sides matched.

In the afternoon, we walked back to the market (as was the wish of our guide!), then, because this was our last evening with the river ship (not a boat), we watched Hungarian dancers. (Pictures are not very good – low light, bad angle and the dancers were FAST).

After the “traditional” dancing, these four got into some jazz and other forms of modern dance. We just watched (them and the 3 musicians) after taking pictures for memories. I had the feeling the women especially wanted to kick the traditional dance that the tourists wanted and do their own thing! It was great!

After dinner, the culmination of the day (week?) was the “Illumination Cruise” in which the ship went back upstream (north) on the Danube to show the buildings of Budapest lit up with floodlights.

• Europe 2018