Back to Budapest, Hungary Day 5 (Friday May 29, 2009)

Back to Budapest, Hungary Day 5 (Friday May 29, 2009)

We left Lillafured for Budapest about 9:15 a.m. after having breakfast at the hotel. We had some rain on the trip back that made us change some of our plans. We went to Eger, Hungary which is about half way back to Budapest to see a few things and to have a break in our travel by bus.

In Edger, we went to the Liceum which was a former teachers’ training school and early on a former church college. It contains a famous and impressive archbishop library that opened its doors in 1783. It has 130,000 old volumes including medieval manuscripts that are hand written and we saw some that were written by hand in the 1400s or earlier. The book shelves of the library are made of beautiful Regency oak and go up 20 feet to a second story set of book shelves and an elliptical track around the room. Each column section of the library is labeled by one of the letters of the alphabet, so the main floor has books A-R and the top floor has books S-Z. The ceiling of the library is a masterpiece of Hungarian fresco art by Johann Kracker and represents the 16 century Council of Trent, which changed the nature of the church.

We also went to see the astronomy museum on the sixth floor. It had old telescopes that were used for astronomy in the 1800s. We had to walk up the six flight of stairs, but everyone made it. One could walk on an observation deck on the 6^th floor to see the city of Eger below.

On the 9^th floor was the Camera obscura, a dark room that uses a fixed and rotating mirror to view the city of Eger reflected on a disk laying a table in front of us.

We walked through the city streets to Sorozo Restaurant. It is a small restaurant in Eger, but had excellent food. I had cold peach soup, a Greek salad and chicken with rice. Others had fish soup and other dishes, but everyone liked the food.

Finally we walked to a Marzipan museum and shop. The Hirsches love marzipan candy, so we observed all the beautiful decorative cakes and candies in the museum, including a whole room, that were made of real sugar and starch. Later we bought a few candies in the shop to eat. Needless to say they were delicious.

On the road from Eger to Budapest we saw a rainbow near sunset time which we took as our good luck charm.

We arrived at Budapest about 6:30 p.m. back at the Helia hotel. We gave our driver, Victor, applause for getting us back safely through winding mountain roads, highways and narrow streets in the towns with a blue bus.