Boring You With Budapest, Pt.1

I could only upload some of the pictures I took whilst amongst the Magyar, so until I get a chance to remember the name and password for another of my flickr accounts, this is what you get. Because everyone enjoys sitting back and perusing someone else's vacation¹ photo's, right?

Forgive any bluriness - I was attempting to take some pictures while moving, and some in dimly lit or really bright areas and so I dicked around with the shutter speed quite a bit. Some pictures, now that I'm looking at them full size, suffered for it.

The Journey Begins?
We flew out of Montreal on Lufthansa. A few words about Lufthansa. They dicked us on our seats. I reserved certain seats and they changed them, with nary an e-mail to let us know, so that we weren't even sitting near each other and the flight was full by then so no hope of squeaking around at all. The food was good (for airline food, anyway, I 'd still be embarrassed to serve it to house guests), and the alcohol was...definitely over-served. Not that I'm complaining. But...before we reached cruising altitude they served us a cocktail. Then they came by with pre-dinner beer and wine (the house beer was Warsteiner, too!). Then, wine with dinner. Then after-dinner wine. Then an after-dinner, after-wine aperitif of brandy or Bailey's (they didn't serve the Bailey's in a shoe, though). After which I think they were still handing out free booze, but even though we had plenty of flight left, I had to lay off. No one wants a wine headache at 3,500 feet!

St Joseph's Stephen's Basilica
What is St. Joseph's Stephen's Basilica? It's a giant church. Outside, as I'd guess is the case at many cathedrals world wide, there are people with official looking badges - for the sake of argument, we'll say they're official - wandering around asking for donations to feed the orphans. Well, gee, church, don't you think that you could worship in some kind of plain looking wooden structure and use all the money that would normally go towards art and gold and marble and glass and stuff to feed the sick and look after the poor? No? Well, okay then.

The outside. It was one of those landmark's that's large enough that you can use it to navigate around by checking out which side of it your facing. Really helpful if you're standing right next to it.

Here we see the first meeting of the Royal Order of the Water Buffalo depicted above the basilica's entrance.

This is the front door. These dudes really love Jesus, but they are very stern about it.

This was an inside arch - I may have taken pictures of others, somewhere.

This was the main dome. Hopefully my artists eye gives some scale to it's awesome majesty. It was breathtaking. It was grand. I really just couldn't wait for a group of Japanese tourists to move along so I could see the rest of the place!

The pic in the cap was kind of cool. I think that this is supposed to be Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top.

The first altar boy.

This looked like it was tempra (it has that glossy, eggy look) and I liked the form of the art. Too bad I took such a bad picture! And that's tempra, not tempura, which is also eggy.

Stained glass fo' yo' ass!

Look at this guy - he's getting ready to rock that microphone!

I wanted to get pictures of all the windows, but instead we had to get the eff away from some pushy, loud, obnoxious Italian tourists who then scowled at us when we didn't do the "dip the fingers in holy water, then it's spectacles-testicles-wallet-watch" bit as we left. It's not like I've EVER been Catholic, gang, I just wanted to look at the ridiculously gaudy art!

Castle Dracula
No, really. But not really. But really - this thing was a replica of the real Castle Dracula. Really. The great thing about it was that there were little old lady vendors that you could buy a giant can of beer from and then walk around with an open container (and what was great about that was that it was like 90° F outside!). And the beer was Lowenbräu, which I haven't seen in quite some time.

I didn't see any bodies impaled on spikes. There were some baby ducks in the moat. And there were a lot of statues on the eaves of the buildings - some of which were very cool. Knights in armor, dwarves, stuff like that. No explanations given as to who any of them were, but I'd put one in my front yard if they were for sale.

The chapel...

Behind this medieval lion thing that the love lady is leaning on, unseen to the camera as it was only about three inches tall, is a creepy little guy who I believe was wearing robes. Anybody know what the meaning of something like that would be?

I think that this guy was supposed to be a writer or a philosopher or something. I took a picture because he looks like one of the Nazgûl.

Ah! This ring-wraith has no eyes!

These look like they should be in a Chinese tea garden, and not Dracula's Castle in Budapest. But I thought they were neat, so I took a picture. There were actually two, on on either side of a bench or something that looked out over the pond, but some matro-looking dud was standing there, so I didn't want to take a picture. Cindy did, however, compliment the shapeliness of his backside to me. Reluctantly, I had to agree.

That's all you're going to get out of me for now. Later today or tomorrow - whenever I have a long, boring sort again, I'll put another bunch of pictures up - I also have to get more Flickr space or something else going on to finish uploading all the pictures from the trip, and of my garden friends, and of the crazy storm we had yesterday.

¹It was a business trip, really. But around attending lectures and other things,we got to do a bit of sightseeing.