September 22, 2018. St. Wolfgang, Austria to Budapest, Hungary.

This was a very long day! We loaded the van at 9:30 and left St. Wolfgang. We did not get very far before we encountered the tractor convoy. We'd seen a few tractors yesterday when we were on our bikes, but today there were scores of them!

Fortunately we were not behind them for very long. Our paths diverged and we were soon on our way to Salzburg. There we said goodbye to Cheryl and Rudy--we left them on the street in front of their hotel. They are taking the train to Munich to spend some time there before going home to Ontario.

It was sad to see places like McDonalds and TJ Maxx on our route today. We are so accustomed to being away from the populous areas.  We stopped for lunch before we got to Vienna. There was a turnstile to get into the restrooms--we each had to put in our 50 cents to enter. The receipt was good for 50 cents off if you bought something in the store, so we used it toward our lunches.

We dropped Carrie and Tim off at the train station in Vienna. They are going to stow their luggage there and tour Vienna until it's time to catch the night train to Krakow. They get to spend several days there before going home to Atlanta.

On the way to the train station we saw sights we hadn't seen when we were in the old part of town last week.

It took a couple more hours to get to Budapest. There we said goodbye to Marietta and Peter and thanked them for the wonderful tour. 

We got up to our room around 5 PM and had to come right back down and get a room with two beds. I'm not sure why that is so difficult!

We went out for a walk, and of course there were many stairs to get up to the square. There we saw the Matthias church and various fountains and statues.

We went to dinner at the Pest Buda Bistro located in the oldest hotel in Budapest, opened in 1696. We had Chicken Paprikash, and it was delicious! Diana had some Forints left from her last trip here so she used them toward the dinner. Our bill was 14000 forints.

We walked back through the square after our dinner. Unfortunately my night time photos do not reflect the beauty of this city at night.

We walked to the Buda Castle and read the postings about the castle, Hungarian history, and the art museum and exhibits. They were posted in Hungarian and English.

We could see the Parliament building across the Danube River on the Pest side. It's all very beautiful.

After we came back down all the many steps (there is a funicular here but we did not take it) we walked across the Chain Bridge and back. This is the oldest bridge in Budapest, constructed in 1849, the first permanent bridge connecting Buda and Pest.