Well, this was my last day of site seeing in Budapest. Was planning to go stand in line for the Parliament tour but when I got up and saw incredible blue skies starting to poke through, I nixed that idea. Did not want to waste what little I had of daylight (sun sets by 4:15 pm here) standing in line. So, instead, I headed over to Parliament to check out the outside of the building. The Hungarian Parliament is, I believe, the third largest in Europe. Very large gothic building. Following that, I took the tram over to Chain Bridge and [View Full Entry]

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Today was not a good weather day. Heavy, heavy fog. Couldn't see very far in front of you. As a result, decided to kind of spend the day visiting some random sites and just wandering. Went and walked along Vacci Street and Fashion Street which are the big pedestrian only shopping areas. Lots of little shops selling variety of Hungarian items as well as typical tourist stuff. Fashion Street also has a number of high end stores. I also walked over to the Great Synogogue which is one of the largest in Europe. Also walked over the Elizabeth Bridge and down [View Full Entry]

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Well, woke up at 5 am and I can't sleep so might as well write an update on my Day 2. Storm clouds were there when I got up in the morning so decided to try to spend some time indoors seeing some museums. At the top of my list was the Museum of Fine Arts located at Heroes Square. The square is a very large open space with some monuments and museums on two sides, the Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts. It is also adjacent to a huge city park which houses a castle which was [View Full Entry]

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I write from Budapest, Hungary. Wrote up my notes while I was eating tonight on what I was going to report to you, my wonderful friends and family. Can you tell I’m in a good mood? What a suck up, huh? Well, I had a great day of site seeing and I see on the internet that my house probably had 4 foot drifts of snow in front of it so guess the weather people were right for once and I managed to escape to 60 degree weather just in time! It was supposed to rain all day but didn’t happen [View Full Entry]

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Today, my big event was going to be a trip to Hampton Court and then some miscellaneous things in the late afternoon and evening if time. It's my last site seeing day in London. I grabbed the train (only 9 £ roundtrip!) and took the 35 minute ride to Hampton, England. Hampton Court You immediately see the property on coming out of the train station. It…is…huge. And I love it. I am a fan of the tudor building style. My dream home would be tudor inspired with a big office/library with floor to ceiling bookcases for all my books. Back to [View Full Entry]

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Got back to London from Hampton Court late afternoon and cruised over to the Tate Britain since it is home to the collection of one of my favorite artists J.M.W. Turner. I was fortunate to see Turner’s collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC when it was on tour and I happened to be in DC at the same time and became an instant fan. He has several of pieces of art on display since he gifted them his collection. Beautiful work. Such a mix of styles as well. He was a beautiful landscape artist but also could [View Full Entry]

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Today was going to be kind of a leisurely day of tying up some loose ends of places I wanted to visit if there was time and then attending the London Symphony in the evening. Slept in a little because of my late night last night and then headed out, first up, Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace I was able to tour the state rooms of Buckingham Palace which are only open a few months of the year when the Queen is out of town. No photos allowed. These are the rooms used for state dinners and for meeting with dignitaries. They [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Paris this morning for my quick daytrip. Because it was going to be a quick daytrip, I didn't really make any specific plans and planned for a day of wandering the big sites. Took the Eurostar over which was a great way to travel. The trip took a bit over 3 hours which is longer than normal because of some work they are doing due to a fire a couple weeks ago. I thought it was going pretty fast as it was! You're above ground heading out of the UK, then you go under the English Channel and pop [View Full Entry]

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I wasn’t quite sure what today was going to bring. My main emphasis for the day was going to be the British Museum but I also hoped to get into a tour at Parliament. I wasn’t sure if that was going to happen since Parliament can only be viewed by international visitors through a tour in the months of August and September and since I didn’t have a tour ticket, I wasn’t sure I was going to get in during the final days. Got over to Parliament early and did some walking around. Starting chatting with a tour guide who radioed [View Full Entry]

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After a couple hours delay departing the US, we finally landed in London. Anxious to not lose all of my site seeing day, I fumbled my way onto the tube and to my stop and found my hotel. The tube system seemed easy enough, but the first day is always the roughest when you don’t know what you’re doing. I was; however, already loving my tube pass card. It was about 11 am and my room wasn’t ready, so I dumped by bag and headed out for some site seeing before my body told me I needed sleep (wasn’t able to [View Full Entry]

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