Bastya Wellness Hotel Miskolc

Turns out that November 1 is All Saints Day. And rather than spending the day worshipping a pop music band, the locals celebrate the lives of the saints and their family that has passed away who are named afer the various saints (and it seems as though just about everyone here is named after one saint or another). I hope I've got those details right!

Sunday was also the day I arrived in Eger on a relatively ...

... dag is het ondedeel binnen, hangt het er binnen 2 uurtjes weer onder en kunnen we door naar Duitsland. Via het schattige plaatsje Berkastel-Kues zijn we in Asschaffenburg neergestreken.
Tsja ook in duitsland lieten we, los van een stukje moed, een onderdeeltje bus achter. Slechts een rubber maar goed zonder rubber geen remvloeistof dus toch maar even naar de garage in Tsjechie samen met Roman. Tsjechie is onze eerste lange stop aangezien Angelique ...

Eger is around 130kms from Budapest and an easy ride, mostly via a good new highway (I think it is the M3) and then a short, but very scenic ride into the hills. The city centre is very small and with the help of my friend Kate, it was easy to find a good (free) parking spot. The castle up the hill is small, but nice to visit for about 30 minutes. We just missed a big ...

... restaurant last night doing their best to drink all the schnapps available, and we heard that since they switched from Korunas to Euros in January their income has multiplied many times. Perhaps it won't take that long!

We're now in Eger in northern Hungary. The town is famous for a Turkish siege in 1596 followed by an occupation, obviously the reason they server excellent kebabs! There is a fortress overlooking ...

... second cousins, there were some difficulties with communication but they figured it out.
I even received a copy of our family tree that goes back to the 1700-s. It's a 26 page pdf file - now that's impressive...

Monday morning we are off to Croatia. My hopes are not really high at this point as a 5.2 earthquake is reported from the area and the weather suppose to be lousy for the next 10 days. What can I say? We'll make the best of it.

... And Colin, you would love it here because the speed limit on the freeway is 130 km/hr, and most people drive between 140 and 150) We visited the cemetery where Les' oldest brother was buried two years ago. I always find cemeteries fascinating, but this one was extremely so. All the graves were above-ground and very ornate. Most of them had fresh flowers that were obviously replaced every week. One unbelievably ornate grave even had a gazebo of sorts over it, and ...

... napitý, nachystaný - prvý krát v zivote ako prvý a načas. Sedím, sedím, čakám. O 08:15 mi začala byť troska zima, predsa len od pivnice ťahá. O 08:30 uz mi je naozaj zima, tak vychádzam pred dom. Zisťujem, ze nemám ...

... weekend (August 20 is a national holiday in honour of St. Istvan, the king who brought Christianity to the Hungarians). After a brief tour of Eger, we loaded back in the car for the drive to Aggtelek National Park. It was a longer drive than we anticipated, and we feared that the park would be closed once we got there, but all was well... except the tour into the caves involved many stairs and a slippery walkway so Attila's mom had ...

... before going on a tour of Eger Castle. We paid for a guided tour of the castle and were told it would be in English. They were wrong as we discovered when we entered the first room on the tour and listened to the guide speak in Hungarian patiently waiting for the English version that never came. We asked if the tour was going to be entirely in Hungarian and we were told it was. Luckily there was a school ...

... two nights in a row, to try and stiffle the illusion a little. But that meant that last night we had the worst tasting and flavourless meal ever (and I had to hold Pete back from yelling at the chef and refusing to pay). Other than that, Eger has been a lovely little place and one that was very relaxing....but we still both have the sniffles, they just won't seem to go.... Off to Praha tomorrow...