I didn’t need a sweater

Thursday, August 21, 2025

It has been HOT the entire trip. We have been able to stay pretty comfortable with American levels of AC on the boat and in the hotels, but outside has been icky. Today, it cooled off!! Huzzah! It said it was going to be drizzly and 73. I immediately thought, “I will need to find the (summer) sweatshirt I brought.” Then I remembered that 73 is still summer and I would not need that. I wore my pink sleeveless dress and sandals. Everyone else in both of our tours was dressed for winter. Long sleeves, jackets, raincoats – ALL on each person. People literally stared at me. I stared back. I was hot all day – it is very humid here.

We overate at breakfast. I ate a ridiculous amount of peanuts after I had eaten everything else. Alex and Joe came in when we were almost finished, but we shuffled over to their banquette table for three (I shoved in on the banquette with my peanuts) and lingered with them for a long time. Then we napped! Keith is still struggling with having a cold. I showered to get ready for our tour at 1:30, then couldn’t find a hair dryer. Opened all the drawers, looked high and low. Nothing. Darn. Keith went down to the desk and learned we did have a hair dryer – in the desk drawer we didn’t even notice we had.

Our afternoon tour – for which we paid $276 (not real money because Viking gave us some onboard credit, but we could have bought Viking jackets or cookbooks or whatever) was totally lame. It cannot be overstated that I could not figure out what our guide was saying. It would be totally clear, then alkjdoivjlg. It took me until after the tour to understand I could not understand that she was saying people’s names or using Jewish terms for ceremony or worship. The words I couldn’t understand were words I didn’t know. Ah. It doesn’t help now, but at least I understand. Keith just turned her off in his ear. What we could understand was boring.

We visited the shoes first. At the time of the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust, an artist sculpted 60 pairs of metal shoes and installed them on the bank of the Danube where Jews had been shot and dropped into the river during the winter of 1944-45. They were forced to leave their shows behind, since shoes were valuable.

We visited the largest synagogue in Europe. It was designed by a Christian and is laid out like a church, which apparently, isn’t usual. It was lovely. The guide was exceptionally boring there. The overdressed people almost fainted because it was very hot inside and they were still overdressed.

We visited the cemetary of 2000 Jews who had starved or frozen to death and were just in the streets of the ghetto when the Red army liberated Budapest in 1945.

We visited the Raoul Wallenberg garden, with several memorials to those lost in the Holocaust as well as markers for those non-Jews who helped save Jews.

We visited the very small museum. The guide reached new heights of boring. It took forever. I found a bench.

We went to a restaurant for Jewish cake. Good! But heavy.

We got home an hour before the schedule said we should and we were delighted.

We had dinner with Joe and Alex. They are planning to come to NewCastle in UK to see us in November. Yay.

We took the Budapest by night tour and it was lovely. The rain that had come and gone all day stopped and we had a lovely tour up on castle hill. We looked at the parliment building from several angles. It does not get old.