Last Days of 2016 Trip

 For the second to last day, we decided to do the Parliament Building tour, which meant going there buying tickets, and the returning on the appointed time, which for us, was 2 hours later. They have tours in many languages and a board shows what times and how many tickets are available.
 I started taking pictures on our walk there because every corner turned showed more beautiful buildings.

 And this is the Parliament...pretty spectacular on the outside and amazingly ornate and rich inside as well.

 We walked around for the next couple of hours, stopping for coffee and a muffin in a local place.

Inside was decorated so well, but we chose to sit outside under umbrellas.

 I often get intrigued by the shoes people wear for travel and start taking pics of feet instead of sites. One of these days, I might make a collage of shoe pictures from other countries. 

Waiting waiting waiting....and we ran into Marcus the man from Munich who had been on the food tour. We also saw him the da before at the baths, but he was in a pool as we walked by and it would be have been a weird place and time to stop to chat.

 Won't explain much, but this building is over the top. We saw the crown jewels, but not allowed to take photos in there. When the Hungarians knew they were sure to be bombed by the Germans, they removed all the stained glass from this building and kept it safe in the basement until after the war.

I had Matthew take this one for my nephews.....

Ronald Regan's statue is in Liberty Park near the monument erected when the Russians came to liberate the Hungarians.  Little do they know, Communism would reign for years and they would rue the day they created that statue. They've left it as a reminder, albeit an ironic one.

 Cool fountain where people can periodically walk into the center of it and be surrounded by water.

 We came upon this purely by accident. I was staring at this sculpture, which is an eagle with a swastika on it swooping down on the freedom-loving Hungarians. The Hungarians originally helped the Nazis invade Poland, but the Nazis turned on them when they didn't hand over their Jews fast enough.
I then looked down and in front of me were many stones laid on the ground with other objects, such as plants, a pair of old shoes, etc and above it, a string of pictures with comments on them. They were written by family members who had lost someone in the concentration camps. Some were long stories and some said simply, "These were my grandparents who died in Auschwitz before I was born."
 It breaks my heart.