Budapest and First Full Day in Paris

My son and spent two days in Budapest. The Danube river splits the city in two. On the west side is Buda which fairly hilly with lots of castles and churches. On the east side is Pest which is flat but has more area and contains the airport, train station, and the sports stadiums.

We spent our full day in Budapest taking a river tour on the Danube. We got off on an island which is about mile and half long that is a city park and walked it. Budapest has several large nice parks.

My son decided to go visit the thermal spas which are very nice while I walked back to the Hilton which is on the Buda side and surrounded by a church and a ”castle”. It is one of the more interesting hotels I have stayed at. The river tour even mentioned that Hilton thought it was their most beautiful hotel.

Instead of a train we fly to Paris on Air France. It was an uneventful flight until we were landing. There was a plane stuck on the runway and our plane had to power up and go around. Europeans seem to handle this better than us Americans. When this happens in the US there always seems to be a bunch of screaming. On this flight nothing of that sort.

We seem to catch the most abnormal taxi driver in Paris for the trip to the hotel. He did not cuss out any bad drivers and drove the speed limit.

Our hotel is about a block away from the Louvre. The last mile took about as long as the first 15 miles from the airport. We found out the Louvre was closed on Tuesday so we took a cab to the Eiffel Tower. The top was not open so we elected to walk around the city and walked back to the hotel about four miles away.

Paris has a lot if interesting buildings and many parks. It is a fun city to walk.

Today we are headed to tour both Versailles and the Louvre. It will be an active day.

I had a reader asked me what books I am reading. I read a lot of non-fiction for work but I read fiction for pleasure and mostly mysteries. In a typical year I read between 120-150 books. I think my record was something over 500 books in sixth grade. I do not speed read but my average reading speed is about 100 pages an hour.

On this trip I have been reading the Charlie Parker series by John Connolly. He is a private eye with a little bit of supernatural thrown in. It is a good series to read.

I will let you know how our day goes. We are off to Basel tomorrow.