Budapest: Churches and Synagogue

The day after Easter Sunday was one of the brightest, sunniest days of our river-cruise trip in March.  So you won't be surprised that we packed it to the gills!

Our first mission (so to speak...since this is a post about churches), was to see the Dohány Street Synagogue on the Pest side of the Danube.  But on the way...

...we stopped in at this wee church first.

Remember, this was the Monday morning after Easter.

And then we saw the aftermath of a car accident...our first of the entire trip.

Everything about it appeared as though it could have been anywhere!

There she was...just as we had remembered on our Viking excursion when we drove by the previous Friday.

This time we were on foot and could see it up close and personal.

The Dohány Street Synagogue, from 1859, is Europe's largest, seating 3,000.

Sadly, it wasn't open...but we saw a lot!

 I was especially mesmerized by all the Stars of David mixed in with the design and architecture.

We peeked through every gate and crevice possible....

...especially at the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs, resembling a weeping willow (1989).

The leaves bear the names of over 400,000 Hungarian Jews murdered by the Nazis.

I just wish we could have gone inside to see the names!

Have you ever wanted to learn Hebrew?  I have.

(click any collage to enlarge)

It's the kind of place where you just want to sit and soak it all in!

It so happens that there was an advertisement inside the memorial courtyard that pointed out a Flodni (apple-walnut-poppy-seed pastry) café just down the street.  And since it was about that time....

...oh, YES.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Rachel's flodni, to be precise.  

She's "one of the queens of Budapest Jewish cooking. The daughter of a noted rabbi."

Doesn't get more authentic than that...just a few doors down from the synagogue!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Newly energized, we headed off to another of Budapest's famous churches but stopped off first at the nearby Opera House.

The Hungarian State Opera House, from 1875, is Hungary's largest opera building.

Lucky for us, we were able to step inside the lobby and get a glimpse of the grandeur.

The outside wasn't bad either!  (Look at that imp!)

Like I said, we were on our way to see another church, the grand St. Stephen's Basilica from 1905.  It's the third largest church building in present-day Hungary, according to Wiki.

 If that doesn't grab your attention, wait till you go inside.

And yes, that's a souvenir-coin machine right at the door before going in!

Sometimes there's nothing you can say!

"At the feet of Jesus" came to mind.

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Near St. Stephen's we found the metro station and headed across the Danube to the Buda side of the city.  Remember all those churches we saw, clustered near the Matthias Church?

To refresh your mind, see all those steeples?  Yup!

We wanted to see what we could of the other churches.

 This Elizabeth Temple was on a side street on our way to another church...and wasn't open.

This Church of St. Anne, from 1762, was open...at least for the inside glassed foyer.

It's amazing what pictures you can still take without going all the way inside!

But this Church of Szilágyi Dezso, from 1896, was the one I so hoped was open...but wasn't.  

Well, at least it was a treat to behold on the outside.  Look at those colored roof tiles!

By then it was time to eat supper and go home.  So we did.

And what a great choice it was!

You can never go wrong with a nautical theme...for us!

And because this was our last time on the Buda side of the city, I just had to capture the famous icons again:

the Parliament (looking back to the Pest side), the Margaret Bridge, and the Chain Bridge.

By now you should have all these landmarks down pat, right?!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Other impressions from the day...

...more impressions...

...and more impressions.

This, my friends, is Budapest, with one more day left to go....

The Oslo Opera House

Totally worth a post all on its own, as you will see: the Oslo Opera House!

Friday, April Fool's Day, was our first full day in Norway, after spending Thursday night at Diane and Renny's. It was cold but SUNNY. That was the day we took a 2-hour cruise on the Oslo Fjord to see the city from a different perspective.

Seeing the Opera House from the water was worth the entire mini-cruise!
Completed in 2007 (a year after Donica and I were there), it is like an enormous glacier sliding into the fjord. White granite combines with Italian marble to create the illusion of glistening ice. The sloping roof angles down to the water like a jagged chunk of ice.

On Sunday, 2 days later, when we went with our Oslo Pass to visit this incredible structure, the fog made of it a mystery to behold.

But first, before entering, we got distracted by the swans and ducks,
navigating on and off the ice for the bread crumbs being tossed to them...


...but not for long, because it was the Opera House we were there to see...if we could!
THIS is what welcomed us. THIS is what beckoned us to enter.


You actually do find the main entrance, even in the fog.
And just like that, you come in from the iceberg cold to the warmth of light (through windows that are 15 meters high) and oak 'waves' that curve/flow around the room.


Wall panels, like the one Astrid is putting her arm through, are illuminated from the floor and from behind with beams of white and green light. The lights fade in and out, creating shifting shadows and the illusion of slowly melting ice.


Diane really wanted us to take the Opera House Tour, approximately one hour, so thanks to her, we did! All tour guides work in some capacity or another there at the House. Our guide is an opera singer and was just delightful.


So, back behind the scenes, we entered the world of the opera and ballet.
The props, the sound system, the nuts and bolts of putting on a performance.


The costumes (which we found out after a few snaps were not to be photographed)....


The sewing room: "We don't make mistakes; we do variations."


And finally, the heart of the House, the main theater, seating approximately 1,370 in a classic horseshoe shape. The tour didn't take us to the ground floor but what we saw from above was convincing. Diane saw The Nutcracker there this past December and said it was incredible.


While we didn't see a real ballet while there,
we saw enough evidence to believe it happens!

That was the behind-the-scenes tour. Another "totally worth it!"


Then we went outside to play....


...and to see the famous "She Lies" iceberg sculpture sitting out in the water nearby, a sculpture made of stainless steel and glass, 12 x 17 x 16 metres, floating on its axis in line with the tide and wind.


At the beginning of this post, you saw the Opera House from the ground. Here you see if from the roof...the only Opera House in the world where you are able to walk up to and on the roof.


Two posts ago I showed you Diane and Astrid up there on the roof....
(the wall surfaces remind me of Braille)


Look who else was there! Two brothers, Daddy, Mommy and their dog.
There are no guard rails on the roof. Seriously. But there are signs to remind you that the roof has many steps and may be slippery. That should do for any tiger, right?


Even though it was still foggy by then, we could see a lot...and how high we were!
That's Astrid's mirror image on the bottom left (above).


One last reminder, as we were leaving, that the ice was not safe.
The little children had it down pat.

See why this had to have its own post. It ranks up there with some of the best architectural treasures I've ever seen, including the Opera House in Sydney. And that's saying a lot!

The Norwegian Bloggers

Because our 6-day sea voyage was bookended by THREE sets of Norwegian bloggers, that is where I will start this odyssey of our Norway trip.

Three sets. Three couples. 4 Norwegians. One American. One Filipino-Spanish. And if you add in Astrid and myself, another American and one Dutch woman.

The incredible power of virtual reality becoming real!

1. Renny and Diane: Oslo

The first weekend we spent 4 nights with Renny and Diane in Oslo.
He's Norwegian and she's American, from New York, now in Oslo for 12 years.
One main reason for showing their housing complex is the color...one of THE Norwegian basic colors for houses. Very hard to miss!


If you can't take a joke....!
Our first full day in Oslo was a SUNNY Friday, and while Diane worked, Renny took us out to see the sights. We walked out of the parking garage and immediately 'dealt' with these two lovelies, sculpted by Skule Waksvik.
What a way to start off our day!


Oslo's city center is right on the harbor where all the big crusie ships dock. I remembered it well from the Scandinavian cruise Donica and I took back in 2006. Nothing had changed.
Town Hall's two towers; the sculptures; the Nobel Peace building; the open fish market.


We had already decided ahead of time to take the hop-on-hop-off boat cruise that came with our free 72-hour/3-day Oslo Pass.



Renny and Diane had already hosted a big Blog Gathering last year, attended by our very own Vagabonde, amongst others. Thanks to that event (which we were unable to attend), we got some of our own freebies AND free Oslo Passes. THANK YOU!

BUT because there was still ice on the Oslo fjord, the hop-on/off boats (with wood bottoms) were not able to run. Instead, we took a two-hour fjord cruise in a boat with a metal bottom that could break through the patches of ice. It was worth every minute, giving us a foretaste of the longer voyage to come the following week. It was a great way to get many of the city's highlights. You can see Renny's take on it here.


After a full day on the town, we rendezvoused with Diane after her work, and stopped to buy fresh cod for dinner on our way home. Our appetites were more than ready for the typical Norwegian meal Renny and Diane served up for us, joined by Tor and Anna, the last set of Norwegian bloggers.

I'll get back to Tor and Anna later because we stayed with them the following weekend after our sea voyage. But it was wonderful to meet them at Renny and Diane's, to share the camaraderie that had been building for weeks.


Renny and Tor are both computer/IT wizzards, so you can just imagine how we all started going 100 mph on our different ways of uploading and sorting through all our images.
And that's saying nothing about the fact that Renny is THE consummate Blogger's Ambassador, championing the making of blogs and not war!


Diane's blog had been in hibernation for 3 months because of her social work stress. Babysitting these two gerbils who adore her was her lifeline. But it appears she became freshly inspired by our visit and started blogging again here after we left.
I love it when we can feed off of each other, don't you?!

By the way, that's her youngest son, Kyle, sitting next to her...and still living at home....


...and since he also was such a gentleman in welcoming us to his home, we got involved with his life as well.
His RUSS 2011 life! That's all about his high school graduation and the rite of passage they all go through, including this uniform, worn by the girls, too. That's another story altogether...but very Norwegian!
We got our education.


On a foggy Saturday, we were off again to see the Kon Tiki and Fram museums, all minus Anna. We had already become one big happy family. Too much like fun!


Then to the Norwegian open-air Folk Museum without Tor. Just the 4 of us.
See how Renny immerses himself into the lives of other people (bottom left image above)? He's like that...a friend to anyone and everyone from anywhere.

Are you still following this...and noticing that this is a post about the people more than about what we saw! But I'm still trying to whet your appetite for the posts to come. HA!

Our last full day, Sunday, before our sea voyage, was spent relaxing and visiting the Oslo Opera House. I'll talk about it more in another post but it's the only opera house in the world where you can walk up to and on the roof. Incredible, especially in the fog.
Thanks to Diane we had a lovely tour of the backstage inards.
And surely you didn't miss Tor, at 6' 6", waving his arms.


It really is an awesome construction!


Can you tell how much we enjoyed each other?
Thank you, Renny and Diane.

2. Charles and Odd: Bergen

Totally unbeknownst to us, we found out another blogger, Charles, lives in Bergen, the end city of our sea voyage. And since we were staying there overnight, before our next day's train ride to Oslo, we made sure we hooked up with them.
Charles is Filipino-Spanish and Odd is Norwegian, now married for 2 years.


Charles met us at the port, helped us take our luggage to the YMCA, and then we were off to meet Odd for sights of the city.


Lucky for us, Charles insisted on making us a Thai supper, and Odd insisted on a movie for our wonderful evening together. It was short but sweet. Friends forever.
Thank you, Charles and Odd.

The next day we were off on the 7-hour train ride to Oslo, west to east, across this incredible country called Norway. And that takes us back to Tor and Anna....

3. Tor and Anna: Oslo

It so happened it was Tor's 66th birthday that Sunday, April 10. Two month's later it'll be mine, so we have long ago decided we are long-lost twins. And why not!


Lucky for us again, we had a splendid meal prepared for us by Anna.
An avocado-caviar appetizer followed by a potato-fish casserole and home-grown berries with ice cream.
True Norwegian cuisine.


While eating, we found out that Anna had hand-painted not only the dinner plates but an entire set of Christmas plates. Just for fun and pleasure! An artist amongst us.


This is Anna, a high-school teacher of challenging kids! She has no interest in her own blog but clearly keeps herself busy with her collectibles and two Manx cats. I've decided after meeting her that she's an actress!
So much more full of life than I was expecting. Tor, too.


While Anna was off to school the next day, Tor stayed home to show off his neighborhood, overlooking the Oslo fjord...the same one we had crusied with Renny a week earlier.


Then we were off to Drøbak for the rest of the day before flying home.
Nice and relaxing and sunny, just like our first full day with Renny a week earlier.
Drøbak is where Tor's paternal grandmother, Martha, was born in 1882, so it was another special piece of Norwegian life.


And then, to top off the Incredible Adventures of Astrid and Ginnie while in Norway, Tor surprised us and took us to the scenic overview of Oslo from the Ekeberg hill where Edvard Munch got his inspiration for his famous painting, Skrik/Scream. Since we hadn't visited his museum, it was the next best thing.
And what a way to end our trip before driving to Gardermoen airport!
Thank you, Tor and Anna.

There you have it. The Norwegian bloggers. The bookends to our sea voyage. There was no better place to start for me but with them. Norway will never be the same without them!