Stutzfamily.com>Travel Pictures

One of the coolest stops we made was at the town of Fertöd, which has no claim to fame whatsoever EXCEPT that the royal palace of the Austo-Hungarian empire was there for a bit in the 1700s, and that the court composer at that time was a guy named Haydn (ever heard of him?). The palace itself is now a hotel with very reasonable rates, but the whole place was under repair when we visited. Susan and Barb were able to take a tour around several rooms, and came away comparing it to Versailles.

Of course, Susan and the kids didn't quite see things the same. To them, the coolest thing was a swing we discovered coming back from dinner that evening. A chain, wooden seat, and pulley provided close to an hour's worth of entertainment for all (including the locals out for a stroll). Then the church lit up for the evening...

Sopron marked the furthest western stop we made. Just a hop, skip, and long jump from Vienna, the old city was like a postcard. We dropped into the Goathead church (don't ask) and spent some time wandering the city walls, but we ran into to brick wall of Hungarian morning mentality - nothing opens until 10 except for folkart stores.

We hit Estergom on a gray, misty day, but were still impressed by the huge basilica overlooking the entire city. We spent the better part of a morning exploring the crypts under the church - Alea was pretty amazed that we were walking around hundreds of dead bodies!! We had to curb that same morbid fascination when we walked through a museum of early Christian art - lots of emphasis on blood and gore...

...before being locked in the stocks. Luckily mom and dad were there to provide some comic relief (Alea and grandma decided to forgo such frivolities).

We headed to Szentendre thinking about checking out some of the shopping, but when we rolled into town, the kids were fast asleep. Grandma and Dave wandered the streets for about an hour, running into more American tourists than we had seen at all the other stops combined. We decided that a straight run for the border would be the best ending possible for the vacation (before anything bad happened!). After a last Tesco stop (a Hungarian Wal-Mart, I guess: all sorts of stuff we can't get at a decent price in Belgrade), we drove the 5 hours home. The whole time, Breck kept asking "When will we be back at Pushkinova?" (our street), so I suppose it was time to go home. One of the great things about living here, though, is that we can go back fairly easily, and I think we will do just that in the future. Now, if we could only learn more of the language than "Thank you"...