We didn’t write yesterday since it was really just a travel day from Vienna to Budapest. We caught the noon train and enjoyed a delightful two hours with a lady and her son from New Zealand. She is Hungarian but moved away 13 years ago. Her daughter is doing a tour similar to ours with her school – including competing in the Summa Cum Laude music festival in Vienna. She and her son decided to visit grandma and will then catch up to the music group when they come through Budapest.

We knew that the distance from the train station to our hotel in Budapest was relatively short but decided to take a taxi because of our luggage. Turns out we got a bit of a tour of Budapest since the taxi ride was 10 minutes and the walk was only about 6 minutes! Such is life when you’re travelling. We decided to have an easy night so just ate at the hotel and watched the soccer game.

Today we took the Metro and train out to a little town called Szentendre, which is a quaint town beside the river with a large artist and craft community. There were shops of every description including clothing, porcelain, china, jewellery, embroidered cloths, and of course souvenirs. There were a number of art galleries and lots of cafés and bakeries too. After a wander through town, we settled in the courtyard of a cafe for a light lunch. Mealtime is never rushed here and we often find that we have to call the waiter/waitress over to move things along.

We were quite tired when we returned to the hotel so after a little snooze and shower, we went downstairs to meet the rest of the choir folk. It seems that everyone has arrived in fine form. We ate dinner with our friend Bob Couldridge, whose wife, Marguerite, used to be the choir director at LPBC. We all enjoyed the strolling musicians in the dining room, singing along to many of the familiar songs. Later in celebration of Canada Day, we sang Oh Canada. Everyone was looking forward to a good night’s sleep and then getting on with the tour tomorrow. We have a 12 hour day planned including touring and singing at Mass at the largest church in Hungary. We are quite glad that we came the week ahead – it gives time to get acclimatized before the frantic pace of the tour takes over.