esztergom

we've had another fun weekend. saturday we joined about 15 people from our church on a bus ride to esztergom. it's a small town about 50 km northwest of budapest along the danube bend. the main thing we went to see there is the huge basilica. it's the largest church in hungary and the third largest in europe after rome and london. the bus ride there wasn't bad. reese enjoyed sitting in her car seat and facing forward watching things out the window. since we don't ride in cars very often anymore, this was a fairly new experience for her. matt and i also enjoyed her being in a car seat rather than climbing all over us. :) that way we got to enjoy the views from the bus too. we drove along a road that parallels the river. it's a beautiful drive and made us want to explore more of hungary.



matt made the 400+ step climb to the top of the basilica while reese and i enjoyed an ice cream on the ground. he took some good pics of the surrounding areas. in the above picture you can see the river in the upper left. that's the area we drove through to get to esztergom.



this view is from the dome of the basilica looking over the danube river to slovakia. of course we couldn't get that close to slovakia and not go there! so, we walked across that bridge to...


we hadn't been to slovakia yet, so now we can add it to our list. before january 2008 it was a little harder to get across the boarder, but since the schengen agreement among EU countries (plus a few more) border posts and checks have been removed. no showing of your passport and stuff anymore.





view of the basilica from the slovak bank.



we also enjoyed a nice hungarian lunch, ice cream (twice!), a tour around the christian museum and getting to know some more people from our church.