Germany Vacation- Budapest Bound

There were always plenty of 'rest stops' while traveling on the bus, and enough time was given to use the facilities, shop in the gas mart store, or take a look around.

Some spring flowers that I had to check out near the gas station.

 The gas station rest stop was where the boys and I had the opportunity to buy huge bottles of water to keep on hand for use through out the day. Water for consumption anywhere else was hard to come by or very expensive. Another cultural difference was eluded to earlier....paying for the use of a restroom. I will have to admit, overall their restrooms were consistently cleaner than in the States. So, paying wasn't really that bad....it was just that we were not used to having enough change handy (when we are so used to paying by credit or debit card). All those payments for four people  added up over time, but that did not stop me from drinking the water when I was thirsty! By the end of the trip we were scrambling less for 'toilet change' and I knew to stay by Geoffrey because he was usually prepared and had plenty of change left over from souvenir buying in his pockets :-)

Budapest is a 'twin city' with the Danube River separating the hilly city of Buda from the busy city of Pest. We crossed one of the 4 bridges in Budapest to get to the 'Pest' side where our hotel, Leonardo, was located. 

Cute Ram statue on Pest side of the bridge.

I like the turret look

Room keys were distributed and we settled in.Jim's and my room was nice and cozy.

just wide enough for a bed

Then we went to Justin's and Geoffrey's room: somehow they were able snag a spacious room with a social sitting area!

They are in a 'turret' room, which resulted in a larger area.Large bottles of water are on the coffee table.

 While they rested...

 Jim and I made use of their sitting area :-)

View from their window

A nice quiet street and our hotel's terrace, where we enjoyed a nice dinner.

Fun to watch the people at the terrace, Jim and Geoffrey chatting with a few people from our tour group.

In the different rooms and hallways were very pretty decorative tiles.