We got up extra early (8:30AM) to make 10AM mass at St. Stephen's Basilica, but we got there and found out the website lied and that the mass was at 11. So we wrote down a later mass time and decided to go to the free walking tour again, this time though it was all about Budapest. Did you know that the Ottoman Turks razed the city after the Middle Ages and that no buildings in Budapest are older than 200 years? This is an old communist car produced in the 70's. It's made of reinforced cardboard and only has a 2 cylinder engine. It would not have lasted this long in America, the SUVs would have flattened it by now.
There is also a tradition of getting luck from touching statues. The fist is The Little Princess and it is the first non-communist statue in Budapest. Make a wish and touch her knees. The second is an equestrian statue of a Hungarian soldier and you get luck if you climb up like our tour guide is demonstrating and touch it's privates. (The latter tradition was begun by school boys, surprise surprise).
The tour ended in the Castle district in Buda and we wandered around until mass began at St. Matthias at 6PM. It was a gorgeous church with lots of abstarct designes because it was converted into a Mosque under the Turks and then back to Roman Catholic later on. Mass in Hungarian was definitely interesting but I have to say boring. Luckily there was a baptism so I got to focus on cute little kids running around. (I definitely missed old St. Peter's and the bloodbath Easter hunt at 48.)
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