Budapest-Synagogue/Parliament/Shoes on the Danube/Baths

Synagogue - take 2: Made it to one of the morning tours and got a good guide. It was a very interesting tour of the synagogue and attached museum and Holocaust Memorial which is a large metal weeping willow tree that has all the names of the known Hungarian Jews who were killed engraved on each of the willows' leaves.  It was very moving.   

Holocaust Monument

The sun was out again but the temperature was not quite as warm, as before the previous days’ storm, in the morning but by the time we were done our tour and making our way down to see Parliament and the Shoes by the Danube installation it was warming up quite nicely.  A lot of the Parliament building is currently under wraps but despite that you can still see enough to compare the old, the part under restoration and the restored sections.  Our dangerous act of the day was following the sidewalk along the main road until it suddenly disappeared; at which point they post a sign saying you aren`t supposed to be walking there and that the sidewalk is closed…..what is a girl to do but run across the main thoroughfare! No way we were walking all the way back around.

Parliament

Once across we walked along the Danube until we came across the Shoes on the Danube tribute to the Jews who were taken down to the banks of the river, told to take off their shoes and then were either shot and shoved into the river; or when they ran out of ammunition were wrapped together, one person was shot then they were pushed off to drown with the "dead weight". 

The tribute has 60 pairs of shoes, including children's, all haphazardly left on the edge of the river as if just kicked off.  So hard to believe anyone could have done these things and so much worse to another fellow human being, but the even sadder part is how many people are still treated poorly in this world.

Okay now I realize the following isn't exactly the best transition into our next activity but from the tribute we walked to the Gellert baths to sooth our sore and tired muscles.  It was a relaxing experience but I must admit they weren't the best baths I have ever been to.  A beautiful setting to be sure but lacking in helpful employees and again not such good signage (e.g. getting chased out of large lap pool for not having a cap on.....yet in the segregated sections it is okay for people to charge around naked in the pools, saunas, etc.  Go figure.  Regardless one cannot dismiss the positive effects of that sort of bathing experience and we came out a lot more relaxed and with our muscles feeling a whole lot better. Thankful at this point we can make it "home" on auto-pilot.