Stanford Tour Begins

We started the day slowly, sleeping late.  Larry decided to take it easy in the morning, but I went out for a walk in Budapest, following the Danube to the Parliament Buildings and then making my way back through city streets to the Basilica.  I detoured to the opera house, which unfortunately is covered with scaffolding.  Budapest is full of tourists, big groups, families, couples, all taking pictures and posing everywhere you go.  It wasn’t always like this, was it?  The constant picture-taking with cameras of all sorts, selfies, selfie sticks.  So many people seem to be aspiring models for  the cover of a fashion magazine.  It’s got to be the Facebook or Instagram effect.

Budapest is magnificent though.  When I got back to the hotel, I persuaded Larry to come out with me to see the Parliament Buildings and we shared a lunch on the patio of a little cafe near there.  When we got back, we were able to check in with the Stanford tour guides, and collect our luggage tags and audio devices (the little speakers that allow you to hear the tour guide even when she’s far away).  We left on a couple of buses for a tour of the Pest part of the city (tomorrow we will tour the Buda part).  The highlight was a trip to the big Budapest market, a maze of shops selling all sorts of Hungarian products and produce.

It’s really huge.

We drove past the beautiful bridges.  Here’s one:

We even had a little tasting of Hungarian goodies with little glasses of brandies and wine.

We were happy.  (Talking about selfies, we’re no better than the rest of them...)

After the excursion, there was a reception with a surprise:  a Hungarian brass band playing the Star Spangled Banner and other favorites.  Stanford trips are always full of surprises...but, a brass band?  The reception was followed by an elaborate dinner, one of those interminable Stanford dinners.  How dare I complain?  It’s just that there are too many courses and too much time between every course.

I met the musicologist from Stanford, Stephen Hinton (I think that’s right).  He has played with Condoleeza Rice and Paul Brest, former dean of the Stanford Law School.   I played quartets with him and Ron Joseph years and years ago.  He’s going to give us lectures about the string quartets we’re going to hear, but I kind o doubt that they will be as interesting as David Clampitt’s lectures at the MSQ Seattle workshop.  We’ll see!  There is also a historian on the trip, who will lecture about the Habsburgx.

Tomorrow, it’s Buda, and then embarking on the Royal Crown.