Lauren in Budapest: March 15th weekend in Pe'cs

In honor of the May 15th holiday, we got a three-day weekend. Yay! So we headed down to Pe'cs, a town in southern Hungary and one of the three European capitals of culture this year, this first time a Hungarian town has held this distinction. We heard it was lovely, so on Saturday morning we headed down. We had a relaxing weekend of doing very little, resting, walking around, eating delicious meals, and taking advantage of the large international student population for two fun nights out. On the second night, a Sunday, we actually attended a party marketed as a "Whoo! There's no school tomorrow!" party. It was great fun, and surreal to dance to American-style music rather than the typical Hungarian techno beat. I liked Pecs a lot.

As usual, the story will be told in pictures.

First we had dinner in a lovely basement. It was delicious. The wine, from the nearby wine village of Villany, was admittedly better.

We wandered up to the main town square, dominated by a large cathedral.

Pecs is a lovely town, full of brightly colored buildings and interesting architecture.

The decoration on the Cathedral's door's gate was awesome.

Lyla with the Cathedral gate, back-lit against the main square.

Me in front of the Cathedral.

Liszt Ferenc/Franz Liszt poking his head out from the balcony of a nearby building.

the Cathedral

Like many small European towns, Pecs also disposed of a fence covered in padlocks attached by couples declaring their ever-lasting love. This is the main one, but the locks continued for two or three more fences before eventually tapering off.

An old mosque, converted into a Christian church. This is one of the main symbols of Pecs.

The main square was totally torn up for repaving, but I managed to avoid most of that in my photos. You can see all the beautifully-colored buildings.

The mosque-church and its statue.

a view over the rooftops of the town

Some pigeons look up to a statue of St. Francis near the main street.

Pecs was a Roman settlement as well, and a lot of ruins have been found. They are mostly below the modern ground level, but they've set up a whole series of planks and enclosures so you can walk over them and around them. And while we went there mostly out of a sense of obligation, it was actually really cool. You could touch the ruins, see old wall paintings, visit crypts, and the like. I recommend.