Since the weather had seemed to calm down while we ate we decided to risk some outdoor sight seeing.  Grampa told me that the bulk of the restoration work at St. Matthias church in the Castle District had completed. In 2007 when we visited the church it was surrounded by scaffolding while they were restoring the tiles on the roof.  That didn't make for good picture taking of the outside of the church. So we headed down to the nearest metro station to make our way under the Danube and into the older districts. While waiting for the metro Grampa made a new friend, of course.

Meet Julia. She's a Chinese national who has been living and working in Budapest for the last 4 years. Her grasp of Hungarian is far better than mine but still in progress; although it happens to be better than her english. Julia happened to be going up to the castle district as well so Grandpa asked if she would like to join us, of course. Julia has wasted no time while in Hungary.  She has a little map book with all the popular sights and things to do while in Budapest and this thing is well worn with notes and pen marks all over the place and has been going out every weekend and doing everything there is to do in the city.

After about 3 hours we parted ways with Julia and headed back to Ilonka's for dinner. Grampa wanted to stay out a bit longer and do some more, but his knees had a different idea.  The cold weather and increased activity were not doing him any favors and I could tell he was in pain so I insisted we head home 'cause I was tired and hungry. After nice dinner of töltött paprika (paprika peppers stuffed with a pork/beef filling and a tomato sauce) I zonked out for the evening.