Szentendre,Hungary - Churches, Paprika and Books


Szentendre is a little village about 20k's away from Budapest. This church is in the main square.

I'm sure it would be a very picturesque little village,but it was pouring the day we were here, so did a lot of sheltering in coffee shops and souvenir shops. Szentendre is one of those places that attracts busloads and busloads of tourists
and consequently it is chockers with tacky souvenir shops selling mainly lace and paprika. Every 2nd shop is a paprika store where you can buy bags, tins, pots of paprika...think Hungarian goulash..of course, we succumbed(there was nothing else to do in the pouring rain and we had 2 hours to fill in before the bus picked us up) and bought up these little cheesecloth bags with pretty pictures on them full of paprika, thinking we would take them home as souvenirs and cook up a storm. So we lugged this paprika all around Europe in our suitcases not realizing all our clothes were beginning to stink of paprika and we had all probably been walking around Europe with the perfume of eau de paprika wafting around us- until on the last day in a desperate bid to be under qantas' mingy baggage allowance, we jettisonned the bloody stuff in the bin anyway!! However I did find in a quaint villagey little bookshop in Szentendre a copy of The Little Prince in Hungarian, so i brought it home to join it's English cousin on the bookshelf!