Eger

Eger is in northern Hungary, reasonably near the Slovak border.  It is a lovely little town with its beautifully preserved baroque architecture and is flanked by the Bukk range of hills which are a very popular hiking destination.  It was in Eger that the Hungarian forebears, in 1552,  fended off the Turks for the first time in 170 years of occupation.  The famous Hungarian novel Egri Csillagok (1901) describes the siege and is one of the country's most famous books, required reading in some schools.  I read it before I left Hungary as a child.

This statue is a great looking memorial to the battle against the Turks.

Eger Cathedral.

and another view of it from the 9th floor of the Lyceum which I refer to below.

The Franciscan church.

I am pretty sure this is the Minorite Church  (1773) considered one of the most beautiful baroque buildings in the world.

This is the tiny room in the Lyceum on the ninth floor (the lift is only to the second floor) where the camera obscura- Latin for dark chamber - is demonstrated.  It is an early optical  mechanism for projecting images.
The only other one in Europe is in Edinburgh.

The camera obscura is demonstrated in a totally darkened room illuminated only by the projected image of the city as we can move around the image, scaning all over the city. This is the colourful image of Eger projected on to the table but it is not as clear in the photo as we saw in the actual demonstration.

It is a very interesting sight.  I saw it some 15 years ago when I first visited Eger and I wanted to show it to Andrew.

Our trip to Eger also involved driving around the northern parts of the city between Lillafured and Szilvasvarad, two beautiful little villages that are a springboard for walks and hikes in the Bukk Hills.  This is a photo of the small lake at Lillfured where holidaymakers use rowing boats and canoes.

The large guesthouse at Lillafured just opposite the lake.

We spent the night at Szilvasvarad which was a nice little town and we took the popular narrow-gauge open air  railway into the Szalajka Valley.  Szilvasvarad is also the centre of horse breeding in Hungary with some 250 Lippizaners in local stables, the celebrated white horses bred originally for the Spanish Imperial Riding School in Vienna under the Hapsburgs and are considered the finest riding horses in the world.