Eger and the Valley of the Beautiful Women

Eger was a really cool day trip we took.  It's a two hour train ride from Budapest into Northern Hungary.   Above you see the minaret that is the northernmost such minaret left from the Ottoman Empire built when the Turks invaded back in the late 1500's.  A minaret is a narrow tower often connected to a mosque.  I suspect we'll see more once we make it to Turkey.  It is crazy narrow inside with steep steps that you can climb up.  I thought parts of the belfry in Bruges were narrow, but this was ridiculous.  Here I am at the top of the steps:

At the top, you have a great view of Eger Castle where the locals actually successfully defended the town from the Turks in 1552 despite being outnumbered by about 20 to 1.

This is a point of pride and the date is found on a lot of the souvenirs.  Of course, they were attacked again and defeated in 1596 (leading to the building of the minaret), but that's beside the point.  We played cribbage inside the castle walls and had a pretty sweet view there as well.

Now, my last post talked a bit about food here but the best tasting thing we've had in Hungary is the red wine.  In Eger there is a section of town about a 20 minute walk from the center called Szépasszony-völgy, or in English, the Valley of the Beautiful Women.  The signs pointing you in that direction helpfully call it Nice Woman Valley which I enjoyed.

I have no idea why it's called this (besides the fact that my wife was there) because it is a horseshoe shaped street of wine cellars that have all types of wine.  There are over 40 so you kind of just pick one that looks good and ask for whatever suits your mood.  It's kind of like a pub crawl except with wine and they are all right next to each other.  It would be a really fun place to go to on a summer night with a group of friends.  You can enjoy glasses at the cellar or buy the typical bottle, but you can also get big plastic jugs.  I heard you can just ask them to fill up whatever bottle you have with you but the one I asked about that said no.

The most famous type of wine from this region is a red wine called bikavér or bull's blood.  The story behind the name goes back to the aforementioned defense of Eger in 1552 where the Turks saw the red, wine stained beards of the locals and believed they were drinking bull's blood for strength.  It's really good and we particularly liked the one from cellar 45 which you can see Chrissy enjoying below.