Pecs (“C”s are pronounced “ch”) Hungary was founded by the Romans in the 4th century.  We toured an excavation of their burial crypts.  The burials included valuables which attracted numerous ransackings over the centuries.  Desperate people sometimes lived in the crypts too, but a millennium and a half later, many of those walls still stand.  One supports a ceiling still adorned with Christian frescos.  That’s staying power.

The newer historical buildings are impressive too.  Exquisite cathedrals lost their wow-power a couple weeks into this cruise, but this one is exquisite and exotic.  Those Ottoman Turks knew how to do beauty.  Even the basement was exquisite, and our guide boosted it into my Top Five special moments of the cruise by singing a lovely Hungarian prayer there, double wow!

Maybe a modern Turk helped design this sculpture of composer Franz Liszt.  It’s not exotic, but it’s a grabber.