Stay tuned; more on the opera below

Here for a week to do a course for documentary nomads, grads specializing in doc films who start in Barcelona, come here, then finish in Brussels. Today was Get over Jet Lag day.

Always start with a cappuccino in a nice little cafe.

The cafe ceiling has quite stunning details.  Actually it’s a bookstore, opposite the Opera House, but it’ll do.

The U.S. is just not old enough for all this glorious trimming

Having a coffee here, by the way, took me past the shrine to Nespresso, also near the Opera and shrouded in reverence for one of the most environmentally wasteful products yet conceived: the single shot of coffee pod.

The many flavors of Nespresso, a few are here

And if you need a box or two…

Yes, that colorful array is box after box of Nespresso pods

And then there’s the Opera itself, or the entrance, all I could do today.

I wondered if Escher had a hand in designing this

And don’t forget the floor:

But Buadpest has a lot of history and nearby is the House of Terror. Not the usual Inquisitorial torture devices, but a painful history of traitors and killers, spies and betrayals, mostly after World War II, during the Soviet era. It was closed today but these photographic tributes to some who were killed are on the exterior wall:

There’s more to come and later in the week I plan to go inside to learn more about the terrors.