View from the walk up to the Citadella
Liberation Statue
Buda Castle
Matthias Church next to the castle
Illumination of the city!
View of Parliament from the castle
Also, you can't really tell from those pictures, but the past few weeks it has been raining like crazy, and this has caused the Danube river to rise really dramatically. Streets that are right next to the river have just disappeared under the water here in Budapest and we had to cancel a dinner boat ride because of the river conditions.
After our tour of the Citadella and the castle, we headed back to the hotel. I went straight to bed since it had been an exhausting day and we needed to be up early the next morning. On Saturday, we had breakfast (best one I've had so far! So many choices!) and headed out for a tour of the Pest side of town. We walked around Hero's Square and the City Park just behind it. These parts of town are beautiful, and in the City Park we walked by the bath spa as well. Budapest is famous for it's bathhouses, and a couple people went to them during the free time and said they had a great time there. After that tour we went back over to the Buda side to walk around a little more. We went by all the old buildings there and saw the changing of the guard in front of the President's house.
Building on Buda side
Also on Buda side
View of Pest side from Buda
Changing of the guard
Also, there was one time that Beethoven came to play a concert in Budapest, and now people from there are obsessed with him. They think it's the town of Beethoven, which is really funny to me.
After the tour, we had several hours of free time, so Jessie and I went downtown to shop and sight-see. The shopping area is very close to the river, so we went down to take a look. These streets are on a lower level than the streets that we were on, but it was a little scary to see the water so close, especially when it started thunder-storming a few minutes later!
After looking at the water we went to the famous St. Stephan's Basilica, which is HUGE. It's a pretty famous church, but we couldn't go very far into the church because there was a wedding going on there! It was just finishing as we got there, but it was cool to see that going on. We also paid a couple euros to go up to the top of the church, and we got some amazing views up there.
St. Stephan's Basilica
Inside and the wedding!
The dome ceiling
Tower at the top of the church
View from the top!
After that it started raining pretty hard so we headed back to the hotel to rest and get ready for dinner. We soon got back on the bus and headed to Hotel Szeged for dinner. We had some really great food there, but the most fun part was the traditional Hungarian band that was playing there with traditional dancers! They were really amazing and I've never seen anything like that before. After dinner some people went out but we were pretty exhausted so we just relaxed at the hotel.
The next day was another early day with a great breakfast but we headed out early for a tour of the Parliament building. This Parliament building is one of the biggest in Europe even though Hungary isn't a very large country, but it was necessary back in the days of the Austo-Hungarian Empire. Our tour was short, only about 20-30 minutes, but the building was so impressive and beautiful that I think it was worth it.
The grand staicase
Inner chambers
Ceiling of inner chambers
After the tour of Parliament the plan was to go to a small town called Szentendre for lunch and free time. Doc described Szentendre as "the Saugatuck of Hungary" because it's very artsy and cool and we were excited to go. On the way there Doc pointed out to us huge Roman ruins that are preserved here. Apparently these are the best preserved ruins outside of Rome, and they were huge. There was an amphitheater and basically a whole city of ruins.
Once we got past the ruins and drove a little more, we realized that we were not going to make it to Szentendre! The Hungarian army was blocking the road and turning everyone away because the flooding was getting so bad in town. We were really sad that we couldn't go, and Doc had to quickly make another plan for the rest of the day. He wanted to take us to a park where they have kept a lot of statues from the Communism era, and first we thought that was Millinery Park. That turned out to be the wrong park, so we sat around in this park while the professors tried to figure out where we were going. Finally they figured out it was Momento Park that we wanted so we got back on the bus and started driving there. After a couple of wrong turns and wrong directions, we finally made it to the park.
Instead of destroying everything from the Communism days, the government decided to preserve the statues as a remembrance. There were big and small statues, but it was pretty interesting to see something like that.
We still had extra time after the park, and our bus driver recommended that we go to this castle which was just 7 km off the highway. Doc was obviously a little worried because he'd never been there before, but the castle turned out to be one of the coolest parts of the whole trip. It was built in the 1200s as a monastery and has been through a lot of fires and war, and it is such a cool building. This is what you think of when you think of a castle!
The castle
The inside
View from the castle
After the time at the castle, we finally headed home. This was one of my favorite trips so far and I am so thankful that we were able to do it. Someday I am planning on coming back to visit Budapest again and finally see Szentendre. I loved Hungary and can't wait to return someday!
Some exciting events happened over the next week, I will write about them soon (hopefully!). Until then, auf wiedersehn!
No comments:
Post a Comment