27 AUG 2010 - Budapest, Hungary

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Friday, August 27, 2010 - City tour of Buda & Pest

I woke up a little after 7:15am and Mom was down at breakfast. I showered and got ready and she was back in the room when I came out of the bathroom. We packed up our little day bags with snacks and water and went down to the bus. Eva was our local guide that boarded at the hotel and we went on our way through Pest first.

First stop was at Heroes' Square, built in 1896 to celebrate their millennium. The center monument is called the Millenium Monument. It is a 118 foot tall pillar which supports the archangel Gabriel as he offers the crown to St. Istvan. You can see the statue from many blocks away on Andrassy Ut. The Museum of Fine Arts is on one side of the Square and they were showcasing works by Andy Warhol I'm guessing since there was a huge banner covering the front columns of the museum. (Andy Warhol is a Pittsburgher and Slovak too!) After our stop at Heroes Square and drove through the City Park and saw the cool city zoo built in an Art Nouveau style and amusement park even with a roller coaster...a castle and a huge area that will be their ice skating rink after the construction is completed hopefully by this winter.

We sat in morning traffic awhile do to some road construction. Along our drive we saw the 2nd largest Jewish temple in the world...the Opera House...Museum of Fine Arts....Museum of Applied Arts..Louis Vuitton (always try & capture a picture of LV for Terri) on Andrassy Ut...and the granddaddy sight of them all - Hungarian Parliament (highlight!) We stopped by the largest catholic church in town. St. Stephen's or Istvan in Hungarian. The cathedral is massive and gorgeous inside. I used the fisheye lens to try and capture the expansive nature of the building. It was built for the 1896 millenium celebrations for the Magyars. The highest dome of the church is 96 meters...so is Parliment's dome. And no other building can be higher than 96 meters. After visiting Budapest you will never forget 1896...most of the town's highlights were created for their 1000 year celebration in 1896.

Our drive continued through Pest and we rode across the Chain Bridge and into Buda. The bus took us as far as it could and dropped us off just short of the pedestrian only zone in the Castle Hill. (there actually were cars on the road but I found out they had to live on this Hill in order to drive there) First item we saw was the old Ministry of War building. It was all shot up and pock marked from WWII. It was left as a reminder of the damage caused during the second world war. We then meandered up the hill and saw cute cafes and souvenir shops on each side of the street. The tour continued at the top of the hill where Matthias Church stands (not St. Matthias and even yet the offical name of the church is Church of Our Lady). Eva gave us some history of the church and the Fisherman's Bastion located behind the church on the top edge of the hillside. We had some free time to explore the hill and Mom and I walked over to the viewing area to see Pest from afar and I also asked John to take a picture of Mom and I with a view of Parliament in the background. I had fun taking a panoramic that I'll need to stich together and I had fun capturing some reflections of the Bastion in store windows. I admired the roof of Matthias Church and thought about how much work it was to replace all 170,000 tiles that were just replaced on the roof.

Mom and I weaved our way back through the streets and crowds to find our bus at our appointed meeting time. Along the way we saw many tableclothes and runners for sale...beautiful thread colors and stiching. They all say everything is handmade but don't believe it all. Women on the streets around the bus are also trying to peddle their "handmade" shirts and people were haggling with the women...suspiciously I saw the exact same "handmade" shirt sold by 10+ women in several different tourist locations. The women selling would hold up their goods to our bus windows even after we had gotten on the bus...they were aggressive and their tactics worked on several people. I was surprised how many women actually bought the shirts.

The bus then took us back over to Pest so we could stop and visit the Old Market. Halina led us around the market stalls looking at the produce and paprika for sale. Decided to eat in the cafeteria and enjoyed a great stuffed pepper with a meatball larger than the stuffed pepper itself! and I had some dough noodles with it too. Mom felt strong so we decided to walk back to hotel...long and hot walk....stopped and rested at the Temple and took pictures outside the building and then we continued on to our hotel. Most definately it was time for naps. When we woke up we were hungry and went to find a place to eat in our neighborhood. After we got downstairs to our lobby and we run into Don...we all walked around and looked for a place for dinner. We walked around and found a pub that all 3 of us were happy with. Since it was Friday Mom was still abstaining from eating meat so she had a soup for dinner. I had a plate of frankfurters wrapped with cheese and bacon and they were on a bed of cabbage and a regular Coca-Cola...Yummy. It began raining cats and dogs while we were eating and we decided not to photogragh tonight due to the rain. Mom and I walked back to room and I journaled and Mom found out what time mass was on Saturday. We relaxed and went to sleep around 11pm.

Note to self: Shocking I know I took alot of pictures...but I took alot more pictures of signs in Budapest than I normally do in cities because I wanted to share with others how very different their language was from anything else we're used to. How long the words are and every letter seems to have some sort of accent or grave over the letters.

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