How much has Hungary’s capital changed in twenty years? We are about to find out.
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It is more than twenty years since I visited Budapest and my memories are very fleeting. Back then it was still communist and I only really recall staying in someone’s flat, using the bed while they slept on the floor. Things must have changed dramatically since then.
We spent a peaceful night outside the communist sculpture park, we have breakfast, pack up a few things for the day, including our swimming costumes and towels, and head for the bus stop.
The bus takes us to a large residential area and a transport interchange. I think it is brand new, certainly the metro line number four is only a couple of years old. We decide reject the newness of the subway and instead go antique. Some of the trams look fifty years old and at least it will let us see all the sights on the way into Budapest.
We are pretty much the only ones on the tram, everyone else must be in air conditioned newness. The tram rattles us along for fifteen minutes before stopping at the end of the line, beneath a rocky hill.
We have not crossed the river Danube, which means we are in Buda. On the other riverbank lies Pest, which is on tomorrows agenda.
Beautiful bridge, elegantly simple and structurally understandable.
Most of the sights are at the top of Varhegy or Castle hill. You can walk or take this little funicular the couple of hundred metres. The queue is horrendous and they are really packing them in like sardines. It doesn’t look at all pleasant. We opt to walk.
Long queues to pay €5 for a fifteen minutes lovely walk. You have to be lazy! SM
Kiraly lepsco means the Kings Steps and they are pretty much deserted, no other tourist has made the effort up this shaded meander up the hillside.
But at the top we are inundated by large tour groups, the likes of which we have not seen since Athens. It is pretty overwhelming.
Not true, we suffered badly from tourist hell in Bran castle. It was so packed that we had to queue inside the castle for up to 10 minutes to enter a room. SM
They are pretty annoying as they swarm around. They have no concept of spatial awareness and often crowd around the most inconvenient of places; entrances to buildings, ticket counters, tops of steps. We push gently through them, making a point to stop incredulous right in front of the tour guide who seems to thing they own the place.
Buda looks a compact and tidy little city, hemmed in by hills on all sides. A pleasant change from the flatness we have experienced so far in Hungary.
Away from the crowds, the tour group furrow does not go this way, ancient ruins. We have had our fill of ruins so we move on.
Yes, nice, but no pompoms, and no crazy marching, no toe touching. This just isn’t Greece.
LINK TO GREECE POST
Across the river lies Pest, which looks more substantial, and stretches off into the distance.
And their parliament building, which was based on the Palace of Westminster and with a location similar to London.
Soaring above us, a large sculpture of an eagle.
But behind, the ominous black clouds, luckily we have brought with us our waterproofs.
A rather unusual subject for a fountain, a hunting scene.
The Hungarians have no issues with mixing modern architecture with old stuff. We never get to use Corten steel in the UK. I love the pre-rusted look of oxidized iron, reddy brown. We are to afraid of litigation in the UK and that metal might stain someone’s clothes! Its robustness and solidity work really well with the massiveness of the castle walls.
More glorious view back along the Danube, and more great bridges. I am liking Budapest, but it is not bringing back any memories of the last time I was here.
We head to the Royal Palace, which is rather peaceful. Presumably the tour groups have got the time for museums, too busy corralling from one place to the next.
The history never captures my imagination. I frankly do not care which royal dynasty got off with which other royal dynasty. I don’t care for their immoral politics or their pointless power struggles, but sometimes the architecture is interesting. This chapel has been completely restored, but the ribs holding up the vaulted roof are not complete. They are broken off at the base and yet the roof still stands. These buildings are so structurally inefficient, built before an understanding of the load capacities of stone or calculations of structure. How much could you carve away and the building would still remain standing?
A large part of the exhibition at the palace related to a nearby church. Wonderful architectural drawings which are only good for displaying on a wall and useless for building a building.
After seeing this exhibition we are intrigued, it must be wonderful, we head for Mattias church.
Outside it is raining, pouring. We don our hi tech jackets and head into the storm. Top half bone dry, bottom half sodden!
By the time we get to the church it is beginning to brighten again.
It is packed. Obvious the tour groups can be herded through here without losing too many sheep. Loud calls of “Come by” and “away to me” emanate from all corners.
The inside is indeed beautiful.
The stained glass is very pretty, but let down because they have artificially lit the interior, but with some photographic tricky we can give you the gist.
The light that filters through is amazing, quite other worldly, quite the point no doubt, just turn off the bloody lights, who wants to see the walls anyway! They could at least do ten minutes on, ten minutes off, but health and safety, plunging everyone into darkness wouldn’t go down well, except it wouldn’t be darkness, it would be beautiful light, just very little of it!
This one completely spoilt by those pointless little scenes of fictitious events, completely interrupting the purity of the pattern!
I prefer the geometric patterned ones, rather than the fictitious religious ones.
Every wall in this church is plastered with paint, hence why all the lights are on.
And someone has had a stencil set in their stocking this year and has gone absolutely mad with it.
Now I like a bit of pattern, but this is way too much, less is more and all that!
No idea of the relevance, but we did like the sheep, perhaps they knew how popular this place would be with sheep.
It also has this interesting concentric offset indented circles, very modern.
That’s enough of the church.
Time to move on.
Nearby another highlight according to the guide.
Fishermen’s Bastion.
It is essentially a folly, a building of no real purpose, just an amazing outlook over Pest.
Some entrepreneur has tried to capitalise on the tourists and situated his cafe on route.
That has been his folly!
Everyone traipses through to look at the view, but who would want to sit for a sandwich here, with all these bloody tourists traipsing through!
We almost buy an ice-cream out of sympathy, but we don’t.
See, what did I say, nice views.
And the other way up the Danube.
And another great view of their copied parliament building, which we will be seeing tomorrow.
We leave the throngs looking for lunch. We find some Hungarian goulash, which is actually a meat soup, Susana has fish soup, but she is not really impressed.
Not, really. The fish soup means to be a traditional, delicatessen Hungarian dish and I don’t dispute this. It may just be that we have eaten near a touristic place. In essence, the soup has consisted of a bowl of pepper flavour liquid and a piece of fish swimming around (dead of course). I ate the fish, I poured the liquid into a glass and drink it. It was quicker than using a spoon. SM
These sculptures seemed to have been forgotten, shouldn’t they be in Momento park?
Link to previous post
They are quite dramatic, but fenced off. Maybe they will have a short journey soon.
And there is that beautiful bridge again, we must have come full circle.
Actually, we are back at the hotel Gellert. But this hotel is a bit special.
This place is famous for its baths. Of the three we have visited so far, this is the most expensive at €17 each. This is going to play havoc with the budget!
Even so, we can tell from the reception, this is going to be special.
There is an outside fun bit with a wave pool, which we don’t try.
Me neither, it is 23C SM
We just video
But it is all rather beautiful, rather ornate, but still beautiful.
But it is the pools inside which really take your breath away.
Now this really shows what the Roman baths might have been like to use, and they have all those intricate mosaics.
And glorious stained glass ceilings without the pointless religious messages.
What better way to indulge, relaxing in 40 degree water.
40 to hot, how about 36
or 34 or 32, take your pick.
then a shower, sauna or steam
Eventually we had to leave this opulence.
What a glorious place, only in Buda, well worth the money. We headed back to Dora, relaxed.
GDR
No hay lugar a dudas me gusta la ciudad, El hotel una maravilla, las piscinas una pasada creo que merece la pena los 17 euros, la relajación debe se total.