Sunday 10 July 2011

Budapest


Budapest is somewhere we have wanted to go to since arriving in Europe two years ago. After Croatia we drove across the border to Hungary. It is a large, very interesting and very beautiful city on the Danube.
We drove through Buda towards our hotel in Pest and left our car in a large carpark for the duration of our stay. It is not a place to drive in and the public transport system is excellent so there is no need. We spent a lot of time wandering the amazing streets. It was very hot when we went but we persisted as much as we could and slipped into some of the large buildings there when we needed some cooler air.


On the first day we did a walking tour of Pest which has many beautiful buildings built in the late 19th century when it was co-capital with Vienna of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the afternoon we went to the Szechenyi Baths and in the evening we went to a recital at St Steven's Basilica.



The second day we did a walking tour of Buda, on the other side of the Danube around Castle Hill. The views from the Buda Hills were amazing. In the afternoon we went to the Underground Military Hospital (Hospital in the Rock) which was used in 1944-45 and again during the revolution in 1956. It was fully operational and used as a bomb shelter until 2000. It was amazing to see and hear about how they overcome hardships down there.



In the early evening we went to Gellert Hill to get more amazing views of both Buda, Pest and the Danube.

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