Day 10: 2nd day in Budapest
We disembarked the ship at 10am, catching a taxi to our hotel which is on the Buda side of the city. The day was much better than yesterday’s -15 degree, foggy day, and we were both now feeling OK, so after checking in to the hotel, we set off to walk to the castle district in Buda.
This walk, up a very steep stone staircase – about 500 steps- brought us to the top of the castle district. I had visited it briefly yesterday in the bus tour, but today’s walk gave me a better look at it. It reminded me of The Rocks in Sydney and Battery Point in Hobart, with narrow, winding cobbled streets, set into the hillside. Many buildings were sad reminders of the years spent behind the iron curtain. At the top of the hill is a magnificent neo-Gothic cathedral, St Mathias. It has a very interesting feature: part of its very steep roof is tiled with mosaic tiles – no doubt from the time the Turks conquered Hungary (about 400 years ago I think). We didn’t delve into its history at all, but it may have been turned into a mosque at that time. Another very interesting feature was in the square a little beyond the cathedral. There was a bronze model of it on a raised dias with what are obviously descriptions of the cathedral written in braille – no doubt Hungarian braille. What a wonderful way to help unsighted people enjoy the cathedral too!
There were several lovely shops which were good for window shopping – and some funny sights, such as the display in a women’s wear shop where the models were elevated on Snickers boxes!
After lunching on a couple of Tony Ferguson shakes in our hotel room and doing a much needed wash of clothes in the bath (we wre going to send them to the hotel laundry, but when we worked out that it would cost us around $100, the scotch in us took over and we trampled them in the bath), we set off to the Pest side of Budapest by public transport. Well what an experience that was! We certainly got a taste of former iron curtain public service – it was non-existent! As soon as we approached any of the people selling train tickets and said ‘Ënglish”, they just shook their heads and looked down. This happened several times until finally, a lady who only spoke German came to our rescue. From the map she could see where we needed to go and she was able to make us understand what to ask for. We finally got down the looooong escalator to the underground platform and onto the train which is a throw back from the 1960’s. I think it is fair enough to say that updating of the rail infrastructure in Hungary is somewhat behind Melbourne’s Metro! No sooner were we on the train than we were off – not a gradual pull out of the station but a sudden zero to one hundred in a couple of seconds! It was as much as I could do to grab a rail just in time before the momentum whisked me off my feet.
Once off at the other end, we wandered quite a while until we got our bearings. In the wander we passed McDonalds and TGI Friday’s as well as several other familiar places, so we knew we would be right for tea. We headed to the Danube, in search of a ‘sculpture” which I had passed yesterday on the bus and wanted to spend time at. We trudged and trudged along the snow-covered river bank and had nearly given up on it when I was able to identify its location from a photo I had taken yesterday and so that helped us to locate it.
The sculpture I am alluding to is so poignant: it is called The Iron Shoes. All that is there is a line of pairs of shoes – several dozen of them along about 200m of the very edge of the river bank. The shoes are of iron and they represent the Jews who were lined up by the Nazis, told to take off their shoes and were then shot into the Danube.
As we walked back to the centre of the city, the sun was setting with a beautiful reflection in the river, which is still laden with ice flows.
Before going to the Christmas market – our last – we went into a beautiful coffee house I had discovered yesterday. It was built in 1858 and how it survived the Communist era and remains so beautiful, I’d love to know. Beautifully decorated with brass fittings, elegant swags and tails on the rounded windows and a beautiful gilded (but not overdone) ceiling, it was like having coffee with Hercule Poirot on the Orient Express! We certainly treated ourselves to a wonderful cake as well in such a luxurious setting.
It was well and truly dark by the time we had finished looking at the market. We sampled McDonalds Hungarian style (no different from at home except the fries were a lot more salty) and then successfully made our way back to the hotel.
We are excited to be meeting up with Robyn and Damien tomorrow – we hope – in Istanbul. They are not certain that they will be able to fly out of Amsterdam as many flights are grounded because of the heavy snow. However, the weather seems t be on the improve, so we all have our fingers crossed. I don’t think we will have too much trouble flying out of Budapest but need to confirm in the morning.
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