Budapest (Day 2)

We have finished day two of our stay in Budapest. Andrew wants to watch anime and while he did get to the computer first, I kicked him off because I am waiting for a semi important email, so I will have to blog quickly.

Let's see, we had a late start this morning. After the very early wake up that we had yesterday and the dreadful 4 am wake up call we will have in a couple of days, I thought something like that would be important anyway. We had breakfast and didn't end up leaving the hostel until almost noon. Yeah, like I said, very late start.

It gets kind of hot in the hostel, so I thought that we had finally reached the Europe that we had packed for, but once we got outside it was overcast and sprinkling. It was still kind of muggy though, so I would much prefer that to the heat that I fear is inevitable.

Our first stop today was Heroes' Square, which was put up to commemorate the 1000th year anniversary of the Hungarian State. Once we got there, it started pouring, so we ran to the nearby Art Gallery to stay under cover while there was a downpour. It calmed down again after around ten minutes (thought it did effectively ruin my map of Budapest), and we went back out to examine the area more closely. Surrounding the big monument thing in the middle of Heroes Square are statues of the legends and great leaders of Hungary's 1000 years. We ended up trying to guess what their favorite colors would be.

Next, we walked through the nearby park towards the Vajdabunyad Castle. We didn't go inside because that would have cost money, but we did explore the outside and take a lot of pictures of it. It's very pretty. Andrew and Gianni were more impressed with the statue of some guy named Anonymous.

Our next stop was St. Stephen's Basillica. The inside was very elaborate, but in a pretty way. We initially did not go inside because we thought it was closed, but then went in after we realized that the actual entrance was around the corner. Inside this basillica is also the right hand of St. Stephen. It was all right.

We got some postage stamps at the post office. This took two tries. Gianni asked first and failed because they could not understand him. Then Andrew asked, taking a pamphlet with pictures of stamps with him, and succeded. He was very happy about this.

Our next destination was some store that Mia read about that she thought she would like to see. Once we got there (after getting lost because it was hard to find), we found out that it was like an overpriced version of Fresh Produce and left quickly. The Great Synagogue was nearby and was very pretty from the outside. We kind of peaked inside, but I think you had to get tickets to go in, so we didn't actually go in.

After this, we found a nearby restaurant and ate lunch there. Mia and I had Hungarian sausages. Good stuff. Gianni and Andrew had sandwiches. I added this because Gianni just yelled at me for not including that fact.

Next stop was the Market Hall. We walked there from the restaurant and passed the National Gallery on the way. We also stopped at a store because Mia needed more bandages and all of my remaining shampoo spilled everywhere so I needed to restock. Anyway, we got to Market Hall, which is basically one big market. It's been around since the 19th century, and they actually had train tracks and barge entrances for delivery of goods. We walked around and looked what they were selling (mostly food on the bottom floor and a lot of tourist souveniers on the top), but it was closing up, so we didn't spend much time there.

Next destination was the Parliament, which has a very very nice building. It also looks out over the Danube, so after we took some pictures of the building, we started walking along the banks of the river. We found this monument that consists of a bunch of bronze shoes on the side of the river. It's a memorial to the Hungarian Jews that were shot there by some fascist group. They were forced to remove their shoes beforehand, hence the bronze shoes.

We sat in that area for a while because there is a very nice view of the other half of the city from there. It was very peaceful and quiet.

We eventually left, and walked towards the Chain Bridge and to the Metro Station. We then took the Metro to the Opera house, which was pretty but I don't know how worth the stop it was.

The magazine that we had been using had an advertisement for a Mexican restaurant that was supposed to be in the area. We were very excited about this and went off in search of it. We did find it and it was reasonably priced. It was more or less like a Hungarian version of Chipotle...which I don't mind at all. And they had great horchata.

We were going to go back to the hostel at this point (around 8), but decided that we wanted to go to that area along the Danube that we were sitting before at night to see how it looked with all the lights, so we headed to that area and hung out there for a while. Then we came back here. I should probably log off so my siblings (or anyone else) can use the computer.

So, Budapest is actually made up of two cities, Buda and Pest. Everything we saw today was on the Pest side of the city. Tomorrow we will explore Buda. I also want to see this Statue Park that is in Pest, so I think that's the only other thing on the agenda.