Buda Walk

Today it was supposed to be sunny, so we planned a walk around Castle Hill and Gellért Hill, both on the Buda side of the river. We took the bus over to the bottom of the castle, and when we got off the bus, the driver closed the doors when Willow was trying to get off! She got stuck half in and half out of the bus, and we could see the people on the bus shouting for the driver to open the door. When he did Willow spilled out of the bus and was more frightened than hurt. The driver came out to make sure we were okay, which we were. We just have to be careful when getting off public transport and make sure a parent is always last off the bus!

We started at the Castle Garden Bazaar, which isn’t a group of shops like you would suppose but rather a series of stairways and walkways just south of the Palace. There is an escalator (and stairs, but we took the escalator) leading up to the top of the hill. There is some interesting architecture with old stone walls juxtaposed with curved metal walls. Once at the top, we walked toward the castle and to a promontory sticking out with a huge statue of Virgin Mary overlooking the town below. I really like the picture where you can see the Virgin Mary statue and the Liberty statue in the distance that sits atop Gellért Hill.

Walking to the front of the palace we took a few pictures in the front. The horse statue in front of the castle is of Eugene of Savoy, and of course Willow needed a picture of the horsey. The picture of the scaffolding is of the Turul bird statue, which is currently being renovated, but is huge. It was sort of neat seeing it up close instead of where it usually stands, which is atop a tall pedestal.

We walked past the Hungarian National Gallery, which is inside the front of the palace. I would like to eventually go to the gallery, but it isn’t something I think the kids would enjoy. We walked through a narrow archway to the courtyard behind the gallery, where we saw the lovely architecture on the back of the building and the King Matthias fountain. I am not sure why all my vertical pictures are again really fuzzy (this seems to be an occurring thing within this blog creator), but the fountain is prettier than it looks here.

Today was the cultural appreciation day in Hungary, so quite a few museums were free. One of these was the Budapest History Museum, which we spent about two and a half hours in. A lot of it was pretty repetitive with old crumbling fragments of buildings, particularly the buildings on Castle Hill, but Ronin really liked the big slab that looked like Han Solo frozen in carbonite. There were also big books with hand-painted drawings, examples of pit toilets that Zoey and Ronin wanted to sit on, and a throne for Willow in the small chapel. On the third floor there were some more interactive activities about culture and life in Budapest across the decades, including the big floor puzzle. This was the most interesting floor, but by now everyone was tired of the museum and wanted to move on, so we skimmed through a lot of things that I wish we could have spent more time viewing.

Once we left the Budapest History Museum we walked through the Raven Gate and to the left we saw an area that was being excavated for archeological purposes (although it sort of looked like a junk heap) and could view over the Buda hills where supposedly the wealthy folk live. We walked past the president’s house, which is a big white building but is not heavily gated and guarded like our White House is in the states. We then continued our walk past another statue and a knight that everyone needed to take a picture with. Although there were a lot of people in the more touristy areas, some of the street were completely empty.

We went into a quirky museum of pharmacy and apothecary, which had displays that looked like they were from an old apothecary. Although everything was written in Hungarian, we could see different medicine containers, the set up of areas where people would make medicines, old beakers and chemical systems, and even some anatomy parts (hopefully of animals) in jars. This was a quick and interesting stop, and only cost a couple of dollars for all of us to visit.

Although I already talked about Matthias Church, I had to add more pictures because it is just that pretty. Again, we didn’t get to go in the church, but this time it was because of weddings. They were having wedding after wedding, and in the hour we spent in this general area I saw no less than five different brides!

Although last time we came here we got to see the Fisherman’s Bastion, this time we got to explore it more thoroughly. We walked through the corridors and even heard a violinist playing.

We walked farther down to see more views of the Bastion. I wish we had gotten a picture from the front, but I am sure we will do that eventually. We did look down on the stairs, and one of the brides was having pictures taken. Everyone was being very respectful and not walking behind her on the stairs. On the north side of the Bastion is a really cool view where you can see several layers all stacked up so it looks like a birthday cake. We took some pictures of the view, and I got a good picture of Zoey with a real smile!

When we were walking to our next stop we passed the statue of András Hadik, which as you remember is supposed to give you good luck if you rub the horse’s ... um ... nether regions. Last time Ronin was begging to do this, so we lifted him up (it was pretty high) so he could get a picture. He was so excited, even though other tourists were looking at us a bit strangely.

Our next stop was Ruzwurm, a bakery and coffee shop that was recommended by our tour guide when we toured Castle Hill with the Fulbright group last week. We got four different cakes. In order clockwise from the top left are eszterházy torte, black forest torte, dobos torte, and the Ruszwurm torte. The kids and JonPaul liked the Ruszwurm torte the best (of course—it’s all chocolate), I liked the dobos torte, and my mom liked the eszterházy torte; they were all really good though.

After our snack we took the bus over to Gellért hill. We started at the north side of the hill where we walked up to the monument of Szent Gellért. It wasn’t a great view though because we were looking at the monument from the back and the side. We will have to find a good view of the statue from the front. This is right in front of the Erzsébet bridge, so we got some pictures of the bridge, as well as pictures down the Danube River from this viewpoint.

Since we were high up on the Buda side today, here are some pictures of the river from some of the different viewpoints.

We walked by a flower garden that had some great climbing trees. I liked these flowers that were a combination of pink and yellow on the same flowers!

We walked up and up and up to get to the top of Gellért hill. I was hoping we would be able to get closer to the Liberty statue, but there were big gates around the entire square and Citadella, so we couldn’t get too close. Here is another picture of the Liberty statue from about halfway down the hill and to the side; you can see how her dress is flowing behind her. We stopped at two playgrounds on the hill. The first was made to look like there were big wooden pencils everywhere, which was pretty cool. There was a spinning wheel which was fun until too many kids got on it and Willow fell out and bumped her head. The second playground was awesome! It was on two levels, and slides and a climbing wall (and stairs for the parents) connected the two levels. We could have stayed here for quite a bit longer to play, but it was getting late and a little chilly.

Our last stop was the Gellért Hill Cave, which is a church actually inside a cave. This was originally built in the 1920s by a group of monks inspired by other cave churches during a pilgrimage. The church was raided and the cave was sealed during the Soviet rule, but then reopened in 1989 when the Iron Curtain fell. Although we have seen lots of churches and the kids were a little put off by going into yet another church, they thought this one was pretty cool.

Near the cave is the Gellért baths, which we hope to get to sometime while we are here, although they aren’t really kid friendly. They are one of the more famous bath houses, and there is a neat fountain in front where the water runs into little trenches in the ground instead of going directly into a drain.

On our walk back to the bus I saw a sign for a restaurant that was advertising a huge meat plate that would feed six people, so we decided to give it a try. This thing had a lot of everything, and everyone got plenty to eat, even Willow. When they brought it out it had a huge sparkler right in the middle of the kabob stack, and you can see how cool Ronin thought this was!