Museums and the Opera

My mom only had a few days left with us in Budapest, so we tried to fit in as many activities as we could. While JonPaul took the kids to the big playground, my mom and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts. The museum is next to Heroes’ Square, which for the first time did not have any scaffolding or barriers! We took a leisurely walk around the square, taking pictures of all the statues in the Millennium Memorial. The monument began construction in 1986 (of course), and was rebuilt after damage during WWII with some of the figures of Habsburgs switched out for other notable Hungarians. The cenotaph in the center is a Memorial Stone of Heroes, similar to our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The Museum of Fine Arts was built around 1900 and is made up of art prior to the year 1800; although in some internet searches (hello, Wikipedia) it says the museum holds impressionism and other 19th- and 20th-century art, there was none when we visited. The art exhibits included a pretty interesting exhibit on ancient Egypt, a large classics exhibit that was mostly sculpture and vases (similar to what we saw in Italy), Hungarian art from 1600-1800, and European art and sculpture from 1200-1800. There were quite a few El Greco paintings, which were some of my favorites. To me they look almost like pre-impressionist paintings instead of the typical Old Master paintings.

The star of the museum is the architecture, which was gorgeous, particularly in the Romanesque Hall, which was used as a warehouse for overflow for many years and completely closed to visitors since it was a dirty mess. It has been completely restored, and the pictures just don’t do it justice.

My mom really wanted to go to the opera while she was here, and the Budapest Opera House is supposed to have a beautiful and opulent foyer and main hall. However, the Opera House is closed for renovations and you can’t enter the building right now. All operas and events are being held at the Erkel Theatre, which is much less grand but does have great acoustics. The only opera playing while my mom is here is Salome, so that is what we went to see. You can get tickets for around $4 a piece, but we splurged and got the front row balcony boxes for $25 a piece, which is still an amazing price. The opera, while not either of our favorites or even in the top 10, was very good. The acting was okay, very dramatic and over the top (but hey, that’s typical for opera). The main actress who played Salome had an absolutely amazing voice. She wasn’t just good, she was great. Although she was a horrible dancer; the Dance of the Seven Veils was rather painful for me to watch! The actors who played Herodes and Jochanaan also had very good voices.

After the opera we walked to the New York Café, which is touted as “the most beautiful café in the world”, and although I haven’t been to every café in the world I am likely to agree with their statement. Again, the pictures do not do it justice because of how squishy they are in the blog, but this place was gorgeous. We were really lucky to be able to get a seat as it is usually reservation-only, but it was about 45 minutes before they closed and the place was not crowded. We had dessert—I had a chocolate mousse cake with hot chocolate, and it was good but very very chocolaty. My mom had an espresso and strudels—one apple and one cheese. The apple one was pretty good but neither of us liked the cheese one. After enjoying our snack we walked around a bit to take pictures and really enjoyed our fancy night out.

The next day, the last day my mom was here, she and JonPaul went to a cooking class to learn how to cook traditional Hungarian dishes. They made goulash, chicken paprikash with dumpling noodles, and strudel (both apple and cheese). They even had leftovers to bring home of everything but the goulash. The paprikash was really good, and so was the apple strudel, but again no one liked the cheese strudel. I think it is because the cheese is more curdy like a cottage cheese and not creamy like a custard. If it was creamy like a cream puff I would probably eat ten of them!

After their class, mom and I went to the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum, which is on the second floor of the Old Academy of Music building. This was a nice little museum that had a lot of Liszt manuscripts, artifacts, and memorabilia. Liszt was the founder, president, and a faculty member of the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music, which began in this building. He had an apartment in the academy, which are the same rooms the museum is in. They tried to replicate his living quarters here to the best of their ability while adding in extra exhibits and memorabilia. The first picture is the plaque that hung in his office saying when he was available for office hours. He had an entry room, a dining room, bedroom/study, and drawing room where he held piano lessons. In his bedroom he had a piano desk, which is a writing desk that has a little piano you can pull out and play where we would now put a pull-out keyboard. In the drawing room there were four pianos displayed, and on the grand piano was this amazing intricate music stand that had the busts of Liszt surrounded by some of the great composers—Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber. The museum took us all of 45 minutes to look through but was a nice small museum for music lovers.

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Buda Walk