On Monday, we took a direct EuroCity train from Prague to Budapest. It's a 7-hour trip through the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It was a good way to get a taste of the countryside. We could see a lot of evidence of the Communist era, but also of rebuilding and new construction.
Praha Hlavni Nadrazi (Prague Main Train Station):
We were staying on the Buda side of the river, and most of the sights are on the Pest side. So, while we were in a very nice neighborhood of apartments and restaurants and stellar views, we knew we needed to figure out the transit system. Our hotel was very close to a stop for a bus that takes you into the heart of Pest and to the hub of Metro and tram lines.
On Tuesday, our highlight was a tour of Budapest's grand opera house. We planned to take a bus over to Pest and walk up Andrassy Ut, Budapest's version of the Champs Élysées. A good plan, except our bus got to the bottom of the hill and went kaput. Rather than wait for a replacement bus, we decided to walk across the legendary Chain Bridge. Not quite what we planned to do, but it was a good chance to commune with the Danube. We then walked on to Andrassy Ut, which is filled with luxury shops like Armani, Gucci, Omega.
Chain Bridge:
It was interesting to see the old opera house. It looks just like you expect a major European opera house to look. We got to hear lots of stories of former royals and political leaders. Given the politics of the time, the Budapest Opera House was not allowed to be bigger than the one in Vienna. So what they did was indeed make this one smaller, but made it grander.
There were a lot of other people going through at the same tour time we chose. There were tour guides for French, Russian, Hungarian, German, and English groups. There were so many of us English-speaking folks, they had to break us into three groups of 30 or so apiece.
We visited what felt like every nook and cranny of this elaborate building. We heard about its history and about some of the royals who came here. At the end of the tour, we got a mini-concert--two arias by a singer in costume. Surprisingly, this very brief concert was held in the grand staircase and not the auditorium--though I will say that if the acoustics of the staircase are any indication, those of the auditorium must be quite impressive.
By late afternoon, we headed back to our Castle Hill area. Our friends, Chuck and Kathe, were flying in from Portland via Amsterdam. We all arrived at the hotel at about the same time, a couple of us looking a bit more fatigued than the the others. (It might or might not be the ones you'd guess.)
On Wednesday, Kathe, Jerry, and I set out on the bus again. This time, it made it across to Pest, but it didn't go where we expected it would, according to the transit map we were using. We ended up walking a bit more than expected, but made our way to the Great Synagogue, only to find a sign that said "Due to Technical Difficulties, No Admittance Until 1:00pm." (We were standing looking at this sign at a bit after 11:00am.)
So we hopped on a tram and moved on to our next planned sight.
Our goal was the Great Market Hall. Now, there's one thriving, humming place. The main floor is for food vendors--all sorts of meat purveyors, cheeses, fruits and vegetables, and lots and lots of paprika. Downstairs is for the fish market, and upstairs is for Hungarian crafts and souvenirs. Also upstairs is a food court. We happened to walk through that area right at the height of lunchtime. It was a complete crush, but it sure was interesting to see some of the things people were eating.
Eventually, we caught a tram back to the synagogue. There was a long line for tickets, but in due time we managed to get in. It is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. It is quite grand and a bit unexpected in that it looks more like a Christian building than a traditional synagogue. It has balconies where the women used to sit. (They now sit on the sides on the main floor.) We also walked past the small cemetery and through the memory garden with its Tree of Life monument to those lost in the Holocaust. It is a steel sculpture of a weeping willow tree, each of its leaves etched with the name of a victim.
When we got back to our Buda roost, we took advantage of the pretty light and wandered through the Fisherman's Bastion and admired the views across to the beautiful Parliament building and other Pest monuments.
It was such a clear and pretty evening, we made much the same stroll after dinner. The views of the monuments at night is quite mesmerizing. In fact, it was difficult to pull ourselves away from those views. The confection that is the Parliament building is impressive at any time of day, but it is a particular delight at night, and we had a perfect vantage point.
Chain Bridge:
St. Istvan's Basilica:
Our visit to Budapest has been so different from our experience in Prague. They are both great cities, each divided by a river, each with famous bridges, and each with a castle on the side of the river away from the main downtown. But Prague has a very small old center that concentrates one's touring and wandering. Budapest, on the other hand, has many old buildings that are sprinkled throughout the city. Everywhere you look there is another treat. I think of Prague as a cobblestone experience, where Budapest is filled with monuments and grand buildings on what feels like a grander scale.
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