So to begin, we arrived in Budapest on July 23, 2014 and were met by our driver. We stayed in a serviced apartment (air conditioning! washing machine! refrigerator! microwave! close to everything!) at the 7Seasons Apartments, the management of which was kind enough to dispatch a "limo" for a very reasonable fee. Speaking of reasonable, Hungary is. A trip to the supermarket that would have cost $35 - $40 U.S. for wine, water, some food, etc. only ran about $17 U.S.
Budapest turned out to be just as great as everyone says. Our first full day, we took off on foot to see the Buda side with its Fisherman's Bastion area.
The Parliament building from the Bastion:
The all-day hike also took us along the river on the Pest side. This is where all the river cruise ships dock, and it's amazing how many of them were around. At one point, there had to be at least a dozen, stacked up three abreast. There are some interesting life-size bronze statues along the river walk:
We also headed over to Hero's Square, where we found the original Anonymous:
There's a huge market in Budapest, often called the "iron cathedral".
Here, we had heard, was where we would find the Budapest Belly Buster, called langosh. This is a potato-based dough, deep-fat fried and traditionally served for breakfast with cheese, garlic, or both. These days, they'll fix it up almost like a pizza with lots of toppings. The stuff is wonderful and we really overdid it, but at least we had the sense to not go back the next day. Not that we didn't want to. Besides langosh, the vegetable stands at the market were so tempting!
On a more sobering note, near the Parliament Building are the bronze shoes. This memorial is dedicated to the many people who were killed by the Arrow Cross Militia during 1944 and 1945. The Arrow Cross was basically the Hungarian Nazi Party, and while in power, they were dedicated to ridding Budapest of Jews, confining them to ghettos and deporting them to work and concentration camps. Over 80,000 died at Auschwitz, while 10,000 to 15,000 people were murdered outright. At one point, battalions raided the ghettos looking for Jews who were supposedly partisans or saboteurs...about 200 were rounded up, marched onto the bridges over the Danube, shot, and pushed into the river. The shoes say it all.
An after-dinner stroll rounded out the trip:
Before boarding our ship, we had a lot of leftover Hungarian cash (forints) and we had to figure out a way to spend it. A case of wine was purchased for the cruise.
