Blue Danube

Hungary wasn't always high on my list of places I wanted to go, but now I cannot imagine why that would be. Since first catching a glimpse of the Danube river on Sunday night I fell in love with the scenery and architecture. There are so many old sights, and mostly all within walking distance from our hostel, which was quite fortunate for us.

Budapest is divided in two parts; Buda west of the river and Pest to the east. Our hostel was on the Buda side, so we decided to cross the bridge over to Pest first. The first big sight was Fashion street, an area filled with shops and kitschy souvenirs... An interesting way to learn about Hungarian culture. We walked from there and ended up in what resembled the Easter market from Innsbruck, except selling things that were more of a Hungarian style. We wandered about there for a while, finding a lot of old buildings along the way including churches, a basilica, the opera house, and finally ending up by the parliament building right next to the river again.

So much elegance! We crossed back to Buda at this point, walking up to the top of a hill where Buda Castle is located. There were amazing views of the city from the top, and of course the elegance of the castle itself. Around this time my camera's battery died, and since we weren't far from the hostel we went back for a rest and recharge.

We ended up meeting another traveller at the hostel who was from Turkey, and about to embark on a tour with a Hungarian guide. they invited us along, and conveniently they were headed to some of the places we hadn't made it to yet, so we decided to go. We went up another hill on the Buda side first, with old monuments and Budapest's Statue of Liberty. This area had even better views of all sides of the city, so we took it all in before going back down and crossing the river farther south than we had before, seeing immediately a famous marketplace, and then walking back up the river past various statues and monuments, eventually near parliament again where there was a memorial to Jewish Hungarians killed during the Holocaust. The sun was setting by this time so I got some beautiful pictures... We walked back to the other side and split up again, headed back for the hostel to make dinner and rest our tired feet for our next day of adventure!