Budapest a Dark Beauty

Parliament

I started out with 34 photos for this blog post, and thought: "Yikes, that's going to scare people." Then I tried to weedle it down the best I could, but it still was too much, so we're going to do this trip in 3 parts and if that's too much, well this is more for posterity than for anyone in particular.

It is impossible to show all of the grandeur, elegance, and beauty of Budapest, but at least these pictures might give you a taste and a hankering to see it for yourself.



We decided to go to Budapest over London chiefly because the price of the ticket was so low (thank you Ryan Air) and the apartment was so ridiculously inexpensive in comparison. Lucky for us, Budapest wasn't given the effervescent description and praise we've given it or our expectations may have been too high for any earthly city to gratify, so we had next to no idea what to expect.

Fisherman's bastion forming a crescent around St. Matthias

We booked a little flat abutting the Danube with a view of the Parliament building and the chain bridge (Buda side), and it was totally worth it! 

View from the apartment

We arrived at this little gem just in time to drop of bags and head over to the free walking tour. 3.5 hours later, with much of the Pest and the castle district under our visual belt, we found ourselves at 6pm with the most breathtaking view of a man made light marathon I've ever seen.



Note to all travelers: try and find the free walking tours wherever you go; you get so much more out of a city if you know a little about the history. For example, the Mongols invaded centuries ago so most Hungarians have Asian blood in them. It's also interesting to hear how they couch the darker periods of history. The tour guide used air quotes when stating that Hungary aligned itself with the "wrong side" of both World Wars. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she didn't know the connotation of air quotes in English (do the English use it in the same way we do? Maybe we're just weird).

The holes you see in the facade are actually bullet holes from WWII. This was the former Ministry of Defense.

This horse statue has a famous piece of anatomy that every university student would rub during 
finals for good luck...Poor guy was accosted so many times that it's now illegal to try to rub him.

St. Matthias church cloaked in pitch black

Trompsing around the Jewish quarter in search of food and craft beer, we gave in to hunger and stopped at an inexpensive pub for goulash and some kind of meat (not sure what...veal sausages? well, whatever it was it was tasty). The beer was only palatable so we hopped to a little garden level brewery with what turned out to be very acceptable craft brews.

Chain bridge all aglow

Not sure which beers we had, but it's festive

I do remember which beers we had here because they were delicious. Micah had the Chopper and 
I the bitter...dang, maybe I don't remember. But I remember the taste.

 Leaving the warmth for another jaunt into the cold (much colder in Budapest than Barcelona, and being away from CO winters has made us wimps), we made a circuitous, meandering route behind the parliament building, across the Margarit Bridge and dragged ourselves back to our cozy apartment to crash.

View of Castle hill from Pest. Matthias church and Fisherman's bastion.

Seriously, taking a picture of yourselves at night is hard.

St. Stephen's Basilica