A Sunny, Exhausting Day

Thursday, July 24, 2014--Budapest

After sleeping well for about 8 1/2 hours last night, we got up and were out of the apartment by 9:30.  It was a sunny, warm day, and we jumped on the metro headed toward Buda, the part of the city on the southern side of the Danube.

Our goal was to explore this hilly, older section of the city--the home of Buda Castle, several museums, and a neighborhood that mostly includes architecture from medieval times through the 1800s (along with reconstruction that occurred after bombings during WWII.

We walked the streets admiring the buildings.  We watched roofers re-tiling a high roof with a dramatic slope.  We watched all the tourist crowds from all over the world.  We toured the Hungarian National Gallery and the Budapest History Museum which are both housed in the massive old palace.  (In regards to the former, we noticed the pattern that if your name is Károly, you apparently HAVE to become a painter.  Either that, or Károly is as common a name here as Smith is in the US.)

After all that, we were starving.  We ate a shawarma sandwich from a small shop at the metro stop.  Then we continued our exploring.  We took the metro to the Budapest City Park.  We sat on a bench watching people enjoy the nice day visiting, picnicking, etc.  Then we headed to one last museum for the day--the Museum of Fine Arts which housed mostly paintings and sculptures by artists from various European countries.

By 17:30, we were totally exhausted and headed for the apartment.  We expected Leo to pick us up at 20:00, and we knew we needed to drink water and rest before that.  

Leo drove up at 20:00.  We were waiting on the street.  He drove us to the top of the hill where the Hungarian Statue of Liberty, celebrating their break from Soviet domination, is located.  We were there looking out over great views of the city and the Danube when the lights on the bridges and across town came on for the evening.  We took several photos of views from up there.  The statue itself is not very impressive; it has too much of a communist-style design, I think.  But the views are great.

Leo was going to a concert at 9:00 and needed to get his car back home so he could take public transportation to the venue--an open garden area with a bar along Ráday utca, a street that is lined with sidewalk cafes.  We encouraged him to leave us so that we could walk back down the hill.  While he was returning the car, we came down, found the street with the concert, and listed to the band (a Polish/Hungarian folk group) play one song before going on a break.  Then we walked the street looking at he diners at all the sidewalk cafes on each side.  It was a bit like the Riverwalk in San Antonio--one crowded restaurant after another with live music at many of them, but without the river between the two lines of restaurants.

Because the band was still on break, we decided not to look for Leo there.  We were tired, so we went to the nearby metro stop and made our way home.