Folks, I'm so tired, I don't know how I can continue to entertain you with the delights we experienced today. Budapest made up for yesterday's miserable weather with a superb display of spring time in Hungary, and we decided to kill three birds with one stone. Hey, why not? We wanted to take a hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city, reserve our seats on the rail jet train for tomorrow and work out the Metro underground all in one day. So we did! :)
Being an obviously typical tourist isn't my first choice but some days you have to don the multi-language ear phones, hop on an open-top bus, and let someone else explain the sights to you as you get driven around the city. Too many beautiful buildings of note passed us by, including the opera house, a Jewish synagogue, university buildings, music schools, so many famous Hungarians to list (apologetically I can't list any right now).
We hopped off at Heroe's Square whose magnificent bronze monuments to the kings of old have long succumbed to the copper oxidation process and turned green. How brilliant they would look after a bit of a scrub with some brasso! Nearby was the fairytale Vajdahunyad Castle that was built with different architectural styles and is now home to some museum. The area is surrounded by beautiful park lands, and families were enjoying the Sunday sunshine in some of the great facilities provided by the city, including table tennis and trampolines for the kids. Of course Budapest is famous for the hot springs that bubble up from underground and the Széchenyi Medicinal Baths are very popular with the locals. But there was no time for soaking in it as we hopped back on the bus and got off at the train station to reserve our seats to Vienna.
The Metro is an easy, cheap way of getting around so we figured out how to get back to our starting point and re-boarded the bus to continue the tour on the Buda side. Yes, the city is split by the Danube River, Buda on the hilly west side and Pest on the flat east side. Apart from the spectacular views, the Buda Castle Palace and the Fishermen's Bastion are remarkable, and together with the Mattias Church and the Citadel, the whole precinct is a tourist Mecca with line after line of coach buses, guided walking tours, and souvenir shops. There was just way too much history to take in in one day, and after the bus failed to turn up on time for the home stretch, leaving us grumpy and tired, we were happy to get back to the hotel after another long exhausting day!
Now if only those bloody drunk soccer fanatics at the Irish Pub next door would shut up we can get some sleep! Hehe.
