Budapest, Hungary

  We slept in a bit more than we were expecting,  still not quite acclimated to the new time zone....plan for today was to venture out from Budapest and vist a couple of other small towns...Szentendre and Visegrad.  Easy acces using the subterranean train out of Budapest  and a local  bus.  Walking over to the train station we encountered a race of some type.

And we passed the church that I took a photo of last night.It's actually much prettier in the daylight!

.Nice to see the countryside, since all we've seen over the last few days was hardcore city scenes...evidence of the drought is everywhere. 

Very basic train...not terribly comfy and no A/C.... But who's complaining comma it cost about three dollars total for each of us for the almost hour train ride.

It was a quick walk from the train station to the downtown area of Szentendre.   Obviously a pretty touristy area...lots of locals pedaling their wares.

I picked a church to tour - this one had a nice museum of religious artifacts (of course!)

Inside the church itself.  

With our late start, we needed to move on to the next little town.  Boarded the local bus and about an hour later we were in Visegrad.  The most important thing I wanted to see there was the Fellegvar castle, perched very high on the hill.  Built in the 1300's is fairly well preserved. 

View from river level.  It was a pretty strenuous hike for about an hour. 

A little closer view

 

After the tough hike, it was nice to stroll around the well preserved fortress.  Unlike lots of other castles we've toured, this one had a lot of original  structure. 

  

Time to walk back down the trail and get headed back to Budapest.   We opted for a bit of an adventure- ferry to the other side of the Danube, then catch a train back into Budapest.  You gotta love their transit system!  The ferry cost for each of us was about  $3.....and then the 50 minute overland train was $3.22 for BOTH of us!

Back to Budapest we caught a city bus to take us back close to the apartment.   Long day and we were tired puppies!

X

Budapest, Hungary

 

Long post today....

After well over 12 hours of much needed sleep, we were back out touring again in the late morning.   We'd planned to ride the funicular (cable railway) up the hill to the "castle district" but the line was long/not moving very fast so we decided against  waiting around for it. 

The castle district sits high on the hill overlooking the Danube.  It's astonishing how many huge intricate buildings and structures are there.

Views over the Danube were spectacular. 

Fisherman's Bastion was overrun with folks enjoying the day.

Mathias church was spectacular  as well.

The view across the river to the Parliament Building.

Selfie near Mathias Church 😄

Did I mention  that there were a lot of folks out??

A different angle of Fisherman's Bastion. 

And yet another view of the Danube.

Buda tower- thought about paying $3 each to climb  but there are no outside viewing points.  

View of part of the city on the other side of Castle Hill.

Then we happened upon a traditional Hungarian dance display. Good fun watching  them!

More views as we continued our walk.

Fountain near the National Gallery.

 

The Hungarian National Gallery that we could see all lighted across the river last night.

And another view of Chain Bridge as we made our way down the hill.

Finished with our tour of the Castle district, we caught a city bus for the 5 mile trip over to Hero Square, a beautiful huge park honoring their war heros. Lovely statues of course. 

And a castle included too.

We wandered the large park, enjoying the day. There was a tethered balloon but was not operating. 

One last cool building before we made our way back on the subway. This was a thermal bath, we knew about it but it seemed like too much trouble....

It took us a few tries on the Metro kiosk, but we secured tickets for our ride back to the station very near our apartment.   Easy peasy and cost about $1.50 USD.

After another little rest, around sunset we started walking to get a night-time view of the Parliament Building.   Normally,  this would be seen directly from the deck of the Viking river boat as we would depart at night specifically for that purpose.   Since we won't see a river boat for the first few days, we took it into our own hands to make sure we'd see that view!  Busy promenade as we crossed over Chain Bridge.

The river cruise boats can't navigate because of low water upstream,  but the local dinner cruise boats are in full operation.

Yet another view of Chain Bridge! 

The Parliament Building is quite spectacular! 

Another mor modern church was lighted as well.

One final look at the Parliament Building  before making our way back.

Across the Danube, we stopped at a hummus/kabob shop called an original  name - hummusbar.....for a light meal before getting back to the apartment for some much needed rest!