Friday, July 8, 2011

Beautiful Buildings, Big Bellies and Bikes

We made into Eastern Europe where everything is a little bit more affordable.  Budapest was rustic and a little run down with less of the sleek and efficient feel of Western capitals. However the strong sense of culture was evident in the architecture, food and people. We didn’t learn a single word of Hungarian but fortunately everyone seemed to speak at least some English.


 The Danube River which divides Budapest into the Buda and Pest sides.  The Buda side is shown here.


The Great Market where we bought our fruit everyday.  The Hungarian style Zsolnay tiles decorated Budapest’s skyline.


Matthais Church. Originally constructed in the 1300’s and repaired in the 1800’s.


One of the seven bridges connecting Buda and Pest with St. Istvan Church in the background.

The Buda Castle Palace


The Hungarian Parliament  Building.  Construction started in 1885 and was inaugurated in 1886 on the country’s 1000th anniversary.


On our second day we rented bikes and sped around town touring several of the city’s large parks. 

 A museum in City Park on the pest side.    Our first stop on the tour.

A lake in the park with some interesting sculptures including a sinking house.

The view from our lunch spot on Margit Island, the entire island is a huge city park.

The Pest skyline.


The Buda skyline.


Two of the three nights we were in Budapest we ate at Köleves, a fantastic restaurant that reminded us of the Five Spot in Seattle.  The first night we had curry fish stew and roast goose leg.  The second night we had sun dried tomato stuffed chicken over mashed potatoes mixed with spinach and garlic and roasted lamb over sweet potatoes and celeric.  It was two of the best meals we have had on this trip and only cost a little over €10.00 each. 

The Danube at night.

Next up... heading back to Austria to hit up the capital of the country.

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