We woke to a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day! Yes finally we were going to get a lovely summers day in Europe! So out came the summer dresses and a venture out in the warmth of the day to discover Budapest 🙂
August last year Judy, Teresa and I met up with Daniel and Marysia in Budapest. They had travelled there from London for a wedding, and we had just completed our tour of Italy and Sicily. Because we had already seen a lot of the famous sights, we decided to do our own walking tour, and see some of the places we missed last time.
Our first place to see was only a short half a kilometre from our Hotel, the Sofitel. It was St Stephen’s Basilica. It was huge! Well worth the visit. We were lucky enough to arrive when a choir was singing inside. The sound was amazing! Here are some photos of this amazing place…
It reminded me a little of St Peter’s Basilica in The Vatican City but on a much smaller scale. That place is huge!
Our walk took us next to the Iron curtain memorial and the ‘House of Horrors’, but I’m not including photos of those places. We didn’t actually go in as we went through the museum last year, and the men weren’t bothered about seeing it.
The Parish Church of Terezverce was our next place to visit. A smaller Cathedral but still very lovely inside.
Last year we also visited the Antique markets in the Jewish Quarter and decided it was also a MUST SEE for this year as well. The atmosphere is great! So many people as well 🙂 This led us on to the ‘Rumbach Street Synagogue’, the spiritual home of the local Hungarian Jews and was built in 1872.
Sadly we couldn’t enter the Synagog as it was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath 🙁
Not far from the Synagog was the National Museum. We climbed the steps and wandered around the entrance, but didn’t want to look at all the museum contents. But it is a fabulous building with a huge statue in front.
We headed for Market Square. I love looking in markets and this one didn’t fail to impress me. The bottom floor was full of produce. Vegetables, fruit, fish and meat of many varieties. The top floor was clothing, souveners and restaurants.
We crossed the first bridge and then did the very long waterfront walk back to the Chain bridge, that is right next to our Hotel!
Well it was an enjoyable day but also a very tiring day with LOTS of walking. We did see some amazing sights though.
At 6.30pm we met up with our Tour leader, and also all the other people traveling on the tour with us. They seem a really good bunch of people and it will be great to get to know them all better over the next two weeks. We had a lovely three course meal at a near by Restaurant, said out goodbyes until tomorrow morning, and now it’s off to bed for me after a very rewarding day.
Catch you all tomorrow 🙂