Budapest Day 1

Okay I know it has been ages, but my parents were here and I haven't had time to update everyone on that so we're just going to gloss over it. It was good.

Last night Marina and I arrived in Budapest and we are staying at the YELLOW SUBMARINE hostel, so I'm very amused. (Yes, I'm that pathetic). It's small and clean and relatively quiet, so it definitely serves our purpose (we're not that keen on partying... I've done Barcelona and she's heading there so we're taking it a bit easy). Today we basically dominated Pest (the north side of the Danube) and did basically all the sites!

We started out at the Jewish Synagogue, which is the largest of its kind in Europe. It was really beautiful, with gold and red and oranges on the inside. I was surprised to hear it was the largest in Europe because it wasn't overwhelmingly huge. There was also a Jewish museum and a memorial garden. There was a memorial tree that seemed to be made of tin (you're going to have to wait until my return to London for pictures, sorry), which was very cool. Names were carved into the leaves to commemorate those who were killed in the Holocaust.

After the synagogue we had intended to go to the National Museum (we wanted some much-needed Hungarian history), but it was shut. So we walked down toward the river, where there is a two-story covered market. The bottom floor is fresh food: meat, fruit, veggies, nuts, etc. The upstairs consisted of handmade Hungarian goods (wood carved pieces and a lot of embroidered tablecloths, etc), as well as your usual touristy stuff. I bought a couple post cards and a gift or two.

We walked down a main tourist road, had some lunch, and then followed the river down to the Parliament building. Along the river is a really subtle (we almost missed it) Holocaust memorial, commemorating people who were SHOT BY ARROW into the Danube in 1944-1945. I might have to do some more research to find out what actually happened there! The Parliament building looks remarkably like Westminster Abbey with a colored cathedral dome. It's lovely. We opted to not take a tour, simply because there were so many other things we wanted to do (and we know nothing about Hungarian government... sad). Following Parliament we walked through a park where, in 1945, the Soviets tore down the Hungarian flag and posted a Soviet monument. Now there is a Hungarian flag with a hole in it standing close by (and higher than) the monument, to signify its importance as well as what the Soviets attempted to steal from their national identity.

Following this we went to St. Stephen's Basilica. St. Stephen was the first king and seemingly the patron saint of Hungary. It was a beautiful church (though with a little too much gold for my taste), though it was mobbed with people. There was also St. Stephen's hand there. I thought that odd, but who am I to judge?

Lastly, we walked up to a city park to check out the Turkish baths. Neither of us had swimsuits, but we were in sandals so we splashed our feet in and enjoyed the sunshine (it was about 70 degrees and sunny today!). Then it was about five, we stopped by the train station to pick up our tickets to Vienna for Sunday. :)