We thought this was going to be our last full day in Budapest, but surprise! Our boat doesn’t leave town until Tuesday evening, even though we board tomorrow. Doh!
However, it does take the pressure off our sightseeing, so that we could spend the morning doing advanced planning for shore excursions and airport transfers (not that far in advance, as I’m sure you’ve noticed).
We left the hotel late morning and walked to the parliament buildings. We haven’t been able to get tickets for a tour but we hoped that if we turned up in person it would be a different story. No such luck.
Instead, there was a small museum under the forecourt of the parliamentary grounds that marked the short brutal uprising against the Soviets in October 1956. Simon got snitty because he’d already read everything there was to know about it online and didn’t want to know any more. For me, seeing photos and videos of eye witness accounts was very valuable. I stayed longer than he wanted but less time than I would have liked. Welcome to married life!
For a large part of my early adult life, the Russians were seen as nice guys – this was after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The situation has deteriorated since then, with the advent of Putin, but you forget that the Soviets were to be feared for much of the twentieth century. Although of course, they were with the Allies in WW2.
Simon tells me in spite of the brutal crackdown in late 1956, Hungary was known as one of the happiest countries that were part of the Warsaw pact i.e. behind the Iron Curtain. I must say, there is still a whiff of Soviet culture here – barely suppressed violence, organised crime, unsmiling people, “fashion”, fur, alcohol, smoking, and highly made up ladies with fake eyelashes, big boobs and big lips. It may be my imagination of course.
After the museum we made use of our 72 hour transport cards by taking the metro to see the famous New York coffee house. When we got there, there was an enormous queue that stretched right down the street, which didn’t move at all in the five minutes we were watching. We rapidly gave that idea up and went into a bar to have a coffee instead. It was a sports bar and they were showing the America’s Cup, strangely enough. No one was watching.
We walked along the shopping street that was modelled on the Champs Élysées for a while, and then went into the Metro Museum. They would only take cash, and only in the local funny money, not Euros, so Simon had to head out to find an ATM. Here are his riches.
The metro in Budapest was the first on the continent (second in Europe after London, which used to be in Europe). It was built in the golden era, the second half of the 19th century.
We had lunch in a posh Italian restaurant. We have given up on Hungarian cuisine. It is fine as comfort food, but there’s not much else to be said for it.
We headed back to the Buda side on the bus after lunch, to visit the House of Houdini. There is a small museum there dedicated to the great escapologist, who was born in Hungary but left as a child. As part of your visit you get to see a magic show. There was a great deal of audience participation, much to my dismay as the audience was very small. Simon even had to volunteer to spare me, which was very kind of him. The show started off embarrassingly lame but rapidly improved and ended up being very impressive.
The afternoon was wearing on by now so we decided to call a halt to proceedings, and grabbed the next bus home.
…..
A very low key dinner at a bar one block over. I noticed during dinner we were right across the road from the shoe shop I’d been in the other day. I looked in as we walked by on our way home (it’s open late) and I recognised one of the young women who had looked after me. As I walked up to her she looked quite grim when she recognised me, but when I said how much I loved the shoes, she broke out in a big wide smile that was lovely to see.