Today we walked over the Chain Bridge to the Buda side of Budapest. We thought we might ride on the funicular to The Var or Castle Hill, but the queue was long so we walked instead.
At every turn on the way up was another view across the Danube to Pest.
Then we concentrated on Buda itself which has apparently been ravaged and rebuilt 86 times over seven centuries with the last occasion being after WW2. We walked round the outside of the Royal Palace, which now houses the National Gallery but it was too nice a day to spend indoors.
Up close, Matyas Church and the Fishermen’s Bastion have quite a fairytale appearance which would have Disney proud, spoilt slightly by Hilton building their hulking hotel behind, and St Stephen sits proud on his horse.
We stopped at Budavari Retesvar where we bought take-away strudel for lunch, first a savoury one filled with cabbage, then we shared three sweet ones – plum, raspberry and curd cheese and black cherry – the sweet ones were definitely best!
Many buildings in the streets of The Var are painted in pastel colours and have muemlek plaques which detail their history.
There is limited traffic and the whole area feels as though time has stood still. We also noticed stone carvings, metal signs and the area is even still lit by gas lights.
We stopped for a cool drink in a shady cafe and while Chris had a beer, I had a Froccs, which is a spritzer of wine and soda, specifically with 100mls of wine and 200mls of soda. There are other names for other mixes. We retraced our steps back to Pest, passing a memorial depicting a young man falling to his death which we found out later was Mansfeld Péter who fought as a freedom fighter in the 1956 Revolution.
In the evening we planned to take the public ferry from a stop in the south of the city, from one bank to the other up the Danube to just past the Parliament building while watching the sun set on Budapest … but it didn’t turn up!
We resigned ourselves to drinking Aperol spritz in a park overlooking Elizabeth Bridge then returrned to Parisi 6 for dinner. We had another fabulous meal – zucchini salad and spinach filled deep fried tortellini for Chris and Jókai bableves, a local bean soup with smoked sausage followed by pike with sauté potatoes, sausage and pickles for me. We also shared a bottle of dry white wine from a local grape which was really delicious and finished with a complimentary shot of sour cherry Palinka … with rocket fuel like that, I’m not sure the flavour matters!
Off Travelling Together 