Walking and Riding Around the City

  Budapest, Hungary
Sunday, October 14, 2007

We started the day by going on the usual tour around the city.  Budapest is really spread out, so most of the tour was by bus.  Our tour guide was half-Hungarian, half-Brazilian, and 100% shady, hitting on the "cute" girls on the tour.  He also didn't seem very reliable with the facts and was just kind of vague about everything.

We did get to see Parlament, supposedly the "second best Parlament building."  According to the tour guide, Hungary is second best at many many things.

Parlament

At the Parlament is a Hungarian flag with a hole in it.  It symbolizes one of the protests against foreign rule.  Hungary, until very recently, was pretty much always under foreign rule.  The flag used to have a symbol (a star or something) in the center of it.  During a protest, a student took down the flag and cut out the symbol.

Flag Memorial

We also went to Fisherman's Bastion, which looks old but isn't.  It was just built by some rulers to look impressive and old.  There's a supposedly really cool church at the top as well.  Unfortunately it was covered in scaffolding and, as it was a Sunday, they wouldn't let any tourists in. 

Fisherman's Bastion

The tour ended in Heroes Square.  It has statues...of heroes.  It also has the Millennium Monument.  When a city reached 1000 years old, they like to build something fancy to commemorate it.  Lots of times they are pillar-type things, like the one I saw later in Dublin.

Millennium Monument

After the tour we went to what is supposedly the fanciest restaurant in Budapest and maybe all of Eastern Europe.

Restaurant Gundel

It was....fancy, but not overly impressive.  It also wasn't worth walking around in dress clothes all day for.  In typical Eastern European fashion, we were given chicken and rice.   The peach crepes for desert made it all a bit more worth it. 

Food from the Fanciest Restaurant in Budapest

Crepes for Dessert

After lunch, we were given the rest of the day free.  I decided just to walk around the city and Jason followed me.  He seemed to be against figuring out public transportation so we walked...a LOT.  I saw a ton of the city and crossed over two of the bridges.  Check out all the pictures for more.  My favorite bridge is the one with the lions, called the Chain Bridge.

The Chain Bridge 2