2014-06-01
Weather was quite cloudy on Sunday morning, rain might come soon. First a short breakfast stop at Szamos Cukrászda, a nice looking patisserie.
Just took the French breakfast with Tejes kávé.
Via the Chain Bridge/Kettenbrücke, this time the castle up on the hill was the goal.
The cable car reminded me of the Nerobergbahn in Wiesbaden, after the steep climb of the little cabin car I enjoyed the great view over Pest, walked around the huge castle area and went in the Hungarian history museum. Then the other side of castle hill was there to be explored. I saw the
Matthias Church and Fishermen’s bastion and went down the Vienna Gate heading for Pest.
On the descent I stopped at Édeni Vegán, a nice restaurant. For lunch I picked a bit of everything.
Édeni Vegán / 1011 Budapest, Iskola u. 31
The Terror Museum was my next stop. Already with a visible exterior it covers the time of two oppressing regimes (Arrow-cross and Communists). From my perspective it is good for school classes to get to know what happened at the place of interrogation and also in general at the time. You can opt for an audio guide and papers to read in every room. I tried the papers.
Chocolate cake / Laško beer at Vello D’oro Pizzeria Caffe Cinema where a draft beer is just 400Ft for 0,5l.
Took a swim at the hotel, small but very nice pool.
2014-06-02
On the next day I went to the Great Synagogue. Entered without a ticket, just had a short look on the prayers before I was asked for a ticket and found out about my fault. However, the line was quite long so I just walked along the garden with mass graves of the Ghetto victims and to the exit of the synagogue area.
As contrast to the remembrance of the suffering I crossed many unbelievably beautiful Art nouveau buildings up to the parliament. Just did a picture in front of the parliament when the guards did a show at around 11:30.
Went via Liberty square park, which is surrounded by astonishing Art nouveau buildings, to a vegan place called Ganga.
Excellent vegan-vegetarian cuisine, also spicy options. Again a tasty homemade lemonade (Lichies) and so much food I was definitely full after the visit. The guys behind the counter gave me a bit of everything (Gingerbread stuffed with vegetables, Lasagne etc.). Ganga was established around 2010 but the owners changed 2 years ago, repainted the wall colors to something more friendly and built up a busy business.
Then I rolled to the second part of the photo museum, the Capa Center (www.capacenter.hu) and used my first ticket (Mai Manó Ház) to get a discount. The current exhibition shows the contact sheets of many Magnum photographers. Basically you see the developed film negative and which picture was chosen to share with the world. The interesting part are the pictures before/after the iconic ones.
2014-06-03
Transition time. In the morning I quickly went to the Art Nouveau museum. However, for 2000Ft it did not meet my expectations. Basically furniture, lamps, magazines put together without any explanation/hints – looked more like a flea market than a museum.
Found some nice postcards in a little bookstore, got stamps at the post and put everything in a post box.
Afterwards rucksack pickup in hotel and off I went to the train station and right into the already waiting RailJet.
In Vienna I directly drove by car to Prague which was a good idea due to multiple small traffic jams.