Drum roll please...
Our favorite city of the Christmas trip was:
Budapest used to be two different smaller cities on opposite sides of the river Danube, one called Buda and one called Pest. Your useless factoid for the day;) The old town of Buda might be one of the most magical places in Europe.
My favorite spot was the Fishermans Bastion:
I won't try to describe it. You just have to go and experience it. Especially at night and look across the Danube
This lovely place is called H
eroes Square. It is a monument to the heroes and founders of Hungary. On both sides of the square are beautiful art museums. The statues are really cool to look at in detail below. You can see a little bit of the arched wall of columns and statues behind the Obelisk too. There are probably 35 statues here.
Here's a closer shot of a few of them. The coolest thing about the square itself, really, was watching a few local families roller blading and riding their bikes here. It is a HUGE paved area so perfect for that kind of activity. It was just cool to think that local hungarians play here.
Behind Heroes square is a large park and pond (skating rink in the winter), a small courtyard, this castle and the following church. I hate to throw around the word "favorite" too much but my Mom and I loved this castle, called Valdahunyad Castle. Sadly it's not a real castle in the sense that royalty lived here. It was built in late 1890-1905 as a millenial celebration of the country of Hungary. It was designed to feature several copies of different landmark buildings from all over the kindgdom of Hungary, especially the Hunyad Castle in Transylvania (now Romania). Whatever, it was cool;)
This church was right across the square from it.
In the square we got ripped of by a man selling Marzipan candies. But they were worth it;)
The House of Terror Museum:
The House of Terror Museum was like a fire hydrant of Eastern Europe history being blown at you except cool. It's more about their communist history with Hitler and then Russia (more Russia)...not much about the Holocaust as we expected. However, the things non jews went through under communist Russia was pretty dang appalling. If I could do anything again I would read more Easter Europe History before I came to Budapest. To understand a lot of what you're seeing and not feel overwhelmed with "what's" and "why's" the whole time it would be nice to have the general idea of what happened here. And this museum helped.
Aren't we creative..."behind the iron curtain":)
As I emphatically recommend visiting Budapest with people I give them a caveat that we might have liked it 50% more than we otherwise would have because the Christmas Market was so fun. We kept making jokes about ourselves because as we traveled these cities we'd have a plan of things to do that day and then we'd see a Christmas Market (this time of year there are big ones and little ones dotted everywhere in Europe). We'd get delayed there for 2 hours, eating!! In this particular photo we're eating this typical Hungarian fried bread scone like thing that Joey hasn't stopped talking about.
It was pretty incredible in a very indulgent kind of way.
Here's one of the cute food booths in the Christmas Market in front of St Stephens Cathedral.
Two different kinds of stuffed cabbage and cooked cabbage in the middle...lots of cabbage! If you're not drooling it's because you've never had European cabbage before!!
Sausage, Cheese, anti pasta and more cheese.
Here's St. Stephans, the ice skating rink and the Christmas market where we spent most of our time. At night they had a big light show on the front of the church and Joey spent two nights watching it with Juliet in between bites;)
Ju-B's face;)
After stuffing our faces on the first day we finally made it over to Buda.
We wondered around the old town, saw the castle ruins and then made it over to the Hungarian History Museum which was cool but not necessarily a must see. Outside of the museum is this statue of hunters, a slain elk and hunting dogs. We all thought of Pop Pop, so Kerry, this shot was taken for you;) Joey wanted one in front of it to show to his Dad:) It was really beautiful.
Uncle Bryant and Georgie liked it too;)
All the statues in Buda were really cool. In Europe you pass by statues EVERYWHERE but several of these in old town Buda stop you. You want to preserve them in a picture so you can show them off and remember them. They're just cool.
Here's another one we really liked of children playing and catching a fish.
We almost left the area when Bryant and I remembered that we'd wanted to see the Fisherman's Bastion. If we hadn't gone back for it we would have missed the coolest sight in Budapest. I highly recommend going in the evening because the lights are amazing...both at the Bastion and the view all along the river.
The church across from the Bastion. I wish I'd gotten a better picture of this church. It was really beautiful. During the Russian/Communist rule of Hungary it was the only church that was allowed to remain active and Catholic. One of the Hapsburg Queens, I think Marie Antoninettes mother, this was her favorite church to visit in her kingdom. Did you know Hungary was part of the Hapsburg empire before it became its own independent country? I didn't know that before.
The Bastion from the street side.
And again from the river side:
The Bastion takes its name from the guild of fisherman that was responsible for defending this stretch of the city walls in the Middle Ages. But the wall didn't look like this back then. It was initially designed and built for the millennial celebration at the turn of the century (the same time as Heroes Square and Valdahunyad Castle). It was destroyed in World War II and rebuilt again in the late 1940's. That was one amazing thing about this city. It was destroyed at least 4 different times and just as soon as the people would get it all rebuilt and their feet back under them it would all be destroyed again. I can only imagine there's evidence in their culture of this resiliency.
On our way home we stuck our toes over the border of Croatia just to say we did. Then we traveled to Ljubljana for dinner and to show them around briefly. Here's a photo of the Christmas Fairy Square where children walk under the magical wand to be touched with her blessing at Christmas time. You can barely see the line of people waiting their turn below.
It was sad to leave this place knowing we will probably never go back again. It wouldn't take too much persuasion but with so many other great places to see and Budapest not being extremely close it just isn't likely. Thanks for the great Christmas Budapest! And thanks to Mom, Dad and Bryant for being with us. It made it at least 10X more fun. We really missed Adam and his family though. It would have been great to have cousins! Love you guys!
xoxo
