Budapest — Gellért Hill

In the morning I made my way to the bus station to catch the bus to Budapest. The station was located in an area with newly constructed buildings for a new commercial zone. Bratislava is not far from both Austria and Hungary, and some minutes into the journey my mobile carrier switched.

Budapest, as everybody knows, was formed from cities separated by the Danube, which was an important commercial waterway. This sculpture imagines King Buda on the west bank and Queen Pest on the east bank.  Another district Obuda was included but the o means old so Buda subsumes that.

The Széchenyi Chain Bridge from 1849 was the first ground link and brought about prosperity.

I was deposited outside the old Kelenföld train station. The toilet was badly vandalised. It must have taken effort to smear shit high up the wall. I couldn't get out there fast enough after doing my business. The old station has been supplemented by metro and bus stations. However the bus stop I needed was on the highway but I got there with the help of GPS.

I checked into my booked guest house which was near a major intersection called BAH Csomópont, for the three roads that meet there, so very convenient for getting around. The lodgings were a bit worn but serviceable. Obviously appealed to visitors with cars. I asked to stay an additional day due to my stay near Lake Balaton being cancelled and it wasn't a problem, as it was the shoulder season. So I never got to see the lake this trip.

The telephoto shot is of St. Stephen's Basilica in Pest.

The manager recommended a pub around the corner for lunch, and I had a delicious filling meal of schnitzel and potatoes there. I rested for a while then in the late afternoon walked down towards the Citadella on Gellért Hill.

From there one has a commanding view of northern Buda and the Pest bank. This is Buda Castle from the back. It's usually photographed from the opposite bank.

The Garden of Philosophers with renowned thinkers from history.

From here I took a forested path to the Citadella.

On the way up to the summit I encountered an open air gallery of blendings of well-known Budapest locations and cartoon art. I liked all of them so bear with me for the next few pictures.

This one is of the duck pond on Margaret Island.

Ponty Street.

The Little Princess statue on the Danube Promenade. Interesting that it's the background that's been turned into line art.

The narrowest building in Budapest at 6.20 metres wide, which apparently is Várkert Quay 16.

Botanical garden.

Liszt academy.

Elizabeth lookout tower, the highest point in Budapest. I liked the cartoon fox.

At the summit is this monument. There were hordes of people there, not just tourists, but also locals enjoying the evening.

This was taken a bit later, from the back, because I had to get far away enough to avoid tilt distortion. It's the Liberty Statue, a woman holding a palm branch, originally with self-congratulatory inscriptions to the Soviet army who defeated the Nazi occupiers. After communism ended in 1989, the Russian wording was removed and the Hungarian one modified to a dedication to Hungarian sacrifice.

A smaller statue at the foot of the monument depicting a Hungarian warrior defeating a dragon, representing Fascism. Classified under unsubtle.

But enough of history and politics, let's go back to the views of the Danube. This is the eastern bank of the Elizabeth bridge with the Mother Church of the Blessed Virgin behind it.

The western pylons of the bridge and the Széchenyi Chain bridge further up.

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences at one end of the Chain bridge.

The green slopes of Gellért Hill.

A Hungarian corvid.

It was getting late so I walked back. I was tired after the travel and the excursion. I had a filling lunch so I decided I would just get some takeaway food like a sub from a nearby Aldi. I found the translation function of Google lens very useful to confirm what I was buying, Hungarian being totally undecipherable to me, with no resemblance to languages I knew.