We arrived in Budapest and settled into a lovely penthouse apartment on the Buda side of the city. Our bedroom had sliding glass doors that went out onto a roof top terrace with beautiful views across the Danube to the Pest side. This was our view from our bed of Castle Hill - not too shabby!
And below is Buda Castle. It was first completed in 1265 and was the Royal Palace for all the Hungarian Kings. On its grounds you can see ruins of many Medieval structures.
Interestingly, one of the sights we saw while there was a Google Mapper! We had just seen a piece on CNN about these guys and have talked throughout our trip about how amazing it is that Google Maps has so much detail. Well, here's one of the guys and his equipment that does it!
I started this post with a picture of Castle Hill from our bedroom. Now, here's a picture of the Buda side from Castle Hill. It really is a lovely city - on both sides of the river.
Our apartment was very well located and we were able to walk everywhere. There are many wide pedestrian streets with numerous cafes. We pretty much spent our days just meandering around and taking it all in.
Here's just one of the many streets. This one was just around the corner from our apartment.
One of the sites we had to see was The New York Cafe in the Boscolo Hotel. It was built by New York Life Insurance Company in 1894 and was the longtime center for Hungarian literature.
One anecdote tells of the famous writer, Molnar, who, on the day the cafe opened, threw the keys into the Danube so that it could never close.
It was indeed a treat.
We had a great time in this city and I'm going to leave you with a bit of serendipity that occurred on our second night. The day was a national holiday celebrating some anniversary for one of the first Hungarian kings. There were parades and such. Well, as we were reading in bed that night we heard some "booms" outside. We opened the drapes and were presented with a fabulous fireworks display. We didn't even have to get out of bed to enjoy it! So, here you go and we'll see you in Krakow!
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